Technology is evolving at an unprecedented pace and the cabling infrastructure you have should fulfill the needs of your enterprise. Selecting and installing a solution in advance that is ideal for your company with the help of a network cabling contractor can save you money and time.
Each cabling infrastructure performs quite well for around ten years on average. Do you believe that the moment has finally arrived when you must upgrade your network cabling? If yes, you will find this guide rather handy because it unveils the major kinds of cabling infrastructures.
Category 5
In 1995, Category 5 came up as a cabling standard. If you are still using Cat5 in your company and it’s doing reasonably well for your all IT demands, then it would be wise to stick with it. Whenever you decide to move to more modern IT technologies, you may have to upgrade your cabling infrastructure by employing professional network cable installers .
Category 5e
Category 5e standard was introduced in 2001. It comprises a new copper cable that has the capability to decrease signal interference and noise and increase transfer speeds up to 350 megabytes per second over one hundred meters. Some modifications in the encoding scheme can optimize Cat5e cable’s capability and let it perform at the speeds of Gigabit Ethernet up to the length of fifty meters. Both Category5 and Category 5E structured network must be upgraded for an advanced IT infrastructure.
Category 6
This cabling infrastructure is suitable for you if you either own the building or planning on to stay there for a considerable amount of time. If your business utilizes PoE devices, automatic door accessibility, cameras and VoIP business telephone systems, cables of Category 6 or higher should be installed in your building. The reason behind it is that Category 6 structured network can manage the power demanded by aforementioned devices much better than Category 5 cabling.
Category 6a
Category 6a cabling infrastructure boasts the augmented specification. It is devised to double the transmission frequency up to five hundred megahertz. Cat6a would be a good choice if you are going to upgrade your current facility or relocate to a new one within coming five to ten years.
Category 7
At the moment, Category 7 might offer you way more speed than your business actually needs. However, it does mean that you will keep on enjoying higher speeds without having to upgrade your cabling infrastructure for several years to come.
Fiber Optic Cabling
Fiber optic cable installation has surfaced as an ideal standard especially for those businesses that have reached their limits of bandwidth with Category 6. Easy cabling like AE (Active Ethernet) can push companies to shift to the fiber optic cables without facing any kind of hassle.
While fiber optic cables are widely utilized for connecting diverse floors, buildings and network segments, it is not employed to do full network wiring. Fiber optics is significantly different than its copper counterparts, since it is made up of hairline strands of silica glass in its molten form. Instead of using electricity for the transmission of signals, optical fiber utilizes light. This is why fiber optic cabling works almost everywhere.
Light is known as the fastest medium to transfer information from one point to another. It happens because light does not have to face electrical interference and thus encounters negligible amount of resistance. This characteristic allows fiber optic internet providers to run it over great distances without even having the need to boost signals.
Optical fiber can sometimes transmit signals more than five thousand miles before processing or boosting them. Just imagine how effectively this formidable networking cable can improve your regular network installation. When you do a comparison between coaxial cabling and optical fiber then it is tantamount to comparing analog information with digital information. Fiber optics has two main types:
- Single mode – It is capable of delivering ten GB Ethernet at forty thousand meters. Single mode fiber optic cabers are expensive as well as complex to handle. Its strands are ridiculously narrow. Even light can move through them merely in a sole path that is why it is known as single mode
- Multi mode – It also delivers ten GB Ethernet but at five hundred and fifty meters. The diameter of multi mode fiber optic cables’ core is wider that allows light beams to move in multiple paths which also causes distortion in signals at receiving end.
Fiber optic cables are much more impressive as compared to any other category of cabling infrastructure. The only thing that might stop you from quickly shifting to fiber optics is the cost of its NICs (Network Interface Cards). Each NIC costs more than one thousand dollars. However, according to fiber optic cable contractors and experts, the price of these cards is expected to drop in the coming years because of rapidly increasing popularity and utilization of fiber optics.
