In a recent post to its Standards Informant website, Siemon stated that during its meeting the week of June 17, the TIA TR-42.7 Copper Cabling Subcommittee “accepted the concept of adding ISO/IEC Class II cabling performance criteria into its pending ANSI/TIA-568-C.2-1 category 8 project.” Additionally, Siemon’s Brian Celella, along with Panduit’s Frank Straka, will co-chair the cabling standards task group that will develop the Class II criteria.
“Class II is the name of the new ISO/IEC grade of cabling that will be constructed from fully shielded ISO/IEC category 8.2 cords, cables and connecting hardware,” Siemon explained, adding, “Both class II and category 8.2 specifications are targeted to support the 40GBase-T application over a distance of at least 30 meters and are under development by the ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 25/WG 3 Working Group. Category 8.2 components will be an extension and superset of existing Category 7A components.”
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Siemon characterized the TIA’s acceptance of the class II concept as a demonstration “that North American standards development organizations are ready to embrace fully shielded cabling systems,” saying such a move is “a strong and positive step toward global harmonization of the full suite of available IT network structured cabling solutions.”
On the Standards Informant site, Siemon also addressed the issue of the class II connector interface, stating that it “has not yet been specified by TIA.” The company added, however, that, “It is the opinion of the cabling experts at Siemon that the 8-position RJ45 modular interface does not exhibit sufficient performance margin to support new requirements based upon ISO/IEC class II cabling.” The company added that twisted-pair connecting hardware such as its TERA interface, “that is already standardized by ISO/IEC, would be ideal to support this new TIA level of cabling.”
