A structured cabling system consists of outlets, which are usually supplied as either one or two RJ45 connectors mounted in a standard single gang faceplate, or as single snap in modules which can be fitted into surface mount boxes or single/double gang faceplates.
Each user outlet is connected to a hub using a twisted pair cables, which is named as the 'Horizontal Cabling. The structured cabling system can be either unshielded, known as UTP (Unshielded Twisted Pair) or shielded, known as STP (Shielded Twisted Pair) , SCTP (Screened Twisted Pair) or FTP (Foiled Twisted Pair). Structured cabling system is connected to the back of the user outlet by means of a connector. The maximum length of cable between the hub and any outlet must be 90 meters or less for complying to EIA/TIA and ISO standard. The standards allow a further 10 meters for connecting patch cords, making a total distance of 100 meters or less.
At the hub, the 4 pair cables from the user outlets are terminated on patch panel. These patch panel usually have IDC (Insulation Displacement Connection) connectors on the rear for terminating the horizontal cables, and provide an RJ45 presentation on the front for patching. Patch panels are usually mounted in wall mounted or free standing 19 inch racks. RJ45 patch panels usually come with 16, 24, 32, 48 or 96 connectors. The patch panel provides 110 style, 8 pin modular connectors which are rack mounted to allow cables to be neatly punched down. Patch panel and cross connect hardware allow for:
- means to connect station cables with jumper cables,
- connection of active equipment to the UTP network,
- identification of circuits for structured cabling system management.
- an access point for circuit testing and monitoring, and
- an access point for reconnection of the wiring within the network.
The hubs are connected together back to the main equipment room using backbone cables, which can either be copper or optical fibre cable. In most structured cabling system, multicore optical cables ( usually 4 - 12 cores ) are used for the data backbone cables and multipair ( usually 25 , 50 or 100 ) copper cables are used for the voice backbone cables.
The equipment racks and cabinets usually also contain active equipment for the data network. Depending on the equipment used, the data channels may be presented in one of two different ways.
Each data channel on the equipment may be fitted with an RJ45 connector, so that channels can be patched directly to the patch panels terminating the horizontal cables. Alternatively, the equipment may be fitted with 'Telco' connectors, these are 25 pair connectors each of which carries several (usually 12) data channels. Even though the IEEE 802.3ab Gigabit Ethernet specification has released and applications group's are turning their attention towards next generation solutions, there is still a great degree of uncertainty as to the capability of today's telecommunications cabling systems to support tomorrow's high bit-rate applications. Fortunately, the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) and International Organization for Standardization (ISO) have made great strides in the specification and clarification of the minimum structured cabling system performance criteria necessary to support these next generation applications.
Additional requirements and recommendations for category 5 cable and class D structured cabling system that are intended to supplement the existing TIA/EIA-568-A and category ISO/IEC 11801 class specifications have recently been published. These specifications address additional transmission performance characterization required by structured cabling system developers to support bi-directional and full four-pair transmission schemes (such as those utilized by Gigabit Ethernet). Table 1 identifies these new structured cabling system documents developed by the TIA and ISO technical committees. close
Category 6 is capable of a transmission frequency of 250 MHz and would use UTP or FTP/SFTP cable and R145 connectors. It provides an excellent platform for Gigabit Ethernet (which uses complex encoding techniques to limit the required bandwidth to 100 MHz), but also caters for future high-speed data transmission protocols using less expensive encoding schemes. Category 7 will use fully shielded cables (overall shield and individually shielded pairs) and a new connector type in order to achieve 600 MHz capabilities. Cat 6 and Cat 7 have tighter twists, which result in greater speeds. close
Category 1 & Category 1 ( 1Mhz ) is mainly used for Analog voice (plain old telephone service), ISDN Basic Rate Interface Doorbell wiring.
Category 2 - Category 2 (4 Mhz) is mainly used in the IBM Token Ring networks
Category 3 - Category 3 (16Mhz) is mainly used for 10Base-T, 100Base-T4, and 100Base-T2 application.
Category 4 - Category 4 (20Mhz) is mainly used for 10Base-T, 100Base-T4, and 100Base-T2 application.
Category 5 - Category 5 (100Mhz) is mainly used for 10Base-T, 100Base-T4, 100Base-T2, and 100Base-TX application.
Category 5e - Category 5e (100Mhz) is mainly used for 10Base-T, 100Base-T4, 100Base-T2, and 100Base-TX and 1000Base T2 application As compared to Cat 5 cable, it has improved specifications for NEXT and PSELFEXT and Attenuation.
Category 6 - Category 6 (250Mhz) is mainly used for 1000Base T2 application. As compared to Cat 5e cable, it has improved specifications for NEXT and PSELFEXT and Attenuation.
Category 7 - Category 7 is a proposed standard that aims to support transmission at frequencies up to 600 MHz over 100 ohm twisted pair. close
Coaxial cable is a type of communication cable in which a solid center conductor is surrounded by an insulating dielectric which in turn is surrounded by an outer conductor (usually a braid, foil or both). The entire assembly is then covered with an insulating jacket. Coaxial cables have a wide bandwidth and are capable of carrying many data, voice, and video conversations simultaneously.
There are two major types of coaxial cabling used with Ethernet. One is Thicknet and another is Thinnet. close
Fiber optics cable is a technology where electrical signals are converted into optical signals, transmitted through a thin glass fiber, and re-converted into electrical signals. It is used as transmission medium for the following Ethernet media systems: FOIRL, 10Base-FL, 10Base-FB, 10Base-FP,100Base-FX, 1000Base-LX, and 1000Base-SX.
Fiber optics cable is constructed of three concentric layers. The "core" is the central region of an optical fiber through which light is transmitted. The "cladding" is the material in the middle layer. It has a lower index of refraction than the core which serves to confine the light to the core. An outer "protective layer", or "buffer", serves to protect the core and cladding from damage.
We recommend a horizontally run, multimode fiber optics cable for indoor LANs. A multimode fiber optics cable has several hundred modes, individual parameters of light called "waveguides". A minimum of six (6) strands per cable is recommended, while twelve (12) strands are optimal. Cable can be PVC or riser type for non-plenum areas. Plenum areas require a plenum rated, Communications Plenum (CMP) type cable. Fiber optic connectors are single terminus (ST) or subscriber connector (SC) type connectors, either epoxy or crimp type. LIU boxes are used to allow a permanent fiber termination point. Fiber optics cable technology is the future of computer applications and telecommunications networks. Fiber optics cable's high capacity supports video, data and interactive services of all kinds.
Benefits Fiber optics cable is an excellent choice for horizontal station runs to central hubs and backbones.
Fiber optics cable eliminates distance/distribution problems, which are typical of copper cable systems.
Fiber optics cable are also immune to electromagnetic intrusions, crosstalk, radio frequency interference, impedance mismatches, ground loops and transmission frequency variances.
Fiber optics cable remains quite stable and presents a secure means for priority transmissions, which normally create problems for copper cable.
Fiber optics cable have exceptional ability to accommodate transmission bandwidths, when matched with the proper mode of operation. close
Single-mode fiber has a core diameter in 10 micron to allow only single mode of light to propagate. This eliminates the main limitation to bandwidth and modal dispersion. However, the small core of a single-mode fiber makes coupling light into the fiber more difficult, and thus expensive lasers must be used as light sources. The main limitation to the bandwidth of a single-mode fiber is material (chromatic) dispersion. Laser sources must also be used to attain high bandwidth, because LEDs emit a large range of frequencies, and thus material dispersion becomes significant.
Single-mode fiber is capable of supporting much longer segment lengths than multi-mode fiber. Segment lengths of 5000 meters and beyond are supported at all Ethernet data rates through 1 Gbps. Single-mode fiber is significantly more expensive to deploy than multi-mode fiber because of the high laser equipment cost. close
Installations are limited to a total cable distance of 328 feet (100 meters) per node. Anything over the maximum distance of 328 feet begins to lose the signal. Installing a higher grade of cable and terminating hardware may allow the maximum distance to increase to 492 feet (150 meters) over the same working frequency. close
CAT6 cabling products includes the following : UTP CAT6 cable bulk, FTP CAT6 cable bulk and SFTP CAT6 cable bulk. All these three different types of CAT6 cables only have 4 pair construction.
Bandwidth precedes data rates just as highways come before traffic. Doubling the bandwidth is like adding twice the number of lanes on a highway. The trends of the past and the predictions for the future indicate that data rates have been doubling every 18 months. Current applications running at 1 Gb/s are really pushing the limits of CAT5e cables. As streaming media applications such as video and multi-media become commonplace, the demands for faster data rates will increase and spawn new applications that will benefit from the higher bandwidth offered by CAT6 cables. CAT6 cables repeats exactly what happened in the early 90¡¯s when the higher bandwidth of CAT5 cabling compared to CAT3 caused most LAN applications to choose the better media to allow simpler, cost effective, higher speed LAN applications, such as 100BASE-TX. Note: Bandwidth of CAT6 cables is defined as the highest frequency up to which positive power sum ACR (Attenuation to Crosstalk Ratio) is greater than zero.
Cat6 cables are ideal for networking applications where high bandwidth is required. close
