Structured cabling: Miles to go before it’s replaced

As networking becomes increasingly mandatory for even SMEs, the effective design, installation and maintenance of structured cabling networks needs to be taken seriously. Meanwhile, despite the hype about fibre-to-desktop and wireless technologies, copper still continues to be the most preferred medium, says Gaurav Patra

Cat6 not only provides more bandwidth but also significantly suppresses noise levels, says Vikas Pinjarkar

In the new millennium, companies are seeking ways to future-proof their communication (both voice and data) cabling investments. Developments in the networking as well as cabling industry have pushed potential performance beyond the realm of what was deemed possible only a few years ago. Today, structured cabling systems can be designed to provide incredible network speed and throughput.

The Indian structured cabling market is currently estimated to be in the region of Rs 250 crore. Some of the main drivers of the market are segments like software services, education, government, infocomm, manufacturing and banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI). BPO is another segment that is considered to have great potential. Another interesting fact is that cabling growth is primarily coming from B & C class cities.

Technology trends

Over the last two years, the most significant technology drivers in the cabling industry have been the increasing deployment of Fast Ethernet to the desktop and Gigabit Ethernet in the premises as well as in campus backbones. The affordable cost and increasing demand by applications for bandwidth at the desk have led to increasing acceptance of these network platforms.

In a campus LAN cabling system there are three distinct cable segments: horizontal, intra-building backbone and inter-building backbone. Horizontal cabling connects the work areas or desktops to the floor distributor. Intra-building backbone cabling aggregates traffic from desktops and connects floor distributors to building distributors. Inter-building backbone cabling aggregates all the traffic from buildings in a campus and connects all the building distributors to the main or campus distributor, which may also contain all the main switching, computing, storage resources and WAN communications.

Each of the cabling segments supports increasing distances and amounts of data traffic. Horizontal cabling is limited to 90 metres and typically supports 10/100 Mbps Ethernet or 155 Mbps ATM traffic to the desktop. Intra-building backbone, as per TIA/EIA standards, is limited to 300 metres, while inter-building backbone stretches up to 2,000 metres for multimode fibre and up to 3,000 metres for single-mode fibres.

To support a communication speed of 10 Mbps at the desktop level, a higher speed network platform is needed to support the backbone where the horizontal traffic aggregates towards the core of the network. Similarly, to support 100 Mbps to the desk, a higher speed network platform is required—1,000 Mbps or Gigabit. Thus, backbone cabling is being selected keeping in view the need to support increasing data speed and volumes (number of users). With network speeds of 100 Mbps becoming more economical and increasingly deployed at the desktop level, Gigabit network platforms have moved into the campus and premises backbones. Gigabit platforms, like Gigabit Ethernet and 10 Gbps Ethernet have brought into sharp focus the inadequacy of bandwidth available in multi-mode fibres. This is leading to the increasing deployment of single-mode fibre or composite fibre (single-mode + multi-mode) optic cables in the backbone. Refractive-index, defect-free fibres like laser-grade fibres as well as the new ISO OM3 multi-mode fibres are being offered and installed by vendors.

With the acceptance of the TIA/EIA 568-B standards, Cat5e systems are pegged as entry-level offerings and are becoming increasingly commoditised. “The likelihood of migrating to Gigabit Ethernet on desktop in the near future, and the maturing of draft Category 6 standards and product offerings, is driving some users to deploy draft Category 6 cabling systems in the horizontal,” says K K Shetty, country manager, networking division, Tyco Electronics. Though the trend is increasing, competitive pressures are yet to gear up in this segment.

The biggest bottleneck in the promotion of fibre is not cabling, but the cost of LAN electronics, says K K Shetty

With IT applications all-pervasive and more remote office operations integrating in the network, data centres are seeing an increasing number of servers in server farms as well as deployment of storage area networks (SANs). This is leading to the use of more fibre optic and Cat6 UTP (unshielded twisted pair) media in the data centres. High fibre-count cable assemblies like MPO (Multi-fibre Push on Connectors) trunks and cassettes are seeing increasing deployment in server rooms.

From a technology standpoint, Cat6 has started gaining a bigger portion of the cabling market. However, industry experts say that it is going to be a neck-to-neck fight between structured cabling standards such as the existing Cat5/Cat5e and the emerging Cat6/7 on one side and fibre on the other. With the prices of fibre coming down and functionality going up, this war seems to be getting more interesting.

While Cat5e is good enough for fast Ethernet (the dominant medium on LANs), Cat6 has already grabbed a major portion of the pie and its share is increasing. Today, the lower segment of the market mainly uses Cat5e while Cat6 is predominantly used by medium and large companies. Organisations with large deployment needs want to deploy Cat6 to future-proof their current investments. The declining prices of Cat6 cables and equipment are also fuelling this trend.

Although Cat6 is available since the beginning of 2003, the support for Giga speeds by Cat5e has extended the latter’s life. “Cat6 will be the prevalent standard in 2005. Till then it is expected that Cat5e will rule the market. However, in terms of cabling technology, there is a fair amount of growth happening in the Cat6 solution,” says D S Nagendra, country sales manager, Krone. It is expected that Cat6, which supports Gigabit Ethernet, will become the preferred means of cabling using copper; indeed, it is fast becoming a commodity product. More than 70 percent of shipments in high-end markets are on Cat6 UTP.

Gigabit Ethernet to the desktop and VoIP are fast becoming popular. Organisations interested in using these technologies will benefit from Cat6, says D S Nagendra

While Giga speed Cat5e and Cat6 are mainly used in very dense networks in LAN environments, fibre is used in multi-floor environments and definitely in a campus network. In data networks multimode fibre is most prevalent. With the IEEE 802.3 standards committee working on the means of supporting 10G Ethernet on twisted pair copper, it is evident that fibre-to-desktop architecture is going to take a back seat for some more time.

According to experts, the networking industry will be the prime driver of trends in the cabling segment. The answer to Moore’s law in cabling is that the speed of network platforms will multiply by a factor of 10 every five years. To support these increasing speeds and new applications, newer multimode fibre types—Cat7 for support of 10G Ethernet—will be the moving trend in cabling.

The Cat7 standard is being discussed by ISO and is expected to be a shielded twisted pair system. Eventually, as the demand for bandwidth grows, Cat7 will become mandatory. However, industry experts feel that the lack of support for UTP could affect Cat7’s popularity since UTP is used for most installations in India. Again, because fibre works out to be cheaper than Cat7, this will definitely go against the latter.

Another interesting trend is coming up in the high-end market, which is moving from Cat6 to the Intelligent Cabling System. Intelligent cabling is an offshoot of the rising number of nodes in large installations, and the management problems that result from having such complex set-ups.

From Cat5/5e to Cat6

The cabling industry is experiencing a smooth transition in technology. In copper, Gigabit applications are becoming the minimum standard with Cat5 giving way to Cat6. Similarly, in fibre, laser-optimised fibres are replacing conventional fibre in order to achieve 10 GB for future applications. But it is the migration from Cat5 to Cat6 that will be one of the biggest trends. “With the migration already in process, today more than 55 percent of our sales are for Cat6 cables. All new projects are moving towards Cat6. In the next two years migration will be almost 75 percent due to bandwidth and headroom requirements,” says Shetty. Users who need applications like Gigabit to the desktop (and beyond) are the ones who will benefit significantly from Cat6 and who will drive the change. “Slowly, as the sales volume of Cat6 increases, prices will come down and Cat5e will start losing ground fast. Cat6 will handle almost all applications within premises. It not only provides bigger bandwidth but also significantly suppresses noise levels,” says Vikas Pinjarkar, general manager, structured cabling sales, D-Link India. Adds Nagendra, “Gigabit Ethernet to the desktop is fast becoming popular. On the other hand, VoIP is also gaining ground. Those organisations which are interested in using these technologies will benefit from Cat6.”

Fibre to the desktop

Another promising concept is ‘fibre to the desktop’. It is considered to be very advanced technology in cabling. But this concept is not gaining ground due to constant improvements in existing copper technology. Today, one can achieve Giga speed even on copper, which is more than adequate for any application to sustain itself. “If fibre gains ground there will not be any major impact on structured cabling. It might so happen that fibre cable sales increase by some percentage vis-à-vis copper,” says Pinjarkar. Adds Shetty, “The biggest bottleneck in the promotion of fibre is not cabling, but the cost of LAN electronics. Unless this cost comes down to a comparable level, fibre will be used in selected segments.” Agrees Nagendra, “In India, fibre to the desk as an application is still in its infancy due to the high cost of the electronics. The IEEE is still discussing deployment of 10 GB on copper. With this development, fibre to the desktop will not be too attractive for companies which want to save their legacy investment in cabling.” It is also expected that since copper is cheaper and easy to terminate and handle, it will become even more popular than fibre to the desktop.

Road ahead

Looking at the kind of technology implementation going on in India, the cabling industry is bound to gain momentum. An international telecommunication association, BICSI, has already been established in India and is playing a major role in educating the industry about standards and good installation practices. Copper will continue to be the preferred route to the desktop despite all the hype about fibre.

It is interesting to speculate on the effect of wireless technology on something as basic as structured cabling. In the near term, cabling is safer than wireless, costs lesser, and is faster to boot. In the long term, if wireless equipment prices drop significantly and speeds ramp up, it is hard to see why anyone would prefer to be wired. But industry pundits opine that it will take a while (if it ever happens), and till then structured cabling remains safe as far as the LAN is concerned. It is also speculated that the future of the cabling segment lies in enterprises moving towards intelligent cabling systems. Some of the key drivers in the structured cabling industry will be increasing reach, reliability and availability of telecom networks and data services.

The standards battle

Cat5e Good old trusted copper medium. Most affordable. Suitable for horizontal cabling requirements. Cat6 Suitable for distribution. Suitable for large extend horizontal cabling requirements for bandwidth-hungry commercial networks, software firms, educational instituteAs and high-rise, IT-savvy office environments. Cat7 Expensive and cumbersome medium. Can be replaced by fibre at practically the same cost or even less as time passes.

Upcoming technologies

Cat7 PIMF cabling systems to support 10G on copper. MT-ferrules-based multi-port fibre connectors. Industrial Ethernet.

gaurav@expresscomputeronline.com