Available for download in the Technical Notes section of the Partner Area of the Excel website is an updated version of the Containment Sizing Calculator. This spreadsheet now has the separation distances from power for metallic data cabling included along with the containment size calculations. Separation distance calculations are covered in a Technical Note (click here to see the Technical Note) and to make the process easier, this has been added to the spreadsheet. Separation distance is dependant on the data cable classification, cable management system and the number of power cables in the vicinity. Both the Technical Note and …
Continue reading Updated Containment Sizing Calculator
March/April of this year will see the introduction of a new standard in the EN 50173 series. The full title of the new standard will be – EN 50173-6 Information technology – Generic cabling systems Part 6: Distributed building services. Being an “EN” standard will mean that it will automatically be adopted by member states as a national standard (e.g. in the UK it will become a British Standard – BS EN 50173-6, etc).
Distributed building systems covers a range of applications and installations such as: Access Points, Lighting Control, Environmental control, Power monitoring, etc. These have been serviced by …
Continue reading Cabling for Distributed Building Systems
Structured Cabling is all about numbers. Some vendors believe that a bigger number is better and that quoting a larger number than their competitors will give them the edge. Unfortunately this practice can be misleading. One such practice is to quote the number of mating cycles (insertions and withdrawals) for modular plugs and jacks that is higher than the requirements of the Standards.
Excel has carried out aged life testing on all our products, including mating cycles, well in excess of the required number in the current standard, without any significant degradation of performance. The current standard stipulates …
Continue reading The Danger of Overstating Mating Cycles
The first step in this should be to take a few moments to go back over the standards.
IEEE 802.3an, ratified in 2006 outlined 10GBase-T over Category 6A/Class EA cables (or better) including screened and unscreened construction as outlined in ISO 11801 Add 2.
This also introduced the subject of Alien Crosstalk Testing, something that had not really been considered previously. Basically 10GBase-T receiving hardware cannot compensate for the noise from outside the cable itself, therefore the cabling needs to do the cancelling wherever possible.
EN50173-1 has a complete section on the parameters and limits to be tested. If it …
Continue reading Cabling Standards Refresher
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March 21st, 2013 
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