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Following standards pays in terms of life of the cabling, durability and return on investment as one cannot possibly lay and remove cables as it were a LAN Switch. As this forms the backbone of any company's operations, the standards need to be respected and followed as per TIA/ EIA listed standards.

Standards for True Value
Abiding and following standard guidelines is more to do with getting the right throughput and extending the life of the product. Most cabling agencies (small operations) are not aware of the standards completely. This is an important aspect why structured cabling solutions may not give the right performance. However, certification concepts followed by almost all major OEMs help the industry in this aspect. Networks should be designed for easy installation and access, and cabling should be provided with adequate support and protection. Manufacturers' guidelines are designed to ensure that all these criteria are met. They also take into account national and international standards applying to cable pathways. The installer must ensure that the requirements of building codes and standards are met in full.

Cost vs Performance
In India, the choice of any product would be based on the cost as it is a known fact that major OEMs follow TIA/EIA standards. While the cable and component manufacturers follow the TIA/EIA standards, the durability of the system would depend on the material used in manufacturing such cables and components. Product (standards) compliance for some is more an art form than a science, and there are very valid reasons why one patch cord sells for lesser while another sells for a higher price. Likewise, installation practices alone can take a first-class product and turn it into a mediocre one in an instant. When contractors are driven by the knowledge that price is a foremost consideration, be assured that shortcuts will occur-only a matter of where and how many.

However, the central challenge to an end user today is to truly define his needs-present and future. Cabling decisions that will hold their value throughout performance and time.

An important question that builds the premise for all the compliance/standard issues is what should be the performance of a structured cabling system?

Performance of Structured Cabling System
Some prioritize link performance, others prefer channel performance. How do you distinguish between what you understand and what performance you are really buying-and be sure of what you get?

The channel is the entire cabling system comprising all the cables, connecting hardware such as outlets and patch panels and all the cords between (but not including) the mated plug/socket in the network interface card (NIC) used in your PC at one end and the communications room equipment, typically a switch, at the other. The performance requirement of the channel is actually handed down to the cabling industry by the groups who define 'applications' such as Ethernet, ATM, SDH and the like. These specifications basically say "If the dc resistance is better than A Ohms, the insertion loss is better than B dB, the signal to noise ratio is better than C dB, crosstalk is better than D dB, the return loss is better than E dB, etc, then the application will work over the channel". These groups that define the applications are only interested that an RJ45 plug is at each end of the channel to fit into the RJ45 sockets provided. They are not very rigorous about the processors.

Varity in Standards
Even the different structured cabling standard bodies use different definitions! In ISO/IEC11801:2002 and EN 50173-1:2002, a compliant channel can be any collection of cables, connectors and cords that, as a cabling system, meet the channel performance requirements. Whereas under the American standard, TIA/EIA-568-B, a channel must be constructed of individually compliant cabling components. And, of course, if the individual components are not Cat5e or Cat6 compliant, then there is very little chance of the channel continuing to meet its specified performance requirement should a different manufacturer's patch cord, outlet jack or patch panel be introduced later on-leading to network performance problems and reduced throughput.

A permanent link, as defined in ISO/IEC and EN, includes the horizontal cabling from the horizontal patch panel jack in the communications room through to the telecommunications outlet jack at the workplace-including the mated connectors at each end. The permanent link is defined because, in most cases, when a cabling system is being installed, the channel (which also includes all the additional cords and connections) simply doesn't exist.

The whole point of cabling standards is to be able to plug together cabling components from different manufacturers and still meet the overall channel requirement. You don't want a situation where an end user is mixing compliant and non-compliant products. So, to ensure that cabling components from different manufacturers will interoperate, we have Cat5e and Cat6 component requirements. It's possible for poor terminations and wire map errors to occur or for jacks and plugs to become damaged. And cables are all too easily crushed, kinked or damaged on site during installation. So, cabling components can cease to be component compliant with the result that channel performance is hindered. In reality, it is imperative to test on site after installation.

Although the standards allow for a great diversity of proprietary solutions, 100% customers want to buy a system that is true Cat5e or Cat6, ie, it's the fully interoperable, fully component compliant option. And they can only achieve this by specifying that all of the cabling components in the solution are fully component-compliant to the standards.

There is a defining way to measure product capability and creating a level playing field. Ensure that all of the cabling components in the system offered comply with Cat5e (or Cat6) according to ISO/IEC 11801:2002, EN 50173-1:2002 or TIA/EIA-568-B. Users should decide for themselves whether they value the comfort of a safety margin or headroom and should totally discount irrelevant claims about additional bandwidth and channel performance.

Minu Sirsalewala