Structured Cabling in Istanbul

What is structured cabling and why does it matter?

Structured cabling means every run from a wall outlet to the patch panel in the comms room is installed to a standard layout, numbered and tested. The outlet at the desk, the permanent cable in the wall, the panel and the short patch lead to the switch are designed as separate parts. When a desk moves, nobody touches the wall; one patch lead changes at the panel.

Unplanned cabling has a familiar look: a tangle of cable in front of the rack, nobody knows which outlet goes to which port, and some links are stuck at 100 Mbit. The network hardware gets the blame and days are lost, when a single badly terminated connector can cause every one of those symptoms.

Cat6, Cat6A or fibre: which cable do you need?

For user outlets in an office fitted out today, Cat6 covers most needs; for access points, high-density wireless areas and buildings expected to stay in use for a long time, Cat6A is the safer choice. Cat6A is designed to carry 10 Gigabit Ethernet over the full length of a copper channel, while Cat6 handles 10 Gbit only over a limited distance. As uplink speeds on newer Wi-Fi access points go up, that difference matters more.

A copper channel is limited to 100 metres: 90 metres for the permanent link and the rest for the patch leads at each end. Longer distances, between floors and between buildings, are covered with fibre. Multimode fibre (OM3/OM4) is common for an in-building fibre backbone, and single-mode (OS2) for links between buildings and long routes.

Performance requirements for copper cabling components are defined in ANSI/TIA-568.2, and for fibre components in ANSI/TIA-568.3. We use products with documented compliance to these standards, and the cable, outlets and panels in one system must all be the same category.

How do you plan a cabling project?

Planning starts on the architectural drawings, with desk and equipment positions. This is where we decide how many outlets each workstation gets, where printers, cameras, access points and IP phones go, which ceiling and floor routes to use, and how far the cables stay from power lines.

Take a new 80-person office on a single floor: two outlets per desk, 10 access points, 12 cameras and a few printers add up to roughly 190 copper links. They terminate on 24-port panels in the comms room, each with a cable manager underneath. Leaving spare ports on the panels for future growth is far easier than opening up walls later.

On the physical side, the choice of cable tray, trunking, raised floor or suspended ceiling depends on the building. Fire-rated cable sheathing and fire stopping where cables pass through walls are agreed with the building management and the architect. When the cabling is planned together with the server room and rack layout, the job gets done in one go.

Why insist on cable certification testing and a test report?

A test report is the document that proves each link actually meets the category it was installed to. A simple continuity tester only tells you the four pairs are wired correctly; a certification test compares values such as attenuation (insertion loss), crosstalk (NEXT), return loss and length against the limits in the standard.

Copper links are measured as permanent links (panel to outlet), and the results go into the report against each link number. Fibre links get a loss measurement. At handover you receive a report with a pass or fail result for every link; any link that fails is re-terminated and retested.

The report is a record for the future, not just for today. When an outlet gives trouble a year later, comparing it with the original measurement quickly shows whether the fault lies in the cable or in the device.

How should cabling be labelled and documented?

Every link carries the same code at both ends: on the outlet, on the panel and on the cable itself. The code holds the floor, panel and port, so “F2-P03-17” means port 17 on the third panel on the second floor. Labels are printed and permanent, never handwritten.

For documentation, outlet positions on the floor plan, a panel-to-port table and the test report are handed over together. When the switches are configured, the same table goes into the Cisco switch port descriptions, so the switch itself tells you which port goes to which desk.

• Outlet numbers marked on the floor plan
• Panel and port mapping table
• Test report for every link
• Fibre routes and core mapping

When should cabling be planned in an office move?

Cabling is the part of an office move that has to be planned earliest, because it must go in before the ceilings and walls are closed up. If the routes are not settled in the first weeks of the fit-out, cables end up in surface trunking along the outside of the walls.

In the move schedule, cabling, the server room, the internet line and switch configuration all depend on one another. We pull them into a single work plan and sequence them so that on moving day users can plug in and get to work. For projects in Istanbul we carry out a free site survey and prepare a written quote.

What you receive

• Outlet and cable route layout on the floor plan
• Cat6/Cat6A copper and, where needed, fibre cabling, termination and installation
• A tidy rack with patch panels, cable managers and patch leads
• Permanent labelling: the same code on outlet, panel and cable
• Per-link test report (copper link measurements and fibre loss measurements)
• Panel-to-port table and as-built drawings

How we work

1. 1

   Site survey

   We walk the building and review the architectural plans, cable routes and the server room location.

2. 2

   Design

   We settle outlet counts, cable category, fibre requirements and routes on the drawings.

3. 3

   Installation

   We fit trays and trunking, pull and terminate the cable and dress the rack.

4. 4

   Testing

   We measure every link, then re-terminate and retest any that fail.

5. 5

   Handover

   We hand over the labelled infrastructure, the test report and the as-built documentation.

Frequently asked questions