Cabling

Mid-sized companies adopt the best cabling standard

CAT 6 has become a de facto standard for medium businesses, while the use of Cat 5e is limited to small companies only. By Tanu Talwar

A company’s networking architecture depends on and is determined by the cabling infrastructure that the company has equipped itself with. A systematic and well thought out cabling network has become the most important ingredient of any IT network and an essential tool in ensuring that the system performs and fulfils the needs of an organization at an optimum level with maximum efficiency. With the increasing realisation among IT heads and managers about the needs for strong cabling systems to support critical applications and increasing bandwidth requirements required for running an constant supply of data, voice and video across their converged networks, the cabling industry has seen an tremendous boom in the adoption of advanced cabling technologies.

Growing reliance

According to the survey, regarding existing cabling infrastructure, one finds that about 76 percent of 152 respondents depend upon copper as against the 68 percent that have opted for fibre in their cabling infrastructure. When it comes to plans for investing in cabling the survey reveals that mid-sized companies are increasingly looking at fibre with about 50 percent of 167 respondents planning to invest in the technology as against 30 percent that intend to go in for copper.

IT/ITES and Chemical & Pharma lead in projected fibre deployments with 83 percent and 69 percent of respondents from these verticals stating their intentions respectively.

Cabling for mid sized enterprises

Prakash Pradhan, Head IT, Jagsonpal Pharmaceuticals Ltd says, “The cabling requirements of mid-sized enterprises have undergone a complete revamp and they have begun to demand enhanced technologies that provide maximum efficiency. Today, almost every mid-sized organisation is running mission critical applications that require an appropriate size of bandwidth for ensuring fast uptime and higher rate of data transmission and thus is looking at equipping themselves with the best possible cabling structure and technology.” With the rate at which mid-sized enterprises are expanding they are increasingly opting for converged networks that facilitate quick and timely transfer of data, voice and video across the organisation.

Then again, the demand of converged and full-fledged networks has further led to the deployment of enhanced applications, higher bandwidth that offers faster rate of information transfer, Gigabit Ethernet etc. in order to ensure that this complex infrastructure is able to perform to its optimal level, IT managers have become increasingly cautious of their cabling infrastructure and are future proofing their cabling systems. Looking at the ever-growing dependence of medium sized business upon their IT infrastructure, Pradhan adds, “Today we need to run data at really fast speeds, all the connectors and cable assemblies have to be absolutely dead perfect because you can’t get away with any variances.”

CAT 6 rules the roost

As of now the most widely deployed cabling standard across mid sized enterprises is CAT 6. CAT 6 also known as Category 6 cable is the most trusted and accepted cabling technology among mid sized business. After starting with CAT 5e the mid sized enterprises soon adopted CAT 6 for future proofing their cabling needs and infrastructure requirements.

Ever since CAT 5 was enhanced and CAT5 e was launched in 2000 it was the most popular cabling route undertaken by the small and mid sized enterprises. Supporting up to 100 MHz, Cat 5 e earned numerous admirers as it was affordable technology suitable for horizontal cabling requirements. Even though, CAT 5e at 100 MHz can run 10 Mbps or 100 Mbps and can also support Gigabit Ethernet, today its deployment is widely seen across small and SOHO enterprises.

Presently it is CAT 6 that has become the de facto standard for medium and large enterprises, while the usage of Cat 5 e is now limited to small enterprises only. Even though CAT 6 came to the fore in 1997 it took over five years to evolve and became a ratified standard only in 2002. Although initially enterprises presented their apprehensions towards the adoption of this cabling technology it soon gained acceptance and became the most popular standard. The earlier inhibitions expressed by the companies towards the standard mainly came from the technology coming at an high price and the need for the products to be interoperable and backward compatible in order for it to work, but the enhanced performance platform offered by CAT 6 have made it the preferred cabling technology that continues to rule till date.

Today most mid sized enterprises use up to 100 mbps to the desktop with Gigabit Ethernet being connected to the backbone infrastructure of server rooms. CAT 6 supports this and more. However there are still some enterprises that have not considered CAT 6 as a cabling option. According to MH Khan, Manager (IT), Gemini shipping agencies P Ltd, “CAT 5 e is a suitable option for mid-sized enterprises and has been able to fulfil all our requirements till now. Even though presently we do not have any plans for adopting Cat 6, we might consider it as an option in case we go for any expansion in the future chiefly because it’s the latest technology in market that supports a higher rate of information transfer.”

However, the fact remains that the deployment of CAT 6 among mid-sized enterprises is at its peak. Though about three years back the deployment of the technology was chiefly seen across large enterprises and in verticals of software development, MNCs and service providers, the technology has made strong inroads in mid-sized businesses as well. Navin Kumar, Vice President (Technical), Go IP solutions Ltd states, “We had been running on Cat 5e. However as our business expanded we found ourselves struggling with its slow transmission rate and decided to do a complete revamp of our cabling network by going in for CAT 6.”

The point is that as mid-sized enterprises grow they look at complete foolproof networks that can deal with growing bandwidth demands. Kumar adds, “The internal IT infrastructure design of medium enterprises has undergone a major transformation. Their demands have changed and they are looking at equipping their networks with the latest innovative technologies and applications upcoming in the market. While earlier they concentrated on maintaining and supporting their key data communication through internal messaging and database access today the advances in Ethernet have prompted the demand for faster data, voice and video transmission across their entire IT architecture.”

Looking at the key factors attracting medium enterprises to CAT 6, Anand Sengupta, Head IT, Daikin Air Conditioning India Pvt Ltd, says, “Besides being the latest cabling technology the major reason that has prompted the inclination of medium enterprises towards Cat 6 has been a cut in prices of the technology. Today, the prices at which these two technologies come are more or less the same. As a result any enterprise that is looking at setting up a new network or expanding the existing one will definitely opt for CAT 6”. Moreover, one cannot deny that CAT 6 is a higher performing platform and supports frequencies up to 250 MHz. Supporting Gigabit (1,000 Mbps) Ethernet it ensures communications at more than twice the speed of CAT 5e.

There has emerged a growing realisation among IT heads that the cabling infrastructure of an organisation should be future proof. It should not only look after the current needs of the business but also meet the requirements that might arise in future. They look at cabling as an long term investment that should last at least 12 to 15 years therefore are extremely cautious in making there cabling choices and when they do they go in for the most up to date technology available at that point of time. R K Verma, Head IT, Intercontinental Hotel (Nehru Place) states, “An organisation can go anytime for a hardware or software upgrade as per its requirement. However upgrading the cabling network every now and then is not a feasible solution. Hence enterprises tend to be extremely cautious while choosing their cabling technology and go for a standard that can support their future applications load.” Then again, there is a direct relationship between a company’s rate of growth and its cabling infrastructure.

Sengupta says, “Though presently we have deployed CAT 5e we will soon be migrating to CAT 6 primarily due to our larger bandwidth requirement.” The company is expanding its existing footprint and is coming up with a new office for which it has opted for Cat 6. “We are coming up with a new unit that shall be operational by July this year and shall house up to 150 people. We plan to spend over Rs 10 lakh in setting up a fully equipped IT infrastructure. Of this sum, a considerable amount shall go towards adopting CAT6 cabling on copper while fibre shall remain dominant in the backbone,” he adds.

An enterprise considers several aspects such as its current and future bandwidth demands, the distance it needs to cover, cost of setting up and maintaining a fibre or copper network before choosing between the two mediums. Even though IT heads are of the opinion that fibre offers better performance, Copper continues to rule as it comes out to be more economical. Verma says, “The biggest hurdle in the deployment of Fibre is the cost at which it becomes operational. Even though fibre prices have come down the cost of implementing a fire optic network is much higher than that of copper.” Despite this, a greater number of respondents have evinced interest in fibre than copper for the coming year.