Cramming it all down the copper

By Keith Newman

The growth of VoIP and talk of video joining the IP suite along with more sophisticated network applications that route calls and files to users on-demand can only pump up the pressure on your networking plumbing.

The spaghetti off cables that sits in the ceiling or in the building riser eventually snaking its way out to the desktop is too easily taken forgranted. Cabling installed a decade ago will not meet the needs of the next five years as new applications and ways of sharing documents and applications place greater demand on local area and enterprise-wide network infrastructure.

For a long time it looked as though the next push forward for enterprise cabling would come from fibre, however the electronics remain pricey and interconnection with the installed base of copper is messy and expensive. The big surprise of the past 18 months is that unshielded twisted pair (UTP) has pushing the performance envelope and showing more promise than anyone thought possible.

While cabling remains a highly specialised area it is no longer the sole domain of boffins, it has become a highly competitive, some say over-competitive, commodity business. Any while local suppliers and installers have struggled to remain profitable in recent years the market is on the rebound and new product about to be ratified by the IEEE is about to boost sagging margins.

After its decade of double digit growth in the 1990s the structured cabling market slowed to a stall at the end of that decade when firms had installed their initial LANs. By 2004 there were signs of recovery largely due to new web applications, add-ons and PC replacements but the word from US-based FTM Consulting is for a return double digit growth from 2006. This move will be driven by the need to relieve network congestion supporting a trend to beef up bandwidth to gigabit plus speeds to the desktop.

While most businesses are likely to remain relatively satisfied with their Category 5 or 5e cabling for most mainstream applications, larger firms and those moving richer media or deploying more capability to the ‘intelligent’ network are already taking the next step. The current trend is toward Category 6 cabling which can deliver gigabit speeds to the desktop, although several companies including Krone, Belden CDT, Systemax, formerly part of Avaya, and Panduit are already delivering next generation pre-standardised augmented Category 6 which delivers 10Gbit/sec.

Damien Rodgers, general manager of ADC Krone says the arrival of Category 6a could put the fibre deployment plans of some customers on hold permanently. "While fibre can run further without needing a boost, Category 6 and 6a are more than sufficient for most in-building and even campus backbones."

He says the cost of fibre, the active equipment and conversion from copper up to fibre and back again has been a major handbrake to the deployment of 10Gbit/sec. It was Krone that found a way to take the brakes off when it came up with a last minute development that proved the experts wrong. "As late as 2003 it was thought you could only achieve 10Gbit/sec over short distances. We were the first to develop 10Gbit/sec over a 100 metre channel between switches, and even out to the desktop in a cost effective way, with our application to support 10GBaseT."

Rodgers says the resulting augmented Category 6 cable is not just a tweaked system, but a jump in technology, at least as big as that from Fast Ethernet to Gigabit Ethernet. Achieving 10Gbit/sec over the full distance meant overcoming noise and crosstalk. While most manufacturers now have signal processing and noise cancelling capability in their networking cards there was still the issue of alien cross talk, from outside the cable. "Adjoining cables radiate noise and because you are working at a high higher frequency, 250MHz down to 500Hz, it can cause data drop out, packet loss and a slowing of the network because of re-transmission. This can impact all IP traffic over Ethernet," says Rodgers.

With 10Gbit/sec you have to minimise your packet loss to keep the throughput up and in the end Krones Category 6a breakthrough overcame those obstacles. And while full ratification is not expected until mid-2006 Krone has had its CopperTen solution on the market for 12 months. To date it has two customers, a local authority in Manawatu and a scientific company partnering with Massey University. Both installations were essentially based on decisions made at developer level to futureproof premises rather than by IT staff based on a specific need.

Rodgers says its important not to get hung up on today’s technology and take a multi-generational view. "All desktop and notebooks being rolled out currently have 1Gb network cards. You have to change your outlook beyond the current chipsets. It’s only going to get more bandwidth intensive, and you can be sure that sometime within that 10-years you’ll want to go to 10Gbit/sec."

Replacing cable at some later date is not only an expensive operation it represents the height of inconvenience, requiring everything be taken down from desktop computers to ceiling tiles causing significant disruption to all concerned. Category 5e might be fine if you are only going to be in your building for three years – it’ll still handle gigabit speeds. To be safe Category 6 is recommended as the more robust option for longer tenancies.

Datacraft business development manager Eric Thomson, warns overly budget conscious New Zealand businesses not to skimp on cabling investment. "You can swap everything else out but once cable is in, it’s cast in cement so you want to pick the right stuff."

Thomson who’s cabled in Europe for three and a half years on 125,000 outlet jobs says typically this involves the best of everything. Back home in New Zealand however cost still matter too much. "They’re still making decisions based on saving 10 per cent rather than considering the total cost over the life of a cabling system, what technology is coming out and what can be driven over it."

Thomson says fibre’s been asleep for the past two years with little change while copper has always evolved. Although many companies have been in limbo on the way forward for cabling the ratifying of Category 6, the drop in price and the imminent standard for augmented Category 6 has helped tip the decision.

Warranty for 25 years?

While there are many companies playing in this market space even a systems integrator can only focus on a few options, largely because of the training required. "We try not to push too many wheelbarrows as we need to have all our installers and design engineers certified in each product." And that’s where the competition is increasingly centred. Some companies are even sticking their neck out by giving applications assurance warranties. "No matter what comes out in the future, if it’s built to run over Category 6 and doesn’t, they’ll replace it. The big boys in particular are guaranteeing their product for 20-25 years saying it’ll drive whatever you can throw at it over that time," says Thomson.

He says 10Gbit/sec to the desktop over augmented Category 6 is enormous. "If you start to drive that you are going to need a terabit backbone – typically you need a ten to one ratio in." In fact the capabilities of copper are already pushing out the requirements for backbone fibre. The biggest migration is from 62.5 micron to OEM 50 micron fibre. "You may have Cat6 to the desktop and Cat6a down the backbone riser so it’s copper to copper without the need for an interface. While fibre itself is relatively inexpensive conversion from copper gets messy and costly."

And many companies with nationwide presence are finding its much simpler all round to standardise on a common networking platform. "There used to be a certain standard for cities and another for rural areas now we’re seeing life becomes easier if IT staff are trained in one solution and networking infrastructure. Companies are conducting office audits and where the cabling is below standard for VoIP they’re moving up to Cat6."

Thomson suggests hospitals are an ideal client for a while new cabling architecture and with the capabilities as they can bring together applications from multiple networks into a single cable. "They just run quad outlets and turn it into what they want. There’s a big cost saving but it starts with knowing what’s possible and using people who have knowledge about design and build. If you get the design right it’s easy to expand and will drive whatever application comes along in the future."

Bob Hamlett sales manager with InTelcom agrees New Zealanders have become too price conscious and network solutions too ad hoc in their implementation. He suggests a standards-based approach is needed to make it easier for future modifications.

"One of my criticisms is that there are insufficient ways of being able to change or add different cables to a house or building. Everyone is building to a price, the sparky drills a few holes in the 4 x 2 and runs the wires through and that’s it. If you are going to the high end of the market for homes in excess of $500,000 you have to give more thought to adding wiring whether it’s electrical, data and even television cables. In the US they have specifications for building cabling and New Zealand is now starting to look at this. Rather than reinventing the wheel I suggest we use standards that are already there."

He says the same principals apply to business – there needs to be more dynamic ways of ducting and cabling if you are frequently changing offices and adding partitions. One solution is the secure wireless network with everything linking back through the ether to the hub. However wireless creates its own problems, specifically security.

The price and range of options around wireless are making it a rather attractive option for many businesses but says Hamlett there’s a concern that the unlicensed 2.4 and 5.8GHz bands will eventually become cluttered and the noise floor so high that they’re no longer useful for telecommunications work. "You do have a number of industries particularly internet providers who have built their whole network around those bands. If they’re serious they need to start buying spectrum in the licensed band but that costs money and a lot are already living by the seat of pants and can’t escalate the cost to customers. They’re in a difficult place."

He says BCL for example stopped using 2.4GHz in Wellington because the noise floor was so high and bit error rates were generated in 2Mb stream weren’t tolerable for professional business customers.
 

With the cost of cable coming down there’s less resistance to Category 6 but the action is remains for the moment at the high end of the market. "People are becoming less tolerant of slow networks, if they have to wait for five minutes while a file transfers over the network that’s five minutes too long," says Vaughan Frost operations manager with Datacable.

However he says about 70 per cent of companies don’t need to keep up with technology and will happily chug along with Category 5e cabling for the foreseeable future, depending on their core business. "We’re still putting in Category 5 today - it’s cheaper for short term leases in particular and may be all people need unless they’re cabling a building they plan to be in for 10-15 years."

Datacable supply the copper and fibre installations while sister company Hart Group provides switches and fibre converters and imports Planet branded networking equipment from Gbit/sec enterprise switches to 5 port 10/100 data switches and VoIP switches. The one thing it doesn’t do is network design and architecture. It leaves that to integrators like Gen-i which came up with the topology for Linfox Logistics new warehouse and head office complex. Choosing Category 6 cabling was a no-brainer at the new site which consolidates four Auckland warehouses into one site near Auckland airport.

"We’ve applied what we’ve learned from our current sites and looked at ways to improve that by providing scaleable network services across any part of the warehouse ensuring it’s open to different customer needs," says Linfox IT infrastructure manager Hamish Gentil.

The company runs its own 3PL inventory management system but depending on the warehousing contracts it often runs other systems such as SAP along with the related hardware and networing. Rather than running multiple networks, in conjunction with Gen-i it has designed physical structure to enable delivery of a data circuits out to the data closet for each of the five offices in the two warehouse complex.

Cisco switches enable multiple VLANs to be segmented off from its Linfox’s own LAN across redundant fibre. It uses Category 6 cable in each building with 12 core fibre between each office and back to the server. "All the copper is reticulated from the five buildings at the new complex back to a closet and fed by fibre into media converters. The buildings are also ‘lit up for wireless’.

Alongside traditional data traffic the company is running VoIP. While most of the traffic at Linfox is still print and telnet the deployment of Category 6 seemed to be logical as the cost wasn’t much higher than Category 5e. "Because it was a design and build complex it made sense to leave our options open for the future". While security cameras are on a separate network they are managed over the LAN, and as video conferencing is a likely option the potential to run gigabit to the desktop capability is there if the company decides on a hardware and infrastructure upgrade."

Copper not always cure-all

Graeme Thomas, service manager of installation with Downer Commspec suggests a reality check is needed for many customers. He’s of the mind that Cat5 still holds sway in most local office environments and if you’re into serious backbone bandwidth then fibre is the only way to go.

He jests that Cat6 seems to have been invented by manufacturers to get the margins up as Cat5e is still a good product and ‘cheap as chips’. "It’s optimised for 10/100 traffic but well capable of running gigabit traffic around the office. If there’s a need for greater bandwidth for longer haul traffic in the backbone fibre is the way to go or between buildings or even laser."

And VoIP is not the driver some say it is. "We’re still putting in analogue phones although for a remote office with say 10-users, an IP connection and IP phones off the switch, works well. We are also connecting offices with 150Mbit/sec wireless or radio links or line-of-site infrared laser from Lightpoint Communications which can do gigabit speeds up to about 5km."

Thomas says there are an increasing number of options for high speed or backbone links and Cat 6 is only one of them but only useful over shorter distances. While the cost of media converters for fibre remains a deterrent the reality he says over longer distances that’s still the way to go.

Essentially though he says cabling has become a commodity item. Downers outsource from several suppliers. "There’s certainly plenty of choice but you have to take into account the installation skills of your engineers – you can only work with so many products."

No-one can be certain where technology is taking the market but all the signs point upward and onward. General Cable which has manufactured LAN cable at its Christchurch sites for the last 12 years and developed a strong export market says in a Q&A session on its website that data rates have been doubling every 18 months. Current applications running gigabit rates are pushing the limits of Category 5e, and as streaming media applications such as video and multi-media become commonplace, the demands will only increase.

Analyst predictions and independent polls indicate that 80 to 90 per cent of all new installations will be cabled with Category 6. "The fact that Category 6 link and channel requirements are backward compatible to Category 5e makes it easier for customers to choose Category 6 and supersede Category 5e in their networks. The rationale is that cabling will last at least 10 years and will support at least four to five generations of equipment during that time.

General Cable suggests optical fibre together with optical transceivers cost about twice as much as an equivalent system built using Category 6 and associated copper electronics.

"Installation of copper cabling is more craft-friendly and can be accomplished with simple tools and techniques. Additionally, copper cabling supports the emerging Data Terminal Equipment (DTE) power standard under development by IEEE 802.3."

It would be short sighted for anyone developing a hospital, university campus, school or commercial high rise to scrimp on cabling. To put in anything less than Category 6 at this stage would be to limit the capability and flexibility of tenants and an arrogant assumption that caps the future with our present speculating.

While switches and edge devices will hit the market over the next few months to push 10Gbit/sec out to the desktop there are some cautions about the bigger picture for enterprise cabling. While copper UTP will continue to dominate the horizontal cabling subsystem market for the foreseeable future, fibre is expected to make a comeback particularly in backbone and riser applications from 2008.

The price of copper could also be a factor in allowing fibre to regain an edge, as the cost of raw materials including plastics and compounds derived from fossil fuels reached new heights this year, especially in Europe with significant increases passed on from October, according to US-based cable manufacturer Belden CDT.