Certifying a twisted pair copper cabling system for the deployment of 10 Gigabit per second Ethernet.
Today, 10 Gigabit/sec Ethernet (10 GbE) finds application over fiber optic cabling in the data center, in riser cabling, and in campus backbones, but widespread use of 10 GbE over twisted-pair copper cabling (10GBASE T) is going to take off soon. Active devices like switches, servers, and NIC cards are becoming available to support 10GBASE-T. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) standards committee approved the 10GBASE T standard in June 2006. This standard defines the minimum level of performance for the transmission medium, the twisted pair copper cabling. In addition, the cabling industry developed new cabling standards, Augmented Category 6 (Cat 6A) and Augmented Class E (Class EA), to support a new generation of very high throughput network technologies such as 10 GbE.
Certification and Standards
Certification of the cabling system provides the assurance that that the installed cabling system delivers the bandwidth and performance needed for the reliable operation of 10GBASE T before the expensive high performance network devices are purchased and installed.
Existing Cat 6 or Class E cabling system may satisfy the 10GBASE-T requirements established in IEEE std. 802.3. These legacy cabling systems are limited in the length over which they meet the transmission requirements. Re-certification of these installed links against the IEEE 802.3 requirements (also TIA-TSB155 or ISO TR 24750) delivers the definitive answer. The augmented cable types have been developed to support the full 100 m channel for 10-GBASE-T.
Test Parameters
Field certification of installed twisted-pair cabling for 10GBASE T includes all the test parameters that are specified in the TIA/EIA-568-B and ISO 11801 standards for Category 6/Class E links. Table 1 lists these test parameters. The major change for 10 GbE is that the frequency range for these tests now extends to 500 MHz in order to support the higher data rates of the 10 GbE signaling technology. The new cabling standards refer to th