CAT5E CABLING TO SOON BECOME OBSOLETE FOR OFFICES Matias Peluffo, Vice President for Intelligent Buildings, Asia Pacific*
Category 5e cabling, which is used in many offices around the world, will soon be considered obsolete for new installations following a recent decision by the ISO/IEC cabling standards body.
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fter careful consideration of technology trends, wired and wireless bandwidth requirements and current market demand for the various cabling types, the ISO/IEC Working Group (JTC1/SC25 WG3) responsible for the development of the 11801 standard recently decided to upgrade the minimum recommendation for horizontal cabling in offices. At the recent working group meeting in Milan, Italy, the group agreed to raise the minimum horizontal cabling requirement stated in ISO/IEC 11801-2 for offices (expected publication on or before 2017) from Class D (Category 5e) to Class E (Category 6), with a recommendation for Class EA (Category 6A) or better cabling. Class D cabling is still the minimum requirement in the drafts of 11801-3 (industrial) and 11801-4 (single-tenant homes), but upgrades may be considered in the near future. In the drafts of 11801-5 (data centres) and 11801-6 (distributed services), the minimum requirement is already Class EA cabling. For new office installations, Class E will now become the minimum requirement, with a recommendation to specifiers and customers to deploy Class EA to support applications with alien cross-talk requirements, enabling the smooth migration to 2.5, 5 and ultimately 10 Gbps.
54 ECD SOLUTIONS - NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2015
Published more than 20 years ago, the ISO/IEC 11801 standard was the first international standard for cabling in commercial buildings and helped pave the way for consistent implementation of voice and data cabling on a global basis. It enabled the explosive growth and mass deployment of ethernet and IP communications everywhere in the world. In its first edition, the standard defined Class D balanced cabling — based on Category 5 copper components — to provide an upgrade path from 10 to 100 Mbps up to 100 m. At that time, some experts and industry observers argued that 100 Mbps (100BASE-T) to the desk was overkill for the typical office user. Fast forward 20 years to today, where many would say that 100BASE-T technology is in rapid market decline. Now 1000BASET (1 Gbps) is commonplace for desktop personal computers and laptops, as well as a wide range of other devices such as phones, cameras and wireless access points (WAPs). The 11801 standard now includes additional cabling classes that were introduced to enable support of up to 10 Gbps, including the addition of Class E (Category 6), Class F (Category 7) and, more recently, Class EA (Category 6A) and Class FA (Category 7A).Today 1000BASE-T is commonplace and, once again, some experts and industry observers argue that 1 Gbps is overkill for the typical office
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