Structured Cabling System Market Forecast

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Structured cabling system consists of a variety of cables as well as connectivity products that are used to build a standard communication cabling infrastructure in a building or office. A variety of management systems are integrated to facilitate transmission of data, video and voice signals. Like any other industry, the structured cabling system industry has witnessed its share of highs and lows. However, over the last few years it has enjoyed a more or less healthy growth rate. Market pundits forecast a pretty healthy growth rate in the coming years.

Structured Cabling System – Looking Ahead

The structured cabling system market is expanding like never before and the future looks extremely bright. Penetration of internet and demand for high-speed internet connections are the two foremost contributors to its growth. Some of the structured cabling system market drivers include the increase in demand of LED lighting, migration from analog to IP-based surveillance systems and higher usage of FTTP/FTTH.

Businesses of all sizes, small as well as big, need higher bandwidth to carry out multiple essential communication activities. In order to support the increasing data traffic, the need for fiber optics for connectivity is also increasing. IT & Telecommunication will be the biggest market of structured cabling system that any other verticals. All major data center infrastructure providing companies and telecom operators are in need of structured cabling system products or services.

North America has witnessed considerable expansion in communication infrastructure coupled with growth in convergence of data centers. All this has propelled a higher adoption rate of automation systems both at home and in industry. Thus, the region has a bigger share in the global market of structured cabling system.

Even Brighter Future

By the year 2020, the global market for structured cabling system is projected to achieve the $13.13 billion. The CAGR of 9.0% has been taken into account for the time period of 2015-2020. All the above projections forecast a very satisfying growth for the structured cabling system market.

About PhoneAM

At Phone America, we have the knowledge and experience to prepare a blueprint for your shift to VoIP. Call us today and we will guide you through the whole process.

Phone America Corporation is a leading supplier of advanced telecom systems for small and large businesses. We serve as a single point of contact for today’s growing communication needs, offering a wide range of telephone equipment, wiring, surveillance systems, telephone cost accounting systems, and voice processing systems.

Call (800) 836-3601 for a free evaluation of your current system and the system you will need to carry your business into the FUTURE

5 Structured Cabling Tools That Are Essential

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Organizations are fast learning the advantages offered by structured cabling for building a robust telecommunications infrastructure. This network infrastructure not only facilitates telephone service but at the same time is used to provide data transmission for the computer network.

Structured cabling system has become extremely popular among businesses and companies because it is not device dependent. One of the most common terms associated with structured cabling is NID or Network Interface Device (aka demarcation). NID defines the ownership because this is the point where the service provider terminates and structured cabling begins.

Structured cabling has several variations depending on the following:

  • The shape of the building that houses the cabling system
  • Function of the installed cabling system
  • The cable along with its connection products
  • The different types of equipments that structured cabling system will support for the present as well as future installations
  • Retrofits and upgrades
  • Client requirements
  • Warranties provides by the Manufacturer

Every structured cabling service provider adheres to the industry standards while deploying and maintaining the installations. Standardization of the installations is required to ensure optimum performance for complex arrangements. It is ANSI or American National Standards Institute is the body responsible for deciding the standards as well as practices for the profession. Some of the obvious benefits of this standardization of installations include:

  • Consistency during the design and installation phases
  • Compliance with the transmission and physical line requirements
  • Provides the base to examine any proposed expansion of system and any other changes
  • Uniform documentation

Structured cabling usually include the entrance facilities, horizontal and vertical backbone pathways, horizontal and vertical backbone cables, horizontal cables, horizontal pathways, work area outlets, telecommunication closets, equipment rooms, cross-connect facilities, transition points, MUTOA or multi-user telecommunications outlet assemblies, and consolidation points.

The entrance facility usually includes all the cabling components required to connect the premises to the outside facilities. Typically it includes the cables, pathways, circuit protection devices, connecting hardware and also transition hardware. It houses the transition outside plant cabling to the approved cabling within the building construction, which is often the transition fire-rated cable. The entrance facility also serves as the demarcation.

Backbone cabling now takes over as the structured cabling is not rolled out to the other buildings and also from one floor to another within the building. Since the greater part of the network traffic is handled by these cables so it is referred as the backbone cabling.

5 structured cabling tools everyone in the industry should be using are:

  1. Cable Pathways: It typically is made up of shafts, conduits, raceways, and floor penetrations including sleeves or slots) for facilitating cable routing space.
  2. The Cables: Optical fiber, coaxial copper, twisted-pair copper, or other combinations.
  3. Connecting Hardware: Patch panels, connecting blocks, cross-connections, interconnections, or combination of other components
  4. Cabling Connectors: These are used to interface cables with equipment or two cables. Actually a connector provides a coupling mechanism to reduce losses and keep them at acceptable levels. Connectors used in optic fiber cables facilitate the transfer of light impulses from on to another.
  5. Other Support Facilities: This includes support hardware for cables, grounding and fire stopping hardware.

 

10 Points On Structured Cabling

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10 Things You May Not Know About Structured Cabling

Structured Cabling is often hailed for making communication and data networks more efficient while substantially reducing the network downtimes. A structured cabling can be defined as a set or system of cabling as well as related hardware that collectively offer a platform for comprehensive telecommunication. This platform fulfils a wide range of purposes, including data transmission and basic telecommunication services.

  1. Of late, the very idea or concept of Structured Cabling has become quite popular and is used for setting up a cabling structure and communication setup in commercial buildings and large campuses. The set up consists of a series of smaller, standardized components, which can be customized as per customer’s requirements. Often these components are referred as sub systems.
  2. External cabling gets through a main telecommunication hub called demarcation points. It connects with the other telecommunication housed at different locations inside a building or campus. Each of these smaller compartments is again connected to the main hub through riser cables. Joining the telecommunication system with every work station achieved through horizontal cabling.
  3. These telecommunication tools are inseparable parts of the structured cabling systems. Majority of the businesses today are connected to their internet service providers with the help of multi-pair cables that converge at the demarcation point, popularly called entrance facility.
  4. Modern structured cabling system comprises of multiple connection or telecommunication closet, which are again interconnected by cables known as vertical or riser cables.
  5. Telecommunications Rooms or TRs (as they are popularly called) are situated on the same floor of a high-rise. TRs can also be connected with these riser cables, though these cables do not run between one floor to another. However, two TRs on two different floors cannot be connected with each other by riser cables.
  6. The place where a network cable is cut off or terminated, is termed as a work area. Thus, anything, which is connected with a network, is termed as a work area component. A work area component includes network outlets, various types of devices like computers and printers, fax machines and telephones, patch cords and so on.
  7. All these components of a work area, which so far been discussed will be virtually rendered useless, if they cannot be connected to the network and the rooms of telecommunications. This is where the concept of horizontal cabling makes all the difference.
  8. Horizontal cabling connect the work stations with the network via some devices that include routers, patch panels, switches and so on. All these devices are parts of the TR or Telecommunication Rooms.
  9. Installation or setting up of the data cabling is taken care of by an internationally accepted and standardized sets of cabling parameters, with the most prominent of them being the EIA/TIA 568-B standard. These stats actually specify the fact that each and every permanent link of the cable that runs from the patch panel to the network device must not be over 90 m long.
  10. The maximum allowable force that is used at the time of installation of the cables should not be more than 20 ft lb/cable.

About PhoneAM

At Phone America, we have the knowledge and experience to prepare a blueprint for your shift to VoIP. Call us today and we will guide you through the whole process.

Phone America Corporation is a leading supplier of advanced telecom systems for small and large businesses. We serve as a single point of contact for today’s growing communication needs, offering a wide range of telephone equipment, wiring, surveillance systems, telephone cost accounting systems, and voice processing systems.

Call (800) 836-3601 for a free evaluation of your current system and the system you will need to carry your business into the FUTURE.

Fiber Optic Cable Specifications – A Primer

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It is important to take a look at different options when it comes to wiring. It cannot be denied that we are moving to wireless in many areas, but wireless cannot match the speeds of a hard cable.

Within an office or a home, if you want to have good speeds, it is certainly worth looking at using fiber optic cables. A quality fiber optic cabling will ensure that your systems are linked together and work as they should. LAN wiring is important because it is designed to last. A lot of the time, certain companies may produce pieces of technology that are sub-standard. This may be due to negligence, or it may be due to the fact that they want to charge people more money. Whatever it happens to be, it is important to take a look at the options that are on offer when it comes to better quality cabling. A frequent complaint of many people who own iPods, MP3s and other digital media devices is that headphone wires tend to break very easily. Cheap versions will often require a user to buy a new pair every month or two, while better versions can end up lasting for years at a time.

Construction of Fiber Optic Cables

A fiber optic cable consists of two parts – core and cladding. The core is a small tube made of silica glass that carries the light rays that is covered by a cladding to ensure complete reflection. The cladding is usually coated with a layer of acrylate polymer or polyimide. Several layers of protective sheathing may be applied depending upon the application. Usually several of these cables are kept together with appropriate separators to form the cable that you see.

For outdoor application where weather plays a hand, more rigid and robust construction may be applied for protection. Modern cable can have upto 1000 fibers in a single cable giving you potential bandwidth of multiple terabytes per second!

Fiber Specifications

Specifications for fiber optics are a little complicated and can be divided into four categories – optical, mechanical, environmental, and dimensional.

Optical specs included attenuation, and bandwidth that are given as two wavelengths – 850 and 1,300 nm for multimode, and 1,310 and 1,550 for single mode. Mechanical specs include tensile strength and resistance to impact, crush, and twists. Environmental specs include temperature ranges for operation and storage, sensitivity to moisture and sunlight.

Electronic Industries Alliance (TIA/EIA-Arlington, VA) provide all the necessary requirements for a cable to meet set standards. There is also the IEEE-802.3z standard for Gigabit Ethernet, published by the IEEE-New York. A reference to one of these standards will provide all necessary details.

Cable Specifications

While the fiber specification ensures that performance standards are met, the fiber has to be properly encased in a protective covering that will protect it during operations. Indoor cables are designed for flexibility, tensile strength, ease of handling, and being flame resistant. Indoor cables must meet one of four listing categories of the National Electrical Code (NEC): OFN/OFC or OFNG/OFCG for general purpose, OFNR/OFCR for riser applications, and OFNP/OFCP for plenum areas.

Outdoor cables have stricter specs. They have to be designed to withstand a lifetime of 20 to 40 years. They must withstand wide operating temperatures, be resistant to sunlight and moisture, and have sufficient tensile strength for long draws. Waterblocking is also essential. Most outdoor cables have a loose jacket for isolation, and are filled with grease or gel to make them water resistant.

Outdoor cables that have to be buried also have to incorporate a steel tape armor for protection against rodents. For aerial installation, the cable must also have a messenger wire for lashing.

There is also the category called indoor/outdoor cables. These incorporate both the characteristics explained above.

A full cable specification has to include environmental and regulatory factors that include temperature, mechanical loading, moisture, sunlight, flammability, rodents, and chemicals.

The Insulated Cable Engineers Association (ICEA-South Yarmouth, MA) has published two documents that contain all the specs. These are ANSI/ICEA S-87-640 for Outside Plant Communications Cable, and the ANSI/ICEA S-83-596 for Fiber Optic Premises Distribution Cable.

The industry and industry standards have taken great effort to ensure that the standards are set for the design and manufacture of fiber optic cables. These standards are usually preceded by exhaustive tests that take a fiber optic cable to its breaking point.

As an end user what we have to do is to ensure that the cable we buy meet these standards. Purchasing cable from well-known brands is half the distance covered. But having knowledge on what to look for is important by itself.