Cable labeling standards seek harmony, backward-compatibility

The forthcoming TIA-606-B Administration Standard for Telecommunications Infrastructure is likely to fulfill the double-duty of being backward-compatible with its predecessor TIA-606-A and being harmonized with the international labeling/administration standard ISO/IEC TR 1476-3-2-1. In order to achieve both of those objectives, the TIA-606-B standard most likely will permit two identification schemes. Differences between the two schemes would be minor, mainly consisting of different delimeters between fields.

The international cabling administration standard, ISO/IEC TR 14763-2-1 was recently approved for publication. Early in that standard's development it adopted the identifier scheme that also will be specified in TIA-606-B. The ISO standard's official title is ISO/IEC/TR 14763-2-1 Ed. 1.0 Information technology - Implementation and operation of customer premises cabling - Part 2-1: Planning and installation of copper cabling - Identifiers within administration systems. As this ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 25 "dashboard" indicates, the standard was recently approved for publication.

The 606-B standard will have a longer wait than the ISO spec. The TIA TR-42.6 Subcommittee on Telecommunications Infrastructure and Equipment Administration continues to work out details of 606-B. The standard is still going through industry balloting, which is a standard-development stage that precedes default balloting. After default balloting is completed the standard is submitted for publication.

You may also be interested in this labeling guide, based on the 606-A standard, available from Panduit.