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.
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 55 m may not meet the alien crosstalk requirements for 10GBASE-T. New standards are under development to define Augmented Category 6 (Cat 6a) cable and connecting hardware. This new cabling standard is defined to fully support 10GBASE-T channels up to 100 m. See our Solutions Center titled, “Migrating to to 10 Gigabit/sec Ethernet Over Twisted Pair Cabling” for more information on this emerging standard.
Rely on the Cabling Basics Solution Center product and 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.