Companies spend thousands of dollars upgrading their network equipment but the cabling often gets little, if any, attention. This is ironic, because if the cabling doesn't work, the network doesn't work. Some estimate cabling issues account for up to 50% of all LAN failures.
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This results in network downtime which translates to millions of dollars in lost productivity, idle resources, and lost revenues. If you are a network administrator, it is essential to understand how to get the best performance from your cabling investment and find faults quickly when they occur. If you are a cable installer, you need to be up-to-date on the latest cabling installation and conformance techniques to ensure that your work meets changing international standards.
As networks evolve, so do the requirements of the cabling infrastructure to support them. New standards are continuously being developed to provide guidelines for cabling professionals when installing, testing, troubleshooting and certifying both copper and fiber. Whether it's 10BASE-T, 100BASE-TX or 1000BASE-T, you need to be aware of the specific requirements and potential pitfalls in implementing these technologies. And with the introduction of 10GBASE-T, it becomes even more critical to keep current with the latest developments in cabling.
Existing unscreened Category 6/Class E cabling channels longer than 37 meters may not meet the alien crosstalk requirements for 10GBASE-T. ANSI/TIA-568-C.2 defines Augmented Category 6 (Cat 6A) cable and connecting hardware. This cabling standard is defined to fully support 10GBASE-T channels up to 100 meters. See our Featured Topic titled, “Testing 10 Gig Ethernet over Copper and Fiber Cabling” for more information on this emerging standard.
Rely on the related-resource links to help you navigate through the maze of standards, cable classification systems, measurement technology, and applications information so that you can increase your productivity, stay current, and deliver better value to your organization.
Technical Specifications
Use our Statement of Work (SOW) documents as general guidelines to help you understand the specifications for testing twisted pair copper cabling installations and fiber cabling installations.
