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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Most data networking cables are referred to as UTP – which stands for Unshielded Twisted Pair cabling.  This is perfectly adequate for many data networking applications as the twisting of the pairs is thought to cancel out any electromagnetic interference from external sources as well as undesirable cross talk.

Whether or not this is truly adequate depends on a number of factors, one being whether or not the twisting is preserved when the cable is installed.  In some mission critical applications, shielding is desirable just to give added stability to your infrastructure.

Shielded Twisted Pair cabling is primarily used in Europe for general installations, or in noisy electrical environments and combines the protection offered by twisting with an electromagnetic shield.  It was originally developed by IBM for Token Ring data communications, and termed STP at that time.  It is more expensive than UTP cable, harder to install, and can create some additional issues if the shields are not properly terminated.  If a shield is not properly terminated, it acts as an antenna and the resulting signal degradation is worse than if UTP were used!

Two types of Shielded Twisted Pair are commonly found – FTP or Foiled Twisted Pair uses a thin layer of foil as a shield, and S-FTP or Shielded Foiled Twisted Pair which uses both foil and an outer conductor of braided shielding.

If you are running Ethernet cabling near repeaters, routers, power sources, radio towers, or any electrical equipment that could create interference, it makes sense to use shielding in these areas just to be safe.   Remember, once the cable is in the wall, it is tougher to change it than to choose the right cable in the first place.

Shielding also provides some protection against security breaches.  Cable sniffers can detect and decode data packets being carried by sensing the electromagnetic emanations from the cable.   Added shielding makes this harder to do, although not quite providing the amount of protection offered by the use of more expensive fiber optic cable.

Coaxial cable offers the next level of shielding, as the second wire in the pair also acts as the shield – and a layer of insulation covers both.  Although more costly than UTP, coaxial cable allows longer overall cable runs to be made without signal degradation.  For example, UTP can run up to 100 meters (some manufacturers recommend only 90 meters), but coaxial cable can be run for 500 meters with no loss of signal integrity.  If you must have a long cable run, coaxial cabling is the way to go.

Data installation professionals can help you make the determination as to whether or not you need shielding, and if so, where in your network it should be used.   Call them today and they will provide you with a comprehensive infrastructure upgrade plan that includes cable types and installation details.  Your network will thank you, and so will your employees when their network operates more reliability – making them more productive.

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).