Building or campus telecommunications cabling infrastructure is a Structured cabling that consists of a various standardized smaller elements. Cabling infrastructure has become a vital component of an enterprise’s IT strategy.
Structured cabling is a standardized cabling system designed to carry data, voice and video signals in a residential or commercial environment. Traditionally, cabling has full focused on “Cat 5” unshielded twisted pair cable as it is used in Ethernet networks but network architectures are changing.
Networks have increased in speed from 10 Mb/s to 10 Gb/s, 1,000 times that promote the use of fiber, especially in backbone workstation and networks connections. A new generation of users has become accustomed to “mobility”, using the latest generation of wireless networks, usually WiFi, with personal digital assistants, laptops and smart phones so that it can be to avoided for being tethered to a desktop.
Structured cabling is categorized into six subsystems:
- Work-Area Components connect end-user equipment to outlets of the horizontal cabling system.
- Equipment Rooms are the host equipment which serves the users inside the building.
- Entrance Facilities are where the building interfaces with the outside world.
- Telecommunications Rooms house are where the telecommunication equipment which connect the backbone and the horizontal cabling subsystems.
- Horizontal Cabling connect telecommunications rooms to individual outlets on the floor.
- Backbone Cabling connects between the equipment rooms, entrance facilities and telecommunications rooms.
Types of Structured cabling:
Cat 3, Cat 5, Cat 5e, Cat 6, Cat 6e, Fiber Optics Cabling and Coax Cabling etc.
When designing your cabling backbone, there are some key considerations that need to take into account.
- Choosing a Cable Vendor
- Selecting the Right Medium
- Eye on the Future
Advantages of Structured cabling:
- Consistency and flexibility: Structured cabling provides a universal platform upon which an overall information system’s strategy is built. It can support multiple data, voice, video and multimedia systems.
- Support for multi-vendor equipment: A standards-based cable plant will support your applications and hardware even if you change or mix and match vendors.
- Simplify moves/adds/changes: With structured cabling the network resources are always there and ready to go to simplify the changes.
- Simplify troubleshooting: Even cables can fail that were installed correctly. With a structured wiring system, problems are easier to fix, easier to isolate and less likely to down the entire network.
So, we think that Cabling needs have become very specific now. Organisations need to be equipped with better knowledge which can make or break their basic IT infrastructure.