julianusjuli.info | 10GBase-T Cat.6A Currently Defined in ANSI/TIA/EIA-568-B.2-10

Newsflash

Taiwan earthquake damages undersea Internet cables

A major earthquake and several aftershocks in Taiwan, which injured dozens of people and caused several fires on Thursday, also sent Chunghwa Telecom workers scrambling to fix undersea fiber-optic telecommunications cables to prevent service disruptions around Asia.

Taiwan's biggest telecommunications company said the initial 6.4-magnitude earthquake, which struck near the southern Taiwan city of Pingtung, damaged four undersea cables in six different places, knocking out service for parts of the day Thursday and early Friday. Global communications and Internet service on all networks has already been restored, mainly by rerouting service on undamaged cables.

10GBase-T Cat.6A Currently Defined in ANSI/TIA/EIA-568-B.2-10

Written by Julianus Yu

The latest standard from the TIA for enhanced performance standards for twisted pair cable systems was defined in February 2008 in ANSI/TIA/EIA-568-B.2-10. Category 6a (or Augmented Category 6) is defined at frequencies up to 500 MHz—twice that of Cat 6. Category 6a performs at improved specifications, particularly in the area of Alien Cross-talk (AXT) as compared to Cat6 UTP which exhibited high alien noise in high frequencies.

The global cabling standard ISO/IEC 11801 will soon be extended by the addition of amendment 2. This amendment defines new specifications for Cat. 6A components and Class EA permanent links. These new global Cat. 6A / Class EA specifications require a new generation of connecting hardware offering far superior performance compared to the existing products which are based on the American TIA standard (Look at Service>Product>Copper twisted pair Product..for new connector support Cat.6a).

The most important point is a performance difference between ISO/IEC and EIA/TIA component specifications for the NEXT transmission parameter. At a frequency of 500 MHz, an ISO/IEC Cat. 6A connector performs 3 dB better than a Cat. 6A connector that conforms with the EIA/TIA specification. 3 dB equals 100% increase of Near-End Crosstalk noise reduction when measured in absolute magnitudes.

Category 6 and 6a cable must be properly installed and terminated to meet specifications. Incorrect installation practices include kinking the cable or bending it with too tight a radius. Incorrect termination practices include untwisting the wire pairs or stripping the outer jacket back too far. Shielded Category 6a cable must have the foil grounded at one end to achieve specified alien crosstalk performance, To ensure that an installation will meet the requirements for the network protocol it will be used for, a new installation is usually certified using a so-called cable certifier, validator or qualification tester.