Introduction to Data Cabling
"Data cabling! It's just wire. What is there to plan?" the newly promoted promoted programmer-turned-MIS-director commented to Jim. The MIS director had been contracted to help the company move its 750-node network to a new location. During the initial conversation, the director had a few other "insights":
He said that the walls were not even up in the new location, so it was too early to be talking about data cabling.
To save money, he wanted to pull the old Category 3 cabling and move it to the new location. ("We can run 100Base-TX on the old cable.")
He said not to worry about the voice cabling and the cabling for the photocopier tracking system; someone else would coordinate that.
Jim shouldn't have been too surprised by the ridiculous nature of these comments. Too few people understand the importance of a reliable, standard-based, flexible cabling system. Fewer still understand the challenges of building a high-speed network. Some of the technical problems associated with building a cabling system to support a high-speed network are comprehended only by electrical engineers. And many believe that a separate type of cable should be in the wall for each application (PCs, printers, terminals, copiers, etc.).
Data cabling has come a long way in the past 30 years.
You are probably thinking right now that all you really want to know is how to install cable to support a few 10Base-T workstations. Words and phrases such asĀ attenuation,Ā crosstalk,twisted-pair,Ā modular connectors, andĀ multimode optical-fiber cableĀ may be completely foreign to you. Just as the world of PC LANs and WANs has its own industry buzzwords, so does the cabling business. In fact, you may hear such an endless stream of buzzwords and foreign terminology that you'll wish you had majored in electrical engineering in college. But it's not really that mysterious and, armed with the background and information we'll provide, you'll soon be using "cable-speak" like a cabling professional.
In this blog, you will learn to:
Identify key industry standards necessary to specify, install, and test network cabling
Understand the different types of unshielded twisted-pair (UTP) cabling
Understand the different types of shielded twisted-pair (STP) cabling
Determine the uses of plenum- and riser-rated cabling
Identify the key test parameters for communications cables
I will use a series of pictures fromĀ FiberstoreĀ or other companies as the related products in the forward articles.
Article source:Ā China Cable Suppliers
