Learn How to Manage and Protect Your Cabling System

When choosing a cabling system to transport media, you need to strike a balance between bandwidth, flexibility, scalability, and cost. Taking into account the development of the application, choosing the most appropriate and forward-looking transmission media is the most sensible choice. In summary, if you need to build a scalable, longer-lived cabling system, the ideal choice is to install cables that support high-bandwidth applications, eliminating the risk of replacing cabling due to increased requirements.

Next, I will help readers make choices by comparing the advantages and disadvantages of common wiring media. SPOTO ccna Security dumps help many spoto member pass their CCNA exam.

Fiber Optic System

The Optical fiber is the best medium for information transmission, which not only has the advantage that copper system can’t match in long-distance and high-rate transmission. At the same time, unlike copper wire manufacturing, which is subject to the rare resources of raw materials (copper metal), the manufacture of optical fibers is not limited by raw material resources. In addition, the cable is smaller in size than the copper cable, and it is not limited by the number of connectors in the link when networking, and there is no need to consider the problem caused by electromagnetic interference. With the trend of “light into copper”, fiber-optic systems will play an increasingly important role in the data center.

Since the price of fiber optic port equipment is still expensive, several times the copper equipment of the same application, this is the main reason why the fiber system can not completely replace the copper system. Secondly, fiber installation requires professional practitioners to use special tools to carry out, construction costs and requirements are relatively high. In addition, fiber optic systems cannot be supported in the face of emerging and highly regarded PoE Power over Ethernet technologies.

For fiber optic systems in data centers, a common consensus within the industry is to recommend OM3 lasers to optimize fiber systems. This system can support 10Gb/s transmission at a wavelength of 850nm using a VCSEL (Vertical Surface Laser Emitter) source, which can reach 300 meters. In terms of upgrades, some manufacturers set out to exceed the 10Gb/s standard and use the coarse wavelength division multiplexing technology to transmit 40Gb/s.

Copper Cable System

Although copper systems are limited in transmission distance and number of channel connectors compared to fiber optic systems, copper systems are the most familiar to all design, installation, and use personnel. It can achieve high-speed applications in a low-cost way, from 10/100/1000Base-T to 10GBase-T, copper systems are well supported. In addition, unshielded systems can support PoE applications to power remote devices while transmitting data signals.

When the TIA issued the 942 standards in 2005, the 6A standard was not mature. Considering the market conditions at the time, it is recommended to use Category 6 or higher cables in this standard. Today, Category 6A is the most economical way to implement 10Gb/s transmission requirements. The system uses up to twice the cost of Category 6 but delivers 10 times more transmission capacity, so the cost per Gbps is much lower. Although Category 6 can also support 10Gb/s in a short distance, its ability to suppress noise and transmission performance is far worse than 6A.

Although the existing 10G copper port network equipment on the market is expensive, with the mass production of equipment manufacturers, the market is mature, and the price will naturally decrease, just like the original Gigabit port equipment. It is worth noting that due to the high power required for 10G transmission, the previous transceivers even consumed 10 to 15 watts per port. Therefore, the “low-power short-distance transmission mode” is specified in the 10GBASE-T standard, which reduces the power consumption per port to 4 watts. The important point is that only Category 6A or higher cables can support this mode within 30 meters.

Shielding Will Still be Unshielded

It goes without saying that the shielding system has good anti-electromagnetic interference and the ability to prevent information leakage. For Category 6A shielded systems that support 10 Gigabit transmission, there is no need to consider the external crosstalk test problem, which will undoubtedly save a lot of test time. At present, the majority of users in China consider the use of shielding systems because of information security considerations. In addition, the shielding system can support higher bandwidth applications up to 1.2GHz.

However, shielded cabling systems also have limitations in their development. First, the shielding system is currently less accepted globally and may only account for 5% of the total copper cabling system market share. This means that designers and installers are relatively unfamiliar and need further training. Since the 360 degrees continuity shielding effect of the shielding system is to be ensured, the shielding system must be properly installed and grounded, which is difficult and time consuming to construct. In addition, due to the existence of the metal protective layer, when the shielding system is used to support the PoEPlus application, the heat generated by the cable cannot be dissipated, which may cause some interference to the performance.

Protection Wiring System Investment

In addition to choosing the right type of cable media, how to manage and protect the cabling system is also critical to ensuring business continuity and extending the lifecycle of the cabling system.

Here are some of the key points listed:

Label identification system

Tag identification is the basis for wiring system management and the basic element of the data center. A good label identification system will help network administrators quickly find relevant information and shorten the time of moving, adding and changing. Good labeling adds value, enhances aesthetics to the owner, and makes work more efficient, flexible and reliable.

Path and space

Because the data center is a high-density computing environment, there will be a large number of cables. If you do not plan for the proper path and space for these cables at the beginning of the design, as the data center runs and expands, the cables will be out of control and overcrowded. Eventually, it affected the cooling capacity in the data center, and even could not be maintained, so it had to be rebuilt.

The ideal solution is to make good use of the limited space in the data center to make good space and path planning for copper cables, optical cables and power cables. These three types of cables are effectively separated for easy implementation and maintenance. The upper line is also the choice of the next line, each with different advantages and disadvantages. It is recommended to use long-term fixed cables, such as trunk and horizontal cables, and use jumper cables under the overhead floor, and use jumpers (copper cables and fiber jumpers) to route the cables above the racks.

Different cables have different wire diameters. When designing the routing path, you must consider the problem of cable path fill rate. It is recommended that the path fill rate be 35%~40% at the time of design.

Cabinet and rack

In order to achieve good cable management and help maintenance personnel reduce the time to move, add and replace cabling systems, cabinets and rack products with cable management design should be used in the data center. Consider the storage of vertical and horizontal cable managers and redundant length cables in the cabinet and rack to maintain the cable bending radius while making the cables more tidier. Avoid the entanglement and accumulation of cables to block the flow of hot and cold air on the cabinet and the rack, so that the active equipment can effectively achieve cooling and cooling.

Intelligent physical layer management system

The intelligent physical layer management system helps network administrators understand the connectivity of the network. By monitoring the connection status in real time, any network interruption can be quickly identified and immediately reported to the system administrator. This helps to quickly troubleshoot and security threats, minimizing downtime.

In addition, the intelligent physical layer management system database continuously records asset movements and configuration changes at the system and physical layers. This information can be used to meet industry-required reporting requirements or to establish customer service level service level agreements (SLAs) to avoid manual errors in the manual analysis of the table.