Access to the Internet is essential for every company, regardless of their niche market. Actually, according to the prospects for the companies of the future, business development will be strongly related to digital transformation.
In this context, having good bandwidth and infrastructure able to support it will be key for efficiency processes and competitiveness. Cable standard 10 Gigabit Ethernet was designed for the industry long ago. Despite the many advances made in this field over the past few years, this standard remains in place today. Just to show you what innovation in cabling can do for infrastructures, at Televes Corporation we would like to present our new CAT6A cables.
What has changed over the last years?
Category 6 for data networks was first made public in October 2004, though it was not until 2009 that it was released by the name of CommScope’s SYSTIMAX® GigaSPE. The new version of Category 6A managed to reach frequencies up to 500 MHz (double as high as its predecessor CAT6A, operating up to 250 MHz) and maximum speed up to 10 Gbps (10 times faster than its CAT6 predecessor, reaching 1 Gbps).
CAT-6 cabling provides high electric resistance thanks to its copper-clad aluminum, although this causes a greater thermal impact. Using this type of cabling in POE applications could result in a temperature increase that may affect the cable itself or nearby elements. To avoid this potential risk, Televes recommends rolling out high-quality category-6A cables, always featuring a copper inner conductor.
These days, network devices that support this technology are spreading like wildfire with increasing frequency – switches, hubs or even IP cameras for the security industry allowing to create CCTV installations. Different sectors are now facing new needs that can only be met by the available cable types featuring copper inner conductors.
Regulations on infrastructure cabling
In addition to the needs of a cabling system supporting efficient, fast and safe infrastructures, there are regulations on this matter. The Spanish regulatory environment rules telecommunications access and distribution inside buildings and homes, and establishes that every conductor must be fully produced in copper. Thanks to this regulation, the use of category-6A cables is more and more usual in projects across Spain. This is primarily due to the ability to reach speeds of 10 Gbps – equaling Cat7 cables – and 10 times more than its predecessor, Cat6 cables. It also doubles bandwidth (500 MHz) as compared to Cat6.
Apart from the legal framework and the laws of each region, at a minimum, telecommunications infrastructure legistlation establishes the use of unshielded twisted-pair cables (UTP). To respond to the market and the legal framework demands, we at Televes Corporation offer a number of options, which are classified according to the shielding type and in compliance with international standard ISO/IEC 11801.
Discover our solutions
Cables are classified based on the variations of CAT 6 and CAT 6A:
- U/UTP – unshielded
- F/UTP – with a common shielding for all four pairs
- U/FTP – with an individual shielding for each pair
- S/FTP – with common and individual shielding
We strongly recommend that category-6A cables and patch-cords are used for professional installations because, as we have mentioned earlier, the bandwidth of the 6A reaches much greater transmission speeds. Even if they are still not that common, switches able to operate at 10 Gbps will come to be needed in the market and will have to support this speed. That’s why the use of CAT-6A cables is the best solution in the medium and long term.
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