Big CATs on the prowl
The structured cabling market will be fuelled by increasing user demands and new cabling technologies like CAT6.
By Ashwani Mishra
India has emerged as the fastest growing market in the data center-structured cabling market in the Asia Pacific region with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 46 percent, according to Access Markets International (AMI) Partners, a US-based consultancy agency. The data center structured cabling market is expected to grow from $19 million in 2005 to $125 million in 2010. The overall structured cabling market is expected to grow from $127 million in 2005 to $345 million by 2010 at a CAGR of 22 percent.
According to cabling manufacturers, the major turning points in the industry have been the progress in technology from fast Ethernet to gigabit Ethernet and more recently to 10 Gigabit over copper. IT managers realize that the speed, performance and manageability of networks are important factors.
“Networks have undergone upgrades from fast Ethernet to Gigabit Ethernet, CAT5 (category 5) standards, all in the space of three years. If this isn’t enough, pretty soon we’re going to see augmented CAT6 (10 Gigabit) networks being implemented as a standard,” says Karan Kirpalani, senior manager, marketing, NetMagic Solutions.
Recent market research points to an increased demand from Internet traffic. New applications coupled with the growth of Internet users is driving the need for increased bandwidth. The sectors that are driving the structured cabling market include BPO, manufacturing, telecom, healthcare, retail, government and BFSI.
“At present we see more customers using 10G on copper, and this adoption will continue to increase in the next couple of years,” says Prasanna Kumar, regional director, India and Saarc.
According to analysts, the only place where the the adoption of 10G is happening is the LAN aggregation space where it is being used for point-to-point link aggregation between two switches and allows the use of different multiple hop paths simultaneously through the switch topology to the same endpoint.
CAT game
Current applications running on one G/s are pushing the limits of CAT5e cabling. As applications like video and multi-media become common, the demands for faster data rates will increase and create new applications that will benefit from the higher bandwidth offered by CAT6.
As per reports, the general difference between CAT5e and CAT6 is in the transmission performance and extension of the allowed bandwidth from 100 MHz for CAT 5e to 200 MHz for CAT6.
Analyst predictions and independent polls indicate that 85-95 percent of new installations will be installed with CAT6. Since CAT6 link and channel requirements are backward compatible with CAT5e, it quite easy for customers to choose category 6 and supersede CAT5e in their networks.
Intelligent cabling and PoE adoption to increase
Industry sources say that intelligent cabling will reduce the cost of network ownership by solving issues like unplanned downtime, inefficient manual moves, adds and changes, redundant ports and inaccurate records. It will increase network management efficiency and network security considerably.
“Intelligent cabling will have more demand in India as compared to the rest of the globe as the size of the networks here are getting bigger,” says Dileep Kumar, product manager, enterprise networks, ADC Krone.
Power over Ethernet (PoE) is another cabling technology that will gain acceptance among enterprises. PoE integrates power into a standard LAN infrastructure. It enables power to be provided to the network device, such as an IP phone or a network camera, using the same cable as that used for the network connection. It eliminates the need for power outlets, and most of the manufacturers today offer network switches with built-in PoE support.
The Fiber
Structured cabling forms the essential communications infrastructure of a business' IT system, and is every bit as important as the equipment connected to each end of a piece of cable. However, the fiber-versus-copper debate remains unresolved as yet. Of course, fiber systems offer many advantages over copper-based systems. Fiber optics use light pulses instead of electrical signals for transmitting information, there is no concern about electromagnetic interference or radio frequency interference. Transmission distances are greater because light pulses weaken or lose energy much more slowly than electrical signals. Fiber also offers much greater bandwidth than copper cables, allowing more information to be carried on each fiber. In fact, a single pair of fibers can handle the same amount of voice traffic as 1,400 pairs of copper.
The fact remains that the cost of the electronic devices used with fiber systems hasn’t decreased to the extent where fiber has become a relatively inexpensive alternative to copper. Copper continues to make progress in terms of performance, and this has left fiber a laggard where cost is concerned. Copper’s 10G ASE-T supports 10 gigabit speeds. The dampener for copper cables is the rising price of its key raw material in the global metal markets. Hence, it wouldn’t be untoward to expect an increase in the fiber content in enterprise cabling.
Network Computing’s Christopher Beers and Bill Fischer participated in a 15-month project to design and build a 10,000-square foot data center; they shared the following lesson. The MDF (main distribution frame) area of the data center will contain the facility's core routers, switches and cable connections. This area of the facility will require heavy-duty fiber and copper installations. IT professionals, they point out, are faced with the question of using multimode in 62.5 micron, 50 micron, or enhanced multimode supporting 10 GB bandwidths and Category 5E, 6, 6E or 6A. They recommend using fiber to the cabinet IDFs (intermediate distribution frames) and copper from there to the racks in MDFs.
According to them, to protect investments into the future, it makes sense to purchase the best copper budget will bear. As one progresses through the different standards, one would be buying the ability to support more bandwidth on the cable. Cabling tends to have a lifespan greater than the equipment it connects, which means that a decision to go with Category 6A today will eliminate the need to tear out all the cabling in the future to meet higher bandwidth or transmission performance requirements.
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