Building & Data Cabling

Building & Data Cabling is defined as building or campus telecommunications cabling infrastructure that consists of a number of standardized smaller elements (hence called subsystems.

Structured cabling falls into the following six sub-systems:

- Entrance Facilities is where the building interfaces with the outside world.
- Equipment Rooms host equipment which serves the users inside the building.
- Telecommunications Rooms are where various telecommunications and data equipment resides, connecting the backbone and horizontal cabling sub-systems.
- Backbone Cabling as the name suggests carries the signals between the entrance facilities, equipment rooms and telecommunications rooms.
- Horizontal Cabling is the wiring from telecommunications rooms to the individual outlets on the floor.
- Work-Area Components connect end-user equipment to the outlets of the horizontal cabling system.

It is normal to see different colour patch cables used in the patch panel to help identify which type of connection is being carried, though the structured cabling standards do not require this, except in the demarcation wall field.

Cabling standards demand that all eight connectors in Cat5/5e/6 cable are connected, resisting the tempation to 'double-up' or use one cable for both voice and data. This is generally a good thing as it means that they fully support features such as [Power over Ethernet->http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_over_Ethernet] which require the so-far unused brown cables.

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