News and updates
Category 5e
The end of an era
Not all office workspaces are designed alike. The future utilisation and occupancy of a workspace plays a crucial role in determining the necessary cabling infrastructure. Making an incorrect choice initially may result in the need for future recabling or mitigation to accommodate evolving demands.
Modern offices and their needs
A modern office requires a network infrastructure that can keep up with its occupants’ demands for faster internet and a growing number of IoT devices. The most common ones being VoIP phones, WAPs and IP cameras, which are increasingly powered through Power over Ethernet (PoE).
Building management systems (BMS) such as access control, lighting, HVAC, will typically be connected to the mains electricity, although certain sensors, actuators and system controls will also be powered through PoE network connections.
So, when planning an IT upgrade of your building or constructing one from the ground up, you will have to provision for how much bandwidth and power will be needed for present and future.
Higher grade copper cabling
Your building’s Ethernet network needs to support a variety of applications, each with their own bandwidth and PoE requirements. So, choosing the right cabling infrastructure for these smart buildings becomes key. New generation Wi-Fi technologies offer data rates exceeding 1Gbps and up to 10Gbps, which means that Category 5e or even Category 6 cabling will not be able to support these speeds. With Category 6A supporting up to 10Gbps transmission capacity, your network won’t have any problem keeping up with a smart building’s present and future bandwidth demands.In addition, the increasing need for some of these “smart building” devices to be powered through PoE provides a requirement for higher grade cabling: compared to lower grade categories. Shielded Category 6A cabling minimises the effect of temperature rise in cable bundles and hence covers the necessary reach for both the power and the data transmission.
Farewell to Category 5e
Cabling system manufacturers are now strongly recommending opting for a Category 6A cabling solution. This will guarantee a reliable network for today’s applications and will maximise flexibility for tomorrow’s needs.
This growing need for higher grade copper cabling means Category 5e, standardised in 1999 and rated for 1Gbps, has for most, run its course and should be given a fond farewell in
favour of a higher-grade infrastructure. Current statistics and our own installation experiences, do show the market is clearly moving away from tradition with increasingly fewer network installations being deployed using Category 5e.
