The standardly used wiring for both home and company networks is twisted pair – twisting the wires cancels out electromagnetic interference effects and improves SNR or signal-to-noise ratio.  Because cat 5, cat5e and cat6 wiring are all twisted pair wiring types, there are special handling requirements that apply.

First of all, try not to twist the cable as you install it.  This can cause fragile internal wiring to split or break, and can degrade the insulation.  When running twisted pair cabling, try to use gentle curves rather than sharp angles which can degrade performance.  It also makes sense when using UTP (unshielded twisted pair) cabling to install wires a safe distance away from any other wiring, and especially from fluorescent lighting.

To maximize performance and minimize latency, use as short of a cable run as you possibly can get away with using.  In any event, never use more than 100 meters of cabling.   Pulling two wires per “drop” (room, or area needing a connection) provides redundancy, which means you have a spare should one of the wires become degraded.   Using two boxes of wiring makes this easier to do.  Position your patch panel or hub in a central location such that each wire run is minimized.

If you nick a cable – don’t just let it go and think it will be OK. It won’t be over time.  Degradation in performance is easy to achieve at Fast Ethernet or Gigabit Ethernet speeds.  Discard or recycle this cable and pull a new one, to be safe.  If you start with the longest runs first, if you nick a long wire, you can cut some of it off and still have enough for a shorter run.

It goes without saying that labeling each wire as soon as you pull it makes it easier to remember where it goes!  Use colored tape, and mark the same colors on the RJ45 sockets you place the wire terminations into.   Try to minimize the untwisting you do at the ends and connections when terminating the wires.   Test the wiring with a high quality tester – lower quality testers do not detect “split pairs” or stress test wiring at high bit rates.

Pulling low voltage twisted pair cabling does take time and practice – if the infrastructure you are considering pulling is mission critical, it makes sense to leave it to professionals.   Call experienced network cabling installers a cost-effective, thorough and professional job that you can count on for future as well as current infrastructure needs.

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Current industry best practices for network design for enterprise and small business clients begin with a solid understanding of the businesses’ current and future needs. Scalability must be built in from the start; otherwise the network will limit the company’s future growth.  This means using a distributed rather than centralized architecture for most installations.

Today’s networks are combined voice-video- and data networks, not just data networks like yesteryear.  This means QoS (quality of service) must be built in from the start to prioritize voice and video traffic where packet loss can create loss of business communications. Service providers chosen should offer QoS as part of an SLA (service level agreement) and internal Ethernet switches should also offer at least a ToS bit QOS scheme.  Switch ports must be configured to auto-negotiate speed/duplex levels, power levels, enable portfast, and to enable queueing on uplink ports to ensure that the Voice VLAN gets priority across the entire LAN.

Copper rather than fiber cabling is preferred for VoIP networks within a business or enterprise as fiber networks require media convertors which are viewed as another potential point of failure.  All wiring should meet requirements for 100MB Fast Ethernet, and should be certified as free of faulty shielding, improper termination, or other defects.   At least cat 5 wiring and preferably cat5e or higher wiring should be used.

PoE or Power-over-Ethernet switches are also preferred as they can be used in conjunction with a back up power source so that business communications and data sharing are continuous in the event of a power outage.   When PoE switches are used with IP phones and a back up power source, the phones will also still work in the event of a power failure.

A gateway that connects to the PSTN (public switched telephone network) is also needed to handle 911 calls or external calls in the event of WAN failure.  This functionality is included in many IPPBXs or routers available today.

Best practices design is a constantly changing concept also, based on the latest and greatest technology and findings.  It pays to hire an experienced data installation firm that keeps pace with today’s best practices and networking know-how.

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If your building infrastructure was put together during the 90s or later, chances are that you have some form of Cat 5 UTP cabling installed. Cat 5 UTP cable was designed to support the demands of an ATM, CDDI, or Fast Ethernet (100 Base TX) data networking system and represented a significant upgrade over the Cat 3 cable found in buildings designed for 10 Base TX systems installed in the 80s.

Cat 5e cabling was introduced a bit later and is fundamentally the same as Cat 5, but has a few additional items specified.   A chart showing the differences between all three common types of copper cabling is shown below:

CAT5, CAT5e, and CAT6 UTP Solid Cable Specifications Comparison

Chart from http://discountcablesusa.com/ethernet-cables100.html

Delay skew is a measure of the difference between the signal delay along the fastest pair of conductors and along the slowest pair of conductors, and is a measure of the uniformity of signal transmission along the cable.  Cat 5e cable and Cat 6 cable have the same specification, which is a max of 45 nS.

NEXT and PS-NEXT are specifications for cross talk, and near end cross talk, respectively.   Cat 6 cable has more stringent specifications for these parameters, and also is rated to support bandwidths of up to 250 MHz.   Cross talk, which is the bleeding of signals from one pair to another through induction, is highly undesirable and cause slower signal speeds as well as signal degradation.

When choosing which type cable to use for your implementation, it is important to note that cat 5e is probably fine for most small businesses running Fast Ethernet. Much of the cat 5 cable available today is also really cat 5e cable that simply hasn’t been tested to the new rigorous specifications.  Cat 6 is a good choice for 1) mission critical areas such as a data center, or key on-site servers, 2) networks you want to upgrade to Gigabit Ethernet, or 3) networks you want to “future-proof” so that new standards and speeds can be easily accommodated.

A new category of cabling, Cat 6a, is being introduced to support 10 Gigabit Ethernet networks as well. It will operate up to frequencies of 500 MHz.  Some Cat 6 cable can also support 10 Gigabit networks if properly installed, but only over shorter structured cable lengths due to losses.

If you liked this article, tell all your friends about it. They’ll thank you for it. If you have a blog or website, you can link to it or even post it to your own site (don’t forget to mention http://www.intsysinst.com as the original source).