Over 5 types of cables will soon become obsolete for office applications

Over 5 types of cables will soon become obsolete for office applications

The cabling method of commercial buildings is about to undergo major changes. The ISO/IEC Integrated Wiring Standards Institute made a new decision in September 2015. Over 5 types of cables used in many office buildings around the world will be considered obsolete and will not be applicable to new installation and deployment in the future.

The ISO/IEC Working Group (JTC1/SC25 WG3) is responsible for the formulation of the 11801 standard after careful consideration of technical trends, cable and wireless bandwidth requirements and the current market requirements for various Integrated Wiring types) recently, it was decided to upgrade the minimum recommended standard for horizontal Integrated Wiring in commercial buildings.

At a recent meeting in Milan, Italy, the ISO/IEC Working Group reached an agreement, decides to raise the minimum requirements for horizontal integrated cabling for commercial buildings in ISO/IEC 11801-2 (which is expected to be officially released on or before May 15, 2017), from Class D (over Class 5) upgrade to Class E (Class 6) and use EA (class 6A) or higher level cables is recommended. In the draft of 11801-3 standard (industrial) and 11801-4 standard (single-tenant housing), Class D (over Class 5) cables are still the lowest requirements, however, the upgrade may be considered in the near future. In the draft of the 11801-5 standard (data center) and 11801-6 standard (distributed service), the EA level (6A class) is already the lowest standard. For new office buildings, Class E (Class 6) will become the minimum requirement from now on, and it is recommended that specification makers and customers deploy Class a ea (class 6A) integrated Wiring is used to support applications with external crosstalk problems, facilitating smooth migration to 2.5 Gb/s and 5 Gb/s, and eventually reaching 10 Gb/s.

The ISO/IEC 11801 standard released more than 20 years ago is the first international standard for integrated cabling of commercial buildings. It promotes the consistency of speech and Data Integrated Wiring implementation across the world and the explosive growth and large-scale deployment of Ethernet and IP communication throughout the world. In the first version, this standard defines D-level balanced integrated cabling based on five copper cable components, providing a 100-meter transmission rate from 10 megabits per second (Mb/s) upgrade path to 100 megabits per second (Mb/s. At that time, some experts and industry observers believed that the transmission of data to the desktop at a rate of 100 Mb/s (BASE-T) was simply a small use for typical office users.

Today, 20 years later, many believe that 100BASE-T technology is rapidly declining in the market. Today, 1000BASE-T (1 Gb/s) is common among desktop PCs, laptops, mobile phones, cameras, wireless access points (WAP), and other devices. Now, the 11801 standard includes more integrated cabling levels that are used to support transmission rates up to 10 Gb/s, including class E (Class 6) and Class F (Class 7) and the latest EA-level (6A class) and FA-level (7A class ). As 1000BASE-T has become commonplace today, some experts and industry observers still claim that 1 Gbit/s is a small use for typical office users. According to other predictions, as the office building's demand for bandwidth continues to rise, the rate of exceeding 1 Gbit/s will be quickly adopted in the field of horizontal integrated wiring, supports remote presentation, teleconference, HD imaging, 3D printing, and other applications.

In addition, with the increasing expectations of "rich" media users and the explosive growth of smartphones and tablets, the speed of Wireless LAN is rapidly increasing. The wireless LAN infrastructure is rapidly upgrading to a peak rate of up to 7 Gbit/s, and the return speed must be over D (over 5 categories) and E (6 categories) 1 Gbit/s IEEE 802.11ac supported by integrated wiring. Therefore, the new IEEE specification is being developed for 2.5BASE-T (for installed D-level integrated cabling) and 5GBASE-T (for installed e-level integrated cabling. However, the transmission rate of 2.5 and 5GBASE-T exceeds the D and E specifications. Although a large proportion of installed facilities are expected to support a higher rate, the supported specifications and use cases are clearly defined. In some cases, you may need to install D-level (over 5 categories) and e-level (6 categories) to verify the support for 2.5 and 5GBASE-T, and some external crosstalk mitigation measures may be required.

The 2.5 and 5g specifications in the formulation are based on the 10GBASE-T technology and use the downward scaling 10GBASE-T capability. Therefore, it is estimated that the rapid growth of 2.5 and 5GBASE-T will put downward pressure on prices and improve the technical efficiency of 10GBASE-T. Some industry analysts predict that these developments will accelerate the growth of 10 gbase-t deployment in office applications, support higher Wireless Access Point speeds, and implement other bandwidth-intensive applications.

The Working Group meeting held in Milan was the first meeting attended by the recently established Global Standards team of both the company and BNS, which was composed of experts who have long attended the standard setting process. In the end, more than 60 cabling experts from 19 countries reached a decision to raise the minimum requirements for horizontal cabling of office buildings to Class E (Category 6 ). This milestone resolution marks Level D (over 5 categories) Integrated cabling, which was finally eliminated 20 years after the launch of International Standards, it also marks the positioning of EA-level (6A) Integrated Wiring as the best horizontal medium for new office buildings.

The ISO11801 standard also has a strong influence on China. China's National Standards GB50311 and GB50312 are also based on the ISO standards. The promotion of ISO standards will inevitably affect China's national standards. Although Cat.6 cables are used as the main materials in the newly created building, Cat.5e Cat.5e cat5e still has a certain proportion in the market. The promotion of this standard will help the industry to adopt Cat.6 and above levels, especially Cat.6A/EA and above. The gradual development of the data communication industry to a higher level is an irreversible trend. Higher-level cables not only support higher-speed network transmission, but also provide more reliable and stable transmission performance and better noise resistance, it is more suitable for installation and laying when a large number of cables are bundled. More importantly, it is widely used in POE (Ethernet power supply) technology, data cables support IP phones, Wireless AP, digital security cameras, smart control devices, and even LED lamps. More advanced cables are used to increase the fever and safety.

Many industry standards, such as some data center standards, have adopted Cat.6A as the basic cable level requirement, while 10 Gb as the basic speed requirement, earlier than the ISO standard. Therefore, Cat.6 and Cat.6A and above are inevitable to replace Cat.5e, which is the only way for the development of network infrastructure.