INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Cabling
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Cabling standards:
The need for speed
P
erhaps one of the most overlooked
elements of Information
Technology is also one of the most
overlooked and under-appreciated. How
well your cabling infrastructure performs
has a massive impact on the speed of
your network and your ability to please
your customers. We spoke to three
experts asking for their opinions on two
cabling topics.
designing a new data centre, backbone
connections should use MPO/MTP fibre
trunks, which support migration to 40
Gb/s and 100 Gb/s Ethernet without
having to run new channels.
Traditional copper channels should
be installed for data centre servers
to switch ‘edge’ connections, as
well as monitoring, centralised KVM,
management, etc. Copper channels
should also be minimally specified to
allow support of 10GBASE-T. TIA 942-B
recommends a minimum of category 6A/
class EA cabling be installed and ISO/IEC
11801-5 requires a minimum of category
6A/class EA cabling be installed.
Are there any differences in
performance standards for advanced
copper and fibre cabling technology?
Paul Cave, Technical Pre-Sales
Manager, Excel
Not really. The cabling standards
are well defined and adhered to. The
major thing to understand is that the
applications such as 1000Base-T,
10GBase-T and PoE+ etc. are all
applications developed and designed
to operate over ‘standards compliant’
cabling solutions; they do not need
any special cables therefore as long
as the standards are adhered to in the
manufacture, design and installation
stages of the cabling solution they will
always work. Furthermore, the IEEE
are not developing any new standards
that cannot operate over existing fibre
cabling standards, whether that be
Multi-mode or Singlemode.
Narender Vasandani, RCDD,
technical manager Middle East and
India at Siemon
Whether delivering the next ‘killer
application’ or merely managing the
increasing demand for instant data,
transmission speeds in the data centres
are increasing. Supporting this trend
requires a revaluation of existing
applications and cabling infrastructure.
In order to achieve the required
higher data rates, new standards and
transmission media types are becoming
www.intelligentcio.com
Narender Vasandani, RCDD,
technical manager Middle East and
India at Siemon
available. Each needs to be evaluated
based on the architecture, design and
technical advantages, end to end cost
and performance considerations.
Top of Rack (ToR) switches, supported
by short reach twinaxial copper or
active optical fibre assemblies, provide
a relatively new set of options that is
an alternative to structured cabling.
Designs for these systems, however,
are significantly different than industry
standards-based structured cabling and
utilise different form-factor interfaces.
These interconnect assemblies are
deployed in a single cabinet or within
a row depending on the distance
limitation of the application.
The 40 Gb/s and 100 Gb/s solutions
defined in IEEE Std 802.3ba™-2010 has
significantly increased the number of
high speed transmission options. When
By taking advantage of the various
copper and fibre high speed
interconnect assembly, category copper
cabling, and standards-specified optical
fibre cabling options that exist, it is
possible to design a robust, scalable,
flexible and efficient data centre that
meets current needs and is ready for the
future. Siemon offers the broadest range
of standards-based balanced twisted-
pair copper and optical fibre cabling,
high speed interconnect assembly and
cable management solutions.
Osama Abed, Technical Manager
(Gulf, Middle East, East and South
Africa), Nexans Cabling Solutions
Copper and fibre optics are two
different technologies, and each has
its own standard references in terms of
performance levels (electrical signalling
on copper and optical light signalling
on fibre optics), operation distances
and speed. For example, 10G speed is
available on copper for distances up
to 100 metres, while it is available on
multimode fibre optics for a maximum
reach of 550 metres, and on singlemode
fibre optics for a maximum reach of
10,000 metres (10km).
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