Designing, installing, and maintaining the cabling that connects a building or campus: pathways, spaces, horizontal and backbone cabling, and the practices around them.
*The 8-position, 8-contact (8P8C) modular connector, more commonly known as the RJ45, is a highly engineered interconnection system of jacks and plugs with eight equally spaced contacts. Though its history began in the 1960s for telephony, it achieved widespread adoption with the rise of Ethernet networking over twisted-pair cabling.*
AI is not just transforming how we compute; it is changing how we build. Every watt, every optical fiber strand, every square inch of these facilities is being redesigned to support a new kind of digital organism—one that learns, reasons, and scales exponentially.
*Modern network infrastructure installations in higher education and healthcare environments can face unique challenges that demand specialized troubleshooting approaches.*
This article explores why data centers deploy direct liquid cooling (DLC) and in-rack indirect liquid cooling (IILC) systems, outlines key opportunities and barriers, and addresses infrastructure considerations for cabling and coolant routing.
Single-Pair Ethernet (SPE) is a transformative technology that is redefining the landscape of smart buildings by enabling efficient retrofitting of legacy systems, enhancing sustainability, and integrating information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) networks.
11 min
Mark Mullins
Wi-Fi has become the cornerstone of connectivity, connecting everything from smartphones and laptops to smart homes and industrial IoT devices. As the demand for faster, more reliable wireless networks continues to grow, network professionals must have a deep understanding of testing and troubleshooting these complex systems.
Many corporations are committed to meeting strict emissions goals to achieve net-zero or near-net-zero status in the coming years. Onsite microgrids comprised of renewable energy sources and battery energy storage systems are becoming increasingly promising solutions, and while a building can reach net-zero status by generating renewable energy through an onsite microgrid, a DC power infrastructure that distributes DC power from an onsite microgrid can make it easier—depending on a building’s feasibility.
19 min
Gautier Humbert, RCDD
The ISO/IEC 11801 series are the international standards relevant to structured cabling, and ANSI/TIA 568 series is the North American equivalent, but are there differences? They coordinate together, but Categories 7 and 7A represent a point of disagreement. While they exist in the international documents, they do not exist in the North American equivalent. A thorough history of the categories is necessary to understand the differences and their relevant applications.
Applications of artificial intelligence (AI) dominate public discourse, but will the technology replace the need for people and their knowledge and experience? While AI and automation may help alleviate the skills gap, it is unlikely to replace human solutions. The physical aspects of networks require human expertise, and no amount of virtualization will change this reality. Organizations must invest in training and education to attract and retain talent—even as technology continues to evolve.
Passive optical LAN (POL) systems, which have been deployed in fiber to the home (FTTH) builds for decades, are now scalable to 10 Gb/s with increasing data rates on the horizon. Thanks to technological advancements, optical fiber and cabling are now compact and nearly invisible, making them ideal for retrofit POL or FTTH builds that have limited or no available pathways and spaces.
9 min
Members
Robert Reid
When dealing with critical applications within the data center, the performance and reliability of cabling infrastructure is paramount. As performance requirements for networks have changed, so too have the specifications on the constituent components. Discover the most accurate and capable measurement techniques for higher speed intermodal links, and learn industry best practices to ensure that costs associated with the remediation of links are kept to a minimum.
The use of pre-terminated cables versus field-terminated cables makes it possible to save considerable time and expense. Pre-terminated cables and the pre-terminated cable pulling adapters (PCPAs) are new tools in the installer’s toolkit.
Whether designing a one-story building or a multi-story building, the smart/intelligent building has a lot of codes and standards to consider. This article simplifies the complex for ICT designers, installers, integrators, and consulting companies.
Discover how to navigate the complex landscape of data center design and deployment options, including the practice of cloud repatriation that has most enterprise organizations adopting a hybrid approach where computing, storage, and services are comprised of both the public and private clouds.
It is important to know how to build access networks that can take advantage of this generational moment and stand for generations to come. Learn how access networks need to be built for growth and expandability, while needing to be flexible and accessible to accommodate unexpected opportunities and new connections.
IoT technologies have proven instrumental in shaping the landscape of intelligent building architecture and automation, with PoE lighting emerging as a significant driver and support mechanism for smart network integration and success. As office workers across the globe face unprecedented changes in how businesses operate, office occupants will need to rely on automated, data-driven building solutions in ways both old and new.
As data centers evolve to support digital transformation, MPO and polarity testing has become essential, reflectance is now a vital consideration, and cleaning and inspection are more important than ever.
Due to increasing demand for technology-based solutions and the decreasing cost of wireless sensors, there is significant business in converting, retrofitting, and upgrading data centers. Asset management and labeling are important for a successful structured cabling or data center install in any environment to ensure maximum uptime and audit compliance.
Most of the challenges inherent in POL deployment can be avoided by adopting efficient and thorough test procedures for the installed fiber optic cables and active devices before final turn-up. Learn how testing ensures first-time-right service turn-up and enables meeting customer deployment objectives.
Seventy-five percent of enterprise-generated data is expected to be created and processed outside of traditional data centers. Discover the importance of physical protection via critical practices for ensuring that EDCs remain operational, secure, and reliable. Without critical practices in place, the emerging technologies EDCs aim to support will struggle needlessly as they gain adoption.
Mike Connaughton, RCDD, CDCD, Brooke Ford, Joost Grillaert, Ph.D., Michael Wang
Decisions Based on Scale: For the purposes of comparison, there are three categories of data centers: traditional enterprise, cloud scale, and hyperscale. Learn how each of these categories has a different set of cabling and connectivity requirements when considering transmission, data rate, installation, latency, density, maintenance and migration.
Nearly 75 percent of the optical fibers deployed in the LAN are multimode. Bandwidth-intensive applications and latency-aware traffic are becoming ubiquitous. With MPLC-based technologies, there is no need for large costly cabling projects; simply convert multimode optical fibers into non-dispersion singlemode.
There is an explosion of devices being connected to the networks in buildings via IoT, and these varying applications are putting many unforeseen demands on the performance and reliability of circuits, especially those serving high-bandwidth IPTV and video streaming.
There is no denying that data-rich applications will demand more bandwidth in the future, which in turn will jettison data centers even deeper into the zettabyte world. Therefore, it is important for ICT technicians and installers to understand the new aspects and trends in fiber connectivity of the large-scale data center.
11 min
Carol Everett Oliver, RCDD, ESS
Explore the exciting implications of PoE technology, including infrastructure game changers like the recent ratification of the IEEE 802.3bt Power over Ethernet (PoE) over 4 Pairs amendment. What does this mean and how will it affect the ICT world?
From basic 10 Mb/s analog phones, ICT has progressed to 40 Gb on the horizontal, 400 Gb on the backbone and added remote powering via PoE. With the advent of IoT, the time has come for structured cabling to provide the infrastructure for not only all communication in the building, but also a significant part of the power.