How to Choose the Proper Cabling Pathway?

Just as the old saying goes: it’s the little things that make the biggest impact. This is especially true when it comes to design a data center—there are so many factors to consider during the process, among which the proper cabling pathway construction only possesses a small part yet matters significantly. Data center designers are always aware of that multiple products must work together to ensure a successful pathway and cable management. This article will take a review of the commonly seen cabling pathway types.

What Is Cabling Pathway?

Cabling pathways allow the placement of data center trunk cables and cross-connect cables between racks and cabinets. Cabling pathway comes into two forms: overhead pathway and under floor pathway. Both of them are designed to accommodate all standards-compliant cabling and allow for necessary changes later. In other words, cabling pathway should support the weight of cables in the initial installation and also facilitate additional cables in the future. Which helps ensure robust pathways that respond well to cable work over the facility’s life cycle.

Cabling Pathway types Overview

Cabling pathway types come in a dazzle array of styles, in this section, we’ll illustrate some of them that widely used in work areas, wiring closets and for horizontal and backbone cable runs.

Conduit

Conduits are pipes that cable is placed in and pulled through, and it can be metallic or nonmetallic, rigid or flexible. They run from the telecommunications room to the work area outlets in the floor, walls, or columns of a building. To ensure that enough conduit be installed, it is recommended that the conduit would better be only 40 percent full by your current cable needs, or 60 percent full to the maximum. Which leaves you space for future growth.

Cable Trays

Cable tray serves as an alternative cabling pathway component to conduit, which can be installed as distribution system to route and support your cables. Typically, cable tray is open and equipped with sides that allow cable to be laid within the tray’s entire length. It is ideal to use cable tray to manage a large number of horizontal cable runs, due to their greater accessibility when it comes to maintenance and troubleshooting, as well as its ability to accommodate change.

Basket Tray

A basket tray serves as a cable tray that designed for light duty applications, which is lightweight and easy to install. Unlike ladder rack installation, to properly install a basket tray, certain level of experience is needed. Many of the accessories that accompany ladder racks also accompany basket trays, to ensure proper bend radius and a proper transition to the equipment rack.

Underfloor Cable Tray

An underfloor cable tray is used primarily in data centers. It resembles much as overhead support pathway types. However, when using under floor cable tray systems, the air space may be a plenum air space, so all cable and patch cables would need to be plenum to ensure proper air flow.

Ladder Racks

A ladder rack is made of tubular steel and comes in sizes from 6’’ to 36’’ wide. The installation of a ladder rack is simple and requires little trade experience. Ladder rack comes with many accessories such as 90-degree bends, waterfalls and cable retaining posts. These accessories allow the routing of cable without damage.

Raceways

Raceways are special types of conduits used for surface mounting horizontal cables. They are usually pieced together in a modular fashion with vendors providing connectors that do not exceed the minimum bend radius. Raceways are mounted on the outside of a wall in places where cable is not easily installed inside the wall. They are commonly used on walls made of brick or concrete where no telecommunications conduit has been installed.

Installation Considerations for Cabling Pathway

With the purpose of supporting the current needs as well as future growth, several essential factors should better be considered while designing and installing cable pathway.

• Overhead and underfloor cabling pathway should be installed in a matrix type method, allowing cables to be routed from point to point anywhere in the data center.
• When installing any types of cabling pathway, grounding and bonding are rather vital. Make sure that all racks, cabinets, and cabling support components are properly bonded and the system is grounded.
• Always leave room for future growth. All cable tray and ladder rack should allow room to accommodate at least 50% growth after the initial install.
• Be sure the heaviest cable in on the bottom of the tray or separated from the lighter cables, and separate the copper cables from the fiber cables if possible.

• Avoid mounting any types of cabling pathway in locations that block access to other equipment inside and outside the racks.
• Avoid routing pathways with copper cables near equipment, which may generate high levels of electrometric interference. Avoid areas around power cords, florescent lights, building electrical cables and fire prevention components.

Conclusion

The knowledge concerning different styles of cabling pathway lies the foundation of proper installation of data center pathway. Choosing proper cabling pathway type makes it easier to perform cable-related work and maintenance later. Make your decision on the basis of your unique working condition and environments, and do not forget to account for the factors mentioned below while perform cabling pathway installation.

Source: http://www.china-cable-suppliers.com/choose-cabling-pathway.html

Knowing Cable Ratings: Plenum and Riser Rated Cable

When doing data and voice cabling in premise environment, there is a common question that every installer may confront: Should I use plenum or riser rated cable? Plenum and riser here indicate flame ratings for cables which are defined by National Electric Code (NEC), with the purpose of preventing the spread of fire and smoke in commercial and residential buildings. Then, what is the difference between plenum and riser rated cable? This article will explain to you by making a comparison between them.

What are Plenum and Riser Cable?

The flame rating of cables differs according to various installation situations. Thus to decide which rating is appropriate for your installation environment is critical. So let’s just begin with the basic definition of the plenum and riser cable.

Plenum Cable: A plenum refers to any enclosed area that facilitates environmental air handling. Such as an air conditioning duct or an air routing drop ceiling. It can be any air space between walls, under floors, or dropped ceilings. Plenum cable is designed with a fire-retardant plastic jacket, that is laid in the plenum spaces of buildings. It is held to the most stringent testing of the cables rated by the NEC, rated for both flammability and smoke generation.

Riser Cable: Riser cables do what their name indicates—they rise between non-plenum vertical applications like floors of multi-story buildings. Riser cables may also penetrate either fire rated floors or walls. Described as backbone cables, riser cables serve as the main conduit of a distribution system for data, voice or video. The cables are only subjected to flame tests.

Difference Between Plenum and Riser Cable in Application

In this part, we will illustrate the difference between plenum rated cable and riser rated cable from the perspective of their common application situations.

Plenum rated cable is usually made with strict standards required by a plenum space. It is installed to prevent contamination of the air. Requirements for plenum cables dictate the rate at which a flame spreads, as well as the maximum amount of smoke a burning cable may produce. This kind of cable can be applied to commercial and multi-family residential buildings. Plenum rated cables may substitute for riser and general purpose rated cables.

Riser rated cable is typically run between multiple floors of a building through open vertical shafts. Although these pathways do not handle environmental air, they can easily conduct a fire from one floor to the next if the cable is not properly rated. And the vertical spread of flame would pose a big threat to the safety. To minimize the spread of fire, riser rated cable is required for carrying a minimum of a riser rating. Riser cables may be used for different forms of data communications which also include CCTV video access. It is ideal as well for voice communications.

Plenum and Riser Cable in Cabling Design

When deploying cable for indoor applications, to plan and design beforehand is definitely critical yet beneficial. If the cables must be deployed in the plenum, it is important to remember that cables that will be deployed there must reach several standards on flammability, heat resistance, and amount of smoke cable generates when burning. Another essential part of installing cable within a building is riser cable deployment. Since riser cable should go through the whole building, it is rather vulnerable in case of fire. This is why riser cable has even more strict fireproof standards than the plenum one. The picture below illustrates the common design of the plenum and riser rated cable in the building.

Conclusion

Although cable rating is sometimes overlooked by system designers when selecting cables, it is rather vital to the whole installing environment. We have explained the difference between the plenum and riser cable from the perspective of the common application and cabling design, hope that would be informative enough.

Source: http://www.china-cable-suppliers.com/cable-ratings-plenum-and-riser-cable.html

Labeling Cables: the Virtue and Value

Change in wiring is a commonplace in data centers, as the demand for higher bandwidth speeds the installation and updating process of cables and components. Labeling cables is considered as a critical part in data center management, which allows for easier identification and quicker isolation of cables. Meanwhile, a properly labeled cabling system could benefit installers with increased efficiency, profitability and reliability. In this article, let’s talk about the benefits of labeling, and perhaps more important, how to effectively label your cables.

Benefits of Labeling Cables

Labeling cables at each end is quite essential, especially when there is a problem. In this case, the cable can be simply identified. By doing so, labeling help reducing the time it takes to track down and resolve an issue. Besides, labeling the cable to power source ensures you are capable of tracing cables to power source, thus making equipment upgrades or replacements easier.

Here are the main benefits of proper and reliable labeling system:

• Increased Productivity—Simpler troubleshooting and maintenance procedures, which saves repair and movement requirements (both time and costs). You can keep downtime to a minimum and operations running smoothly by being able to track cables, wires and components at-a-glance.
• Improved Profitability—With the right planning and labeling, you make the job easier and more efficient for your workers, more professional-looking for your customers, and in turn, more profitable for your operations.
• Heightened Safety and Security—Along with efficiency, convenience and clarity that brought by labeling, it can be used to keep your workplace more secure and more compliant.

Solutions for Labeling Cables

There are a wide variety of labels and makers out there available to help ease your labeling work. Some of the most commonly used ones are illustrated in the following:

Cable Tags

A cable tag typically consists of a tie that loops around cables (or cable bundles), with a tag on the end that used to identify the cable. These tags allow for an easily readable, highly visible flat surface to clearly show the ID. Tags are widely adopted for labeling, ranging from the networking and electrical fields to home-use.

Wire Markers

Wire markers are used to wrap around the cable, they typically have an identifying mark, usually a number or a color. This allows you to easily identify a cable at a glance. The numbers and colors of wire marker simplify the labeling process, since it is hard to read longer text around the surface of a thin wire. Wire markers can be a plastic expandable ring that clips around a single cable, with the fact that they aren’t large enough to accommodate bundles.

Heat Shrink Labels

These Labels fit around cables, then shrink to conform to the size and shape of the cable via application of heat. This creates a snugly fit label around wires and cables that won't peel or slip off, and can be used in a wide variety of environmental conditions. So, for an application that needs to be long-lasting and withstand tough environmental conditions, sleeves may be preferable to typical adhesive wire markers.

Considerations for Labeling Cables

Labeling cables is not a difficult job, but it is time-consuming thus you need to be patient enough. When selecting the label for your cable identification needs, there are at least three factors that need to be taken into account.

Label material: There are various options when it comes to label material, which depend on your specific applications and environment. Polyolefin labels are for wet environment and resistant to chemical and high temperatures; vinyl labels are ideal for non-flat sub surfaces since they offer oil and dirt resistance; while nylon is the optimum choice for use on curved surfaces due to their flexible and strong features.

Cable thickness: Depending on the thickness of your wires or cables, you need to decide which sleeves or self-laminating labels to use in order to make sure they’ll fit. Generally, cable sleeves should have at least twice the height of the cable diameter, and very thick cables can be identified using straps and a cable bundle tag.

Cable Types: If you want to limit the contact surface between your wire or cable and your label, use a P- or T-shaped flag label to leave space for printing a code or bar-code on. When you need to identify cables or wires that are already attached, tags can be used as a non-adhesive alternative. And wraparounds and flag labels are a self-adhesive alternative for terminated cables.

Conclusion

Properly-labeled wires and cables contribute to facilitating data center management, and it offers immediate insight into how your network operates as well as aesthetic appeal. In a well labeling system, you can install and upgrade your infrastructure in a more secure and cost-effective way. So never and ever underestimates the value of labeling cables.

Source: http://www.fiber-optic-solutions.com/labeling-cables-virtue-value.html

LC Uniboot Fiber Patch Cable – An Optimum Cable Management Option

With the ever lasting advancement of networking technology, there comes an increasing demand for data centers to accommodate higher density cables and more bandwidth. However, it is generally acknowledged that data centers are often with limited space. Then how to handle those massive cables in such circumstances becomes a vital issue. This article will introduce the LC uniboot fiber patch cable, an optimum alternative for cable management that is designed to deliver maximum connectivity performance.

LC Uniboot Fiber Patch Cables Description

LC uniboot fiber patch cable consists of two LC connectors that wrapped by a common housing with one boot. It is terminated on a single, round, two-fiber cable to achieve duplex data transmission. LC uniboot patch cable allows for up to 68% savings in cabling volume due to a compact design, and it can ensure easier maintenance and operability with tool-less field reversible polarity and color identification. All the features presented by LC uniboot fiber patch cable make it an ideal option for high density network environment.

Comparison Between LC Uniboot Fiber Patch Cables and Standard Ones

LC fiber optic connectors offer higher density and better performance in most environments when compared with other fiber optic connectors, making it a reliable and popular choice for many applications and equipment. This can explain why uniboot fiber patch cables are terminated with specially designed LC connectors. The innovative LC uniboot fiber patch cable, with its unique structure and compact design, performs even better than standard LC fiber patch cables in high density cabling environment. Here, we present the obvious differences between the LC uniboot patch cable and the standard LC fiber patch cable in the following picture.

Features of LC Uniboot Fiber Patch Cables

Genarally, there are three primary features concerning the uniboot fiber patch cables:

Adjustable Pitch—the unique style of the clip allows the LC Connectors to easily adjust for the increasing demand of a 5.25 pitch, as well as the standard 6.25 pitch. Eliminating the requirement for hybrid patch cables.

Reverse Polarity—with a few simple steps, the connectors polarity of the LC uniboot fiber patch cables can be reversed at will without connector re-termination.

Quick Release Latch—the latch of LC uniboot fiber patch cable allows for the quick and easy release of this connector from the adapter panel, which makes great sense in the growing trend of high density applications.

What LC Uniboot Fiber Patch Cables Can Achieve?

As we have mentioned previously, LC uniboot fiber patch cables are especially vital to space sensitive data centers and high density cabling environments, so what exactly we can benefit from deploying LC uniboot fiber patch cables?

Cable Congestion Reduction

With two fibers for duplex transmission firmly enclosed in a single cable, LC uniboot fiber patch cable effectively cuts down the cable count up to 50% compared with the standard LC duplex patch cords. Thus the space requirement of cabling can be significantly reduced by it, naturally result in less chance of cable congestion in data centers.

Effective Polarity Reversal

Changing the polarity of a standard LC duplex fiber patch cable may be annoying to many data center operators, especially when there happens to be a high density cabling system. This is sort of a time and energy consuming task since some minor mistakes could lead to various troubles. However, with LC uniboot patch cable, the polarity replacement can be much easier even without any additional tools. In terms of different types of LC uniboot patch cables, the polarity reversal steps may vary. We just illustrate two most used ones as follows.

Conclusion

To address the increasing demand for high density applications and smaller fiber cable, the LC uniboot fiber patch cable is designed to help cut down cabling space and provide more effective polarity reversal solution, and to streamline cable management and logistics. Without doubt, LC uniboot fiber patch cable is the savior of popularized high-density cabling system. Hope this article could help you to choose the right LC uniboot patch cable for your applications, and for more products information and solutions, please visit www.fs.com.

First published: http://www.fiber-optic-components.com/lc-uniboot-fiber-patch-cable-optimum-cable-management-option.html

The Four Fundamental Elements of Fiber Cable Management

As the demand for high-bandwidth broadband services accelerates dramatically in recent years, most service providers begin to realize the importance of upgrading their networks to meet this requirement. Consequently the application of fiber optic cable prevails in the field of networking since it is able to meet both bandwidth and cost requirements. However, by simply deploying fiber optic cable is far from enough—the foundation and premise of a successful, well-built network should be a strong and sound fiber cable management system.

Introduction to Fiber Cable Management

To better survive in the fierce competition in the networking market, service providers employ fiber because of its high-bandwidth as well as its ability to deliver new revenue-generating services profitably. Moreover, service providers are pushing fiber closer and closer to the end user, whether that is fiber to the home or to the desk. To take advantage of the enormous merits of fiber optic cable in revenue-producing bandwidth, it is essential to manage fiber cables properly. A sound management system affects how quickly new services can be turned up and how easily the network can be reconfigured. In fact, fiber cable management, the manner in which the fiber cables are connected, terminated, routed, spliced, stored and handled, has a direct and substantial impact on the networks' performance and profitability.

Bend Radius Protection

Basically, there are two types of bends in fiber—microbends and macrobends. The microbend is a small, microscopic bend which may be caused by the cabling process itself and external forces. It typically changes the path that propagating modes take, resulting in loss from increased attenuation as low-order modes become coupled with high-order modes that are naturally lost. A macrobend is a larger cable bend that can be seen with the unaided eye and is often reversible. When it occurs, the radius can become too small and allow light to escape the core and enter the cladding. The best result is insertion loss, and in worse cases, the signal is decreased or completely lost. The following picture shows clearly the microbend and macrobend.

With proper cable handing and routing, however, both microbend and macrobend can be reduced and even prevented. The minimum bend radius varies depending on the specific fiber cable. In general, the minimum bend radius of fiber should not be less than ten times its outer diameter. Although the bend insensitive fiber, as an innovative breakthrough in network, becoming increasingly popular nowadays, service providers must aware that the need for solid fiber cable management cannot be diminished by these new fibers. Instead, with the number of fibers being added to the system increases, bend radius protection becomes more important ever. Furthermore, bend radius protection is also vital to avoid operational problems in the network.

Cable Routing Path

Cable routing path is related closely to bend radius protection since it can result in bending radius violation if cable technician routes the fibers improperly. No matter where cable is used, routing path must be clearly defined and easy to follow, or it will lead to an inconsistently routed, difficult-to-manage fiber network. Well-defined routing paths, therefore, not only reduce the proficiency training time required for technicians, but also increase the uniformity of the work done as it helps ensure and maintain bend radius requirements at all points to improve overall network reliability.

In addition, well-defined routing paths make it easier and quicker to access to individual fiber, thus efficiently reduce the time required for reconfiguration. Moreover, the reduced fiber twists enable much easier fiber tracing and rerouting. Even with the advent of new technologies such as the use of LEDs at both ends of patch cords for easy identification. Well-defined cable routing paths still play an indispensable role in reducing the time required to route and reroute patch cords.

Cable access

As the name indicates, cable access refers to the accessibility of the installed fibers. As the increasing amount of fibers to be added in both the distribution frame and the active equipment, broadband service providers start to attach more importance to cable access. With huge amounts of data moving across those fibers, it is hence essential for technicians to have quick and easy access to fibers. When there are service level agreements in place, particularly for customers with high priority traffic, the last thing any service provider wants is service interruptions caused by mishandling one fiber to gain access to another. Since accessibility is most critical during network reconfiguration operations, proper cable access directly impacts operational costs and network reliability.

Physical Fiber Protection

The last element of fiber cable management system emphasizes the physical protection of the installed fibers. Every fiber throughout the network must be protected against accidental damage by technicians or equipment. Service providers should always keep physical protection in mind when routing cables, such as using raceway systems that protect from outside disturbances. While without proper physical protection, fibers are susceptible to damage that can critically affect network reliability. The fiber cable management system should always include attention to ensure every fiber is protected from physical damage.

Conclusion

An appropriate fiber management can affect the network’s reliability, performance and cost to a large extent. Besides, it can also influence network maintenance, operations, expansion, restoration and the rapid implementation of new services. This article lies emphasis on the four elementary elements of a strong fiber optic cable management system from the perspective of bend radius protection, cable routing paths, cable accessibility and physical protection of the fiber network. Executing these four concepts correctly, then the network can deliver its full competitive advantages.

First published: http://www.china-cable-suppliers.com/the-four-fundamental-elements-of-fiber-cable-management.html