Structured Cabling Design

What exactly is Structured Cabling Design?

Structured Cabling is the design, documentation, and management of the lowest layer of the OSI network model-the physical layer. The physical layer is the foundation of any network whether it is data, voice, video or alarms, and defines the physical media upon which signals or data is transmitted through the network.

Approximately 70% of your network is composed of passive devices such as cable, cross-connect blocks, and patch panels. Documenting these network components is critical to keeping a network finely tuned. The physical medium can be copper cable (e.g., cat 3, cat 5E), coaxial cable, optical fiber, wireless, or satellite.

Key Components

Key components of the Structured Cabling design include the entrance facility, main equipment room, backbone cable, backbone pathway, Intermediate Distribution Frame (IDF), and horizontal distribution system. We can show you how to develop an online inventory and management system that will let you take control of these critical infrastructure resources.

New buildings require voice, data, and video wiring and electronics facilities within the building to support the newest forms of telecommunications. A series of standards has been developed to provide guidance in designing new buildings and remodeling older facilities. The list of facilities that need to be taken into consideration are building entrance facilities, entrance wiring closets, floor wiring closets protection and grounding, backbone raceways, horizontal raceways, backbone wiring, and horizontal wiring. A more definitive document exists which identifies the considerations and options for architectural and engineering areas supporting telecommunications within a building. The document should be used for design activities, as the following material is a summary.

Entrance facilities
Cabling must enter the building underground and usually within 4 inch conduits. Three or more of the conduits will be required to connect an entrance wiring closet to the nearest manhole or other location with telecommunications facilities. Consideration is required for the type of conduit, depth of bury, separation from other conduits bends in the conduit, conduit capping and seals, manhole sizes, and pull lines.
Entrance wiring closet
Exclusive use of a room for placement of electronics and terminations of cable of many types, which supply the building with telecommunications. Security is required and the room cannot be shared with other functions in the building. Considerations for the facility are floor weight load factors, water avoidance, lighting, electrical access, room size, electrical grounding, HVAC, and location near the building entrance facility.
Floor wiring closet
Exclusive use of a location on each floor to facilitate the electronics and cabling distribution for the floor. If the floor is large enough, with long cable runs, more than one room may be required on each floor. Security requires that the room not be shared with other building functions. Considerations for the facility are floor loading factors, water avoidance, ceilings and walls, fire door, lighting, electrical access, room size, electrical grounding, HVAC, floor location, and cable run maximum lengths.
Backbone raceways
Backbone raceways are a series of accesses that connect the entrance wiring closet to the various floor wiring closets. These paths permit cable to be placed between the floors. They may be slots, sleeves, conduits or trays and racks in which cables may be routed for support and protection. Considerations are the size, quantity, and seals. If conduits or sleeves are used, the 4 inch size is preferred. The in depth document contains a table giving the number of paths needed, based upon building size.
Horizontal raceways
The horizontal raceway carries the cable from the floor wiring closet to the various rooms on the floor. There are many types of systems available today and the pros and cons of each are covered in the detail document. Ceiling trays used in conjunction with utility columns and conduit paths are the preferred method of horizontal distribution. The nature of the building usage may justify another type of cable path. Considerations for the path include bends or curves, size, conduit run lengths, and outlet boxes.

Main Equipment Room
Why Document Your Cable Plant?
Your network is one of your company's most valuable assets. It's the central nervous system of your organization and it's growing along with your network management problems. Your challenge is to harness the power of exploding technology and make it work for you. Every minute spent tracking data, reconfiguring your cable plant or searching for the source of a problem means loss of time and productivity and loss of profit. Cable plant documentation software can help maintain the integrity of the network by tracking the continuity through equipment, patch cords, cross-connects, connectors, cables, and outlets. It encompasses the design and maintenance of the cable plant. Cable plant documentation can be an ally against the ravages of system downtime, giving you the power to configure your cable plant so you have fewer network problems.
Cable Plant Documentation Can:

Let us work with you to develop a Network Management system you can use to manage all of your cable plant, including all the connectivity, connectors, pathways, and device relationships to truly visualize and understand your network's infrastructure. Let's get started today, just give us a call.

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