Don’t let installation be the weakest link in your ICT system. ANSI/BICSI N1 describes minimum requirements and procedures for installing the infrastructure for telecommunications and ICT systems, including cabling, cabling supports and testing. BICSI N1 also provides the tenets of a “neat and workmanlike manner”, as required by contracts and standards such as ANSI/NFPA 70, the National Electrical Code ® (NEC®).
When it comes to testing a cabling installation, there are essentially three choices–verification, qualification and certification. Verification is great for troubleshooting as it will tell you if your cabling is connected correctly and can help you find breaks, connectors and splices. Qualification lets you know if your cable under test will support a specific application, making it great for small moves, adds and changes or determining if an existing cable plant can support an application. But only certification will tell you if the cable plant fully meets industry standards – it’s the only test that measures across predefined ranges and compares the results to TIA, ISO and IEEE specifications to determine if a link is compliant with a specific category or class of cable and able to support the application. Certification is also what most cable manufacturers require for a warranty.
The Telecommunications Industry Association’s (TIA) TR-42 Telecommunications Cabling Systems Engineering Committee is perpetually developing and refining standards documents to guide the specification, design, installation and administration of cabling and related communications systems. TR-42’s most recent meeting took place June 9-13. Based on subcommittee-meeting minutes and other reports, here is a rundown of some of the current and recent activity from TR-42.
TIA’s ANSI/TIA 5017 standard, which specifies requirements for analyzing security levels and develops an individualized security framework for telecommunications infrastructures is now officially under consideration to become an international standard. ANSI/TIA-5017 was created based on U.S. federal government requests to improve the security of commercial buildings and reduce the possibility of disruptions to telecommunications infrastructure.
As large data centers are quickly moving to 100GbE speeds, designers are now looking at the 400GbE options that are becoming available. The options for 400G are much more varied and complex than prior speeds. And whether it is 100G or 400G, there needs to be a cable plant designed to accommodate the technology. How does one go about determining the most cost effective solution with so many moving targets? Nexans has developed an addition to its popular “Own the Link” calculator to help data center designers answers these questions. This presentation will cover some of the specification requirements for 100GbE and 400GbE options and then introduce an online tool that can help determine the most cost effective options.
Viavi Solutions gave the first demonstration of protocol analysis for the recently completed PCI Express® 5th generation data communication standard at the PCI-SIG Developers Conference, June 18-19. PCIe 5.0 – the next revision of the ubiquitous serial computer expansion bus standard – will double the capacity over a PCI Express link to 32 gigabits per second per unidirectional channel or greater than one terabit per second across the common 16-lane bidirectional slot interface. This acceleration of speed correlates with the performance demands of emerging bandwidth- and compute-intensive applications such as 400-Gigabit Ethernet, IoT, hyperscale and AI.
The Open Eye MSA aims to accelerate the adoption of PAM-4 optical interconnects scaling to 50Gbps, 100Gbps, 200Gbps, and 400Gbps by expanding existing standards to enable optical module implementations using optimized clock and data recovery (CDR) based architectures in addition to existing digital signal processing (DSP) architectures.
The TIA TR-42.1 engineering committee on premises telecommunications infrastructure has issued a call for interest to updates the document that provides guidance on cabling for wireless access points. TSB-162-B, Telecommunications Cabling Guidelines for Wireless Access Points, will describe the cabling between LAN equipment and wireless access points including pathways and spaces to support the cabling and wireless access points.
The TIA has published the ANSI/TIA-569-E standard, Telecommunications Pathways and Spaces. The “E” revision supersedes the 569-D standard, which was published in 2015. ANSI/TIA-569-E was developed by the TIA’s TR-42.3 Subcommittee. Major changes from the previous edition include updated references; incorporation of revised temperature and humidity requirements originally published in ANSI/TIA-569-D-1; and incorporation of additional pathway and space considerations for supporting remote powering over twisted-pair cabling originally published in ANSI/TIA-569-D-2.
After 3 1/2 years of development, BICSI has published 009-2019, it’s Data Center Operations standard. Its primary purpose is to help reduce unplanned disruptions in data center services. It provides guidance on Standard Operating Procedures, Maintenance Operationg Procedures, Emergency Operating Procedures and Management.
