* Category-6 wiring and beyond
Readers had a lot to say in response to a newsletter last month that asked questions about the future of LAN cabling. As I mentioned last time, readers were fairly dismissive of wireless LANs – at least for widespread desktop deployment – but they were vocal about copper vs. fiber cabling. In today’s newsletter, we’ll look at next steps for copper.
Right now, Category 5 and Category 5E unshielded twisted pair wiring are fairly standard for desktops. With these copper connections, desktops are pretty much set for Gigabit Ethernet, and that’s just fine for most every desktop application you could think of today. But what if it became desirable at some point to go to 10 Gigabit Ethernet, for some application that we can’t think of today?
One might assume that copper wiring would be the way to do it, since it has brought us so far. As I’ve discussed previously, the IEEE is working on a copper standard for 10 Gigabit Ethernet, so at some point in the not-too-distant future 10 Gigabit Ethernet over copper to desktops would be theoretically possible.
As it stands now, Category 6 cabling is likely to carry 10 Gigabit Ethernet – but as many of you pointed out, it would be limited to 55 meters in the standard, well shy of the 100 meters that users have come to expect from copper cable runs.
An augmented Cat 6 is in the standards pipeline to get 10 Gigabit to 100 meters – although two cabling vendors reminded me that early versions of augmented Cat 6 are available today.
So now it seems you have several options if you’re looking beyond Gigabit to the desktop: install Cat 6 with a 55m limit for 10 Gig, wait a year or more for standardized augmented Cat-6, get an early version of augmented Cat 6, install Cat 7, or go with fiber optics.
There’s another option, which a couple readers suggested, and I’ll get into that next time before we revisit fiber to the desktop.
