Copper conundrum

High bandwidth requirements may force LAN cabling decisions.

LAN cabling experts and vendors say that organizations installing copper cabling in data centers should investigate new unshielded twisted-pair products that can support future high-bandwidth technologies such as 10G Ethernet.

Some chipset vendors of pre-standard products that run 10G over UTP cabling say their wares will support 10G over older cabling plants - such as Category 5, 5e or 6. But some industry experts say businesses that plan to invest in 10G Ethernet would be wise to upgrade copper cabling to the new Category 6 Augmented, or Category 6a, standard of UTP cable expected to be ratified by the International Telecommunication Union early next year.

With 10GBase-T, the standard for 10G Ethernet over UTP cabling, still more than a year away, users have time to explore cabling options. But decision time is coming up.

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LAN cabling experts and vendors say that organizations installing copper cabling in data centers should investigate new unshielded twisted-pair products that can support future high-bandwidth technologies such as 10G Ethernet.

Some chipset vendors of pre-standard products that run 10G over UTP cabling say their wares will support 10G over older cabling plants - such as Category 5, 5e or 6. But some industry experts say businesses that plan to invest in 10G Ethernet would be wise to upgrade copper cabling to the new Category 6 Augmented, or Category 6a, standard of UTP cable expected to be ratified by the International Telecommunication Union early next year.

With 10GBase-T, the standard for 10G Ethernet over UTP cabling, still more than a year away, users have time to explore cabling options. But decision time is coming up.

"The need is coming for better cabling in data centers," says James Truelove, a network architecture consultant and author of the forthcoming LAN Cabling, Third Edition. He says applications that have massive data transfer requirements, such as video production, "need this now. Other companies will follow in 10G adoption as 10G ports become more regular in switching gear. For these companies, 10G will be a breath of fresh air." Truelove says that those who plan ahead for the next level of Ethernet won't be faced with costly cable plant rip-and-replace projects.

"The people who purchased higher-quality cable have always proven to be rewarded when higher-speed Ethernet technologies were introduced," Truelove says. "That's been a lesson with people who put in Category 5, then when they wanted to go to Gigabit Ethernet, the cable couldn't handle it."

Research by J&M Consultants, a telecom engineering firm, backs this up. From 1999 to 2003 - the last year the company collected data - usage of Category 5e cabling dropped from around 66% to 35%. Meanwhile, usage of Category 6 cabling jumped from 22% to 64% during the same time period.

Click to see: The short run

"The distances being kicked around are up to 55 meters, whereas a normal run is 100 meters," for Ethernet over UTP, Truelove says. "A lot of horizontal runs are not that long, but augmented Category 6 cabling will support that easily."

Most data center cable runs should be under 100 meters, according to Mazzetti and Associates, a data center engineering and consulting firm. Research of its own customers, ranging from corporate to educational and government sites, found that half of the UTP cabling run in data centers is under 30 meters - usually bunches of cabling, connecting switches and servers. Only about 1% of the cable installed reached the 100-meter limit of UTP.

Category 6a cabling also figures into the latest blueprints outlined in the TIA-942 Data Center Standard. This standard, put together by architects, engineers, manufactures and users, is a blueprint for how data centers should be physically constructed, including specifications for heating/cooling, raised floors, and the types of racks and cabling used.