Key Components
Key components of the Structured Cabling design include the entrance facility, main equipment room, backbone cable, backbone pathway, Intermediate Distribution Frame (IDF), and horizontal distribution system.
New buildings require voice, data, and video wiring and electronics facilities within the building to support the newest forms of telecommunications. A series of standards has been developed to provide guidance in designing new buildings and remodeling older facilities. The list of facilities that need to be taken into consideration are building entrance facilities, entrance wiring closets, floor wiring closets protection and grounding, backbone raceways, horizontal raceways, backbone wiring, and horizontal wiring. At ECS, we assist our customers with the considerations and options for architectural and engineering areas for supporting voice, data, & video communications within a building.
Entrance Facilities
Cabling usually must enter a building underground and usually within 4 inch conduits. Three or more of the conduits will usually be required to connect an entrance wiring closet to the nearest manhole or other location with telecommunications facilities. Consideration is required for the type of conduit, depth of bury, separation from other conduits, bends in the conduit, conduit capping and seals, manhole sizes, and pull lines.
Entrance Wiring Closet
An Entrance Wiring Closet is a room for placement of electronics and terminations of cable of many types, which supply the building with outside communications. Security is usually required and the room should not be shared with other functions in the building. Considerations for the facility are floor weight load factors, water avoidance, lighting, electrical access, room size, electrical grounding, HVAC, and location near the building entrance facility.
Floor Wiring Closet
A Floor Wiring Closet is a location on each floor to facilitate the electronics and cabling distribution for that floor. If the floor is large enough, with long cable runs, more than one room may be required on each floor. Security is usually required so that the room will not be shared with other building functions. Considerations for the facility are floor loading factors, water avoidance, ceilings and walls, fire door, lighting, electrical access, room size, electrical grounding, HVAC, floor location, and cable run maximum lengths.
Backbone Raceways
Backbone raceways are a series of accesses that connect the entrance wiring closet to the various floor wiring closets. These paths permit cable to be placed between the floors. They may be slots, sleeves, conduits or trays and racks in which cables may be routed for support and protection. Considerations are the size, quantity, and seals. If conduits or sleeves are used, the 4 inch size is preferred.
Horizontal Raceways
The horizontal raceway carries the cable from the floor wiring closet to the various rooms or jack locations on the floor. Ceiling trays, wire hangers, all-thread rod, conduit, & etc. are all common methods of horizontal distribution. The nature of the building usage may justify another type of cable path. Considerations for the path include bends or curves, size, conduit run lengths, and outlet boxes.
Why Document Your Cabling?
Your network is one of your company’s most valuable assets. It’s the communication backbone of your organization and it’s always growing and changing. ECS can assist you to harness the power of exploding technology and make it work for you. Every minute spent tracking data, reconfiguring your cabling or searching for the source of a problem means a loss of time, productivity, and in some cases a loss of profit. Cable documentation can help maintain the integrity of the network by tracking the continuity through equipment, patch cords, cross-connects, connectors, cables, and outlets. It encompasses the design and maintenance of the cable. Cable documentation can be an ally against the ravages of system downtime, giving you the power to configure your cabling so you have fewer network problems.
Cable documentation can:
- Reduce the time it takes to modify the original installation.
- Minimize network downtime.
- Increase the life of a your structured cabling.
- Reduces the number of technicians needed to handle problems.
Let ECS work with you to develop a Network Management system you can use to manage all of your cabling, including all the connectivity, connectors, pathways, and device relationships to truly visualize and understand your network’s infrastructure.
For assistance in planning/designing your Structured Cabling, please contact ECS today.