CommScope VP: Don't get hung up over which enterprise cabling to choose
Nov. 29, 2012
Wherein a knell on Cat 5e cabling is sounded.
Rob Wessels, CommScope's vice president of cable research and development, has written a guest article for TMCnet's TechZone360 site entitled, Don't Get Strung up on which Cabling to Choose for Your Enterprise.
The article contends that, even in today's communications network-driven world, "most enterprises [still] pay little attention to the type of cabling they use when laying the framework for their IT infrastructure."
However surprising this sounds, it might not matter much, contends Wessels, as the ultimate choices for the best network performance are pretty cut and dried -- for instance, even in a decision as elemental as the choice between shielded vs. unshielded cabling.
"Regardless of the decision, the enterprise must look for quality components," asserts Wessels. "Rolling out a solution that does not meet the highest standards, either on shielded or unshielded cabling, will never achieve the same level of performance of a network that does."
"Network managers will only have the quality assurances they need if their suppliers can guarantee the end-to-end performance of a particular network," he says. "Companies should focus on the performance they need, not the underlying technologies."
The available choices when it comes to selecting CAT cabling are similarly moot, continues Wessels. "CAT 6 cabling and above has become the base-line for today’s video standards," he writes.
Along with video-on-demand, virtualization, cloud computing and other high-bandwidth services are cited as chief demand drivers for increased access speeds across networks.
"For new deployments, CAT 5e should never be considered by any enterprise hoping to maintain a facility longer than five years [italics added]," adds Wessels.
