Boosting Your Understanding of Cabling and Networking

I'm gonna talk about that more in a minute , but you know we always gotta start off every episode with Kaylan . George has already gotten it . What are you drinking ? What are you drinking ? I'm not drinking water . If you know me , you know I'm drinking some type of Ziviasoda . What is it ? It's Dr Pepper . Yes , what are you drinking ?

So this is after hours , so you can be drinking in a live adult beverage if you so desire , but I'm not drinking one . Nope , not tonight . Also , don't forget , you know , if you like our content , make sure that you check out our QR code right there . There it is . Come back here . Come back here . There you go . Check out the QR code right there .

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I got a lot of great questions here for tonight's show , but let's get this going Every not every , but the after hours live stream . You know we always do the acronym challenge , the acronym challenge . So today's acronym kind of ties in with what I did this week . I went to the NECA Big C Summit in Denver , colorado .

Neca the National Electrical Contractor Association . So today's acronym is IBEW . What does IBEW mean ? What does that acronym mean ? I'll give you a few seconds to type that in , because that's kind of a long one . So yeah , it's a . The joint session went really well . I attended all the great sessions .

There's a couple sessions that I attended that I didn't necessarily think that I was going to like , but I absolutely loved it . There's one on disruption . Then there was one that got talked about cybersecurity . Really liked that one . My favorite , though , my favorite the project management one done by Christopher Hobbs .

I'm gonna talk to Christopher see if I can't get him to come on to the show to talk about that PowerPoint , maybe . Maybe you'll talk about some of it again . So , still waiting for some answers . What does IBEW mean ? I've gotten a couple answers in the TikTok V , but none of them were . Some of them were close , but none of them are on the mark .

None of them are on the mark . It stands for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers IBEW International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers . So again , that's in honor , because I was at that Nika Bixie Summit this week And that's an acronym directly from that source . Now let's get on with the next thing I wanted to really talk about .

I usually say did you catch this week's show ? But you probably realized I didn't have a show this week . I scripted it , got it all ready . I never got the chance to record it . So there was no podcast pushed out on Monday , just a few days ago . I will record that one . It will go out next week .

I've already talked to a couple of people at the show with some great suggestions . I might have Harlinger coming on talking about bonding and grounding , fluke coming on talking about their they have a thermal scanner for server rooms . Tom Jallow from Softing talking about an office locator kit .

I've got a lot of great shows , some that all were a result of attending that show . So because that show I did not get one out Now . That being said , let's get straight into the questions . I have quite a few of them . I hope to get through all of them before we run out . Remember , if you have a question you can put it in the chat box .

I'll take those as well too . All right , so here's the first question

. The first question comes from Mason , and Mason wants to know how does shielded cable differ from unshielded cable ? How does shielded cable differ from unshielded cable ? So the differences are a shielded cable has a foil shield and a drain wire .

Sometimes the foil shield is just an overall foil shield , sometimes it's a shield over each of the four individual pairs and sometimes it's both . But a shielded cable has both the foil shield and a drain wire Unshielded cable . Well , technically , for the longest time , unshielded cable did not have a foil shield inside of it . It did not .

There was just a jacket , and when you got past the jacket there was just the four pairs inside of it . There wasn't a foil shield in it . But over the last few years , manufacturers are coming out with types of unshielded cable that has a foil shield inside them . They put small breaks every few feet .

So that way , technically , it's classified as an unshielded cable , not a shielded cable . The easiest way to tell the difference between those two is , again , that drain wire . So if you see a UTP cable it's not going to have that drain wire .

So you can have UTP cable that has a shield and sometimes it doesn't have a shield , but when it does have the shield it won't be continuous from one end to the other . But when you're sitting at the box you can't strip off you know six , eight , ten feet of a cable jack to see if it's . If it's , you know if there's a break , right .

So just look to see if there's a drain wire . Those are the differences . Now , where would you use a shielded cable and an unshielded cable ? So here in the US , primarily we like to use the unshielded cable . We like to use the unshielded cable because it's easier to terminate , the cable's cheaper , the jacks are cheaper and we just like use it .

We only will default to a shielded cable plant when there's a scenario or some type of environment where EMI is going to cause us problems . And EMI I've said this before again but I will repeat it because this is important EMI is a when one electric electronic device interferes with another electric or electronic device .

There are three components to EMI an interfering source , a susceptible unit and a coupling between those two . So shielded cabling helps those that EMI from causing problems with the cable plant . Now there's different types of EMI issues that you can experience within a , within a cable , a copper-based horizontal cable .

You can have what's called internal interferences and external interferences . So the shielded cable is really for external interferences . When you've got a transformer or electrical cable or some kind of a transformer or something , it's got a lot of putting a lot of EMI near your cable plant . That's what the shielded cable is for .

Outside of the US we tend to like to they like to use shielded cable everywhere where we use . The UTP is the primary choice here in the US .

The key with the shielded cable plant is make sure that you bond it to a ground correctly , because if you don't , it's going to perform worse than it would if you would if you didn't , if you did use unshielded cable . The next question this comes from Harper and he says what is the difference between solid and stranded cables in category-rated cabling ?

So what they're talking about there when you say solid or stranded cables , they're talking about the conductor . So , for example , a regular four-pair cable , the horizontal cable , by the way , i'm just talking about unshielded cables . Here's an unshielded cable with a shield inside of it but there is no drain wire .

So a solid conductor cable means if I was to take a , if I was to take a , my snips or something , and strip off the jacket off of this , see if I can do it with my fingernails , do this , live on one . And it can't do it . I don't , i don't . Here . We use this , we use this tool real quick to get that off .

So when you see , this is just a single solid conductor , a single solid conductor up from my , from my TikTok peeps . One solid conductor , a stranded conductor means when you take off that dielectric there's going to be multiple strands of copper all kind of twisted together .

Solid conductor cable is the type of conductor that's preferred to be used for the horizontal cable . The cable goes from the patch panel to the jacket , performs better , but the problem is which it you have . You have to maintain the minimum bend radius of four times outside diameter of the cable .

With shielded cable that's typically going to be used for your patch cords because you can , you can route around the desk and stuff like that . The reason we don't use a a stranded cable for the entire run is because shielded cable can have up to as much as 50% more attenuation , depending on the conductor size , than a solid conductor can .

So that's why generally we will shy away from or we only use the stranded conductors at the patch cord legs . Now they do make mod ends . I just we just talked about this with simply RJ45 a few episodes back .

They do make mod end connectors that you can crimp on both solid and stranded conductor cabling , but for the most part we're going to be using stranded conductor cabling for patch hordes . This question comes from Soyer . Soyer wants to know what is the considerations for cable management and organization when installing category rated cabling .

What are the considerations for cable management and organization when installing category rated cable ? I'm assuming that he's talking about in the telecom room . Right , that they rack at the rack You really should use .

So cable management comes in two different kinds . You have horizontal wire managers and vertical wire managers , just like they describe . Horizontal goes horizontal and vertical goes vertically . So you really you really should use those wire managers because , number one , they're going to help decrease problems from EMI and also performance . Now you maybe want to .

Where's the EMI at the rack ? If you have hubs , router switches installed in that rack and if you don't use wire management and if the patch cord is laying in front of an open port on a hub , router or switch , it's being exposed to EMI .

As far as performance issues , wire managers help you keep you from exceeding those minimum bend radiuses and also help make the look a little nicer when you rather just cable in . Wire managers also can help reduce the damage from where this patch cord is .

So , as people are installing patch cords , identifying patch cords , removing patch cords , it helps keep everything all nice and neat on the racks . So what does the standard say about wire managers ? So , for at least horizontal wire managers .

So it tells us that for each rack unit of patch panels you should have an equal number of rack units for horizontal wire managers , plus one , plus one . Now what does that mean ? Let's say I have three are three 48 port , two RU patch panels . Okay . So three patch panels times two RU each , that's going to be six RUs of space used up by patch panels .

That means I need to have seven wire managers , of horizontal wire managers . So what you'll do is you'll end up having a wire manager above and below each of those patch panels , so that way you can choose to go up or down , and gives you room to move . All that .

Now there has been a movement over the last I don't know five , 10 years And I'm not sure who started it but there's a movement to really to do small and sometimes even medium sized projects without any horizontal wire managers .

So what they'll do is they'll put a patch panel and then a switch , a patch panel and a switch , a patch panel and a switch , and then they'll get short patch hordes three , four , five inches and they will literally plug from the patch panel into the port , eliminating horizontal wire managers .

Now in those types of scenarios the advantage there is you're not buying horizontal wire managers And if you do it the way that I've seen it done by like all green lights and a few other people , those patch hordes go out and do a nice smooth and combating , they don't exceed bend radiuses and they're not laying in front of an open port .

So that's the advantage there . The disadvantage is , if you are a service tech and you're working on the backside of that patch panel , you gotta let's say you have to pull the cable off and return it because there's some near and crosstalk issues .

Well , now you're reaching in between two switches , trying to pull the cable off and terminate it and there's not enough room there . Those horizontal wire managers gives you that additional room .

So if you use that methodology , that you don't use horizontal wire managers , you wanna explore things that help make that job easier , because it's not just about you , the person who's installing it there today . What about the service tech who's gonna be coming back a year from today ? And it may not be you , it might be somebody else .

Think about that next technician who's coming out there to do job , right ? So , for example , there's a manufacturer came out with a front loading patch panel front loading patch panel .

So you route the cables down the racks , you come across the wire managers , you go through the port on the patch panel , you terminate it with a regular APAC RJ45 jack and then you push it back into the patch panel and it locks into place A lot like the old amp , aco stuff , right ?

So if you're gonna use that system , that front loading patch panel is probably gonna be the best thing that you can do . Next question this one comes from Logan . Logan wants to know , can category six or higher rated cables support 10 gigabit ethernet .

Okay , so achieving a 10 gigabit ethernet network speed depends on a lot of factors , which includes the type of cable you select , the type of equipment you have , the type of network infrastructure and how well you installed it right .

As I tell all my students , your number one job while you are putting cable in is to keep that cable from getting kinked , crushed , stepped on , cut , burnt or painted , because all those things can affect that performance . With all that sort of side , let's say that you did do a great job of installing it . You didn't have any of those issues going on .

Cat6 cable can support 10 gig , but only to about 55 meters or 180 feet . Beyond that distance the quality of the signal is going to degrade and it may or may not support 10 gig . And I would say the further out you get , the more likely it's not going to support 10 gig And that's why the standard talks about the maximum length of two or 95 feet .

If the Cat6 can do 10 gig out to the maximum two or 95 feet and that will cover 95% of the installs that you're gonna find out there . That's how they , when you write this , keep that in mind . What scenario can we recommend ? so to work 95% of it ? You're always gonna have that 5% where something's weird going on that particular job .

So where would you find a ? where would you wanna do 10 gig where you're not gonna go beyond 180 feet ? A lot of residential installs . If you're a gamer and you wanna have that high bandwidth so you can live stream whatever game it is that you're playing , cat6 cable will do it And 180 feet will get you almost anywhere you need to be in a house .

But if you're gonna put in Cat6 cable , why not just do Cat6A ? Cat6A will do that 10 gig out to the full 295 . And when they go to higher speeds , you know , like the 40 gig , it'll support that too . But shorter distances , just like Cat6 will support 10 gig at shorter distances . So I know the standard says for residential installs start off with Cat6 .

I say you know what Do Cat6A ? you know what I should do ? Let me know in the chat box or in the TikTok feed if you think this would be something of value .

I think maybe I need to , just kind of cause I used to be an estimator by trade Maybe I need to do a fake estimate of a small little project like a home and do the pricing Pricing for Cat6 cable connectors , testing Cat6A cable connectors , testing with patch panels , holds on wire managers And see how much more expensive is the Cat6A .

We know it's going to be somewhat more expensive , but how much more is expensive ? Is it enough to where you can say , yeah , that's not a big deal ? Let me know yes or no . If that sounds like something might be interested , that might actually be a good show . Might even be a good show . Next question this one comes from Riley .

Riley wants to know can category rated cables be used for outdoor installations ? Yes , they can , but you've got to be careful . I just actually I just did a TikTok video yesterday or the day before , i don't remember .

It's just a whole week's been a blur for me And somebody had said that they had used outdoor rated cable inside of their house , outdoor rated cable inside of their house . So let's talk , let's back up What's indoor cable and what's outdoor cable . You're really talking about listed cable versus non-listed cables , which you're really talking about .

So cables inside of a house of office , a hospital , an industrial plant , those have to be listed cabling right Listed cabling And listed is defined in the code book if you really want to go look it up . It's listed in the code book as a product or service that has been tested by a nationally recognized testing laboratory NRTL , intertech , ul .

Those are examples of NRTLs to meet the smoke propagation and flame propagation standards set up by the NFPA . And if it meets those standards it's put on a list inside the book and you can install it inside of a building . So that would be like your CMP cabling , communications plenum , cmr riser rated cabling .

Outside plant cable generally is not listed cabling . In fact most of it's non-listed . Because of the exposure to the elements like UV , ultraviolet rays and heat , humidity , temperature fluctuations and even the physical stress can all impact how that cable performs . So they make outdoor rated cable more ruggedized .

They use different types of materials for the cable jacket , the material they use for outside plant cable . When they do the burn test it cannot pass the UL testing for NFPA . So it's an unlisted cabling . Keep in mind that they do have indoor outdoor rated plant them and indoor outdoor rated riser cabling .

So it's a category rated cable and it's rated for dual purposes , inside and outside . You are going to pay a premium for that . You are absolutely going to pay a premium for that kind of a cable . So keep that in mind . The next question this one comes from what was it ? We lost track of my questions here Ba-ba-ba-ba , category rated cable .

We answered those From Fred . Fred says what are some best practices used for testing and certifying category rated cable . So the first tip I have use the right tester . Use the right tester . There's different types of testers . You have certifiers , qualifiers , verifiers . They vary in cost , they vary in functionality . You may not always necessarily need a certifier .

If you want to warranty from the cable manufacturer , you'll probably need a certifier . But if you're just doing a small job for your brother , your sister or friend where you're doing some category rated cabling in the house , you know continuity test will be fine too .

But if you are a professional in this industry and trying to make money , you should really have access to it . Minimum a verifier , simple continuity tester and a certifier .

So with the certifier , make sure that you , when you buy one because they're not gonna be cheap , they're gonna be a significant investment Do your research , look at the history of that company . Make sure that company's not gonna go out of business soon . Make sure that company doesn't have a history of doing new model releases and not telling anybody .

There's one out there that does that and I won't say who it is . So make sure that you make sure you understand that . Also , make sure that the tests that you're gonna be performing meet the standards . That means wire map test , attenuation test , crosstalk testing , length testing . Can it do all those ? How long ?

if you're in business doing certification , because I couldn't tell if this person was in a business or not If you're in business doing certified cables , how long does it take to do that test ? Because that means money .

The longer the test , the longer it's gonna take you to do it , the more man parts are gonna take , and you might have somebody using a similar test that it might test quicker , in which case you would lose bids against them because they can test theirs quicker . So again , make sure that you understand that .

Also , the length of the test you wanna make sure that , when you're doing that , that you work out some kind of a process And what I mean by that . Small jobs , five , 10 , 15 cables okay , no big deal , just test on the fly . But your larger projects we have 200 , 500 , 1,000 , 2,000 cables . You might wanna come up with a testing plan .

Have a cut sheet which has all the cables labeled on the sheet . Have a spot where you can check that you tested it or didn't test it if it was bad , so that way you can go back and test it . What is the process ?

If you encounter a problem there , do you fix it there or do you just wait till you're done testing and just document the ones that need to be fixed and come back , fix those and then retest them ? And I've heard it , i've heard it argued both ways . The key is have a plan and be consistent with that plan and make sure everybody understands the plan .

Because certifiers are so expensive , it's also a great idea To have some type of a documentation process for that tester , And what I mean by that is a lot of people Lovart Warby's in the house hello , lovart Warby .

A lot of companies don't have enough money to go issue brand new testers to everybody , so they generally buy one or two or three and then they will issue them out to the service tech and then keep the rest in the warehouse .

Make sure you have a documentation process so that way you can tell where that tester is , because you don't want somebody , you don't want one of those $26,000 testers just disappearing . You don't want them just disappearing And that way , have the technician sign out for it . Keep track of all that documentation .

Another thing that you should kind of really consider when it comes to documentation is that tester is gonna need to be calibrated calibrated at least once a year , regular calibration .

That's gonna make sure that you have the most accurate tests And a lot of times it's gonna help you when you go to do your warranties and it's gonna help you when you go to do your results . If you have that plan already in place , and then what are you gonna do with all those results ? All right , i'll let you know .

I'll let you know and think about that side of it . You know what's the process for the results . Are we just gonna leave them all on the tester , so at some point that tester has 70,000 test results on it , or is there a process for downloading the test , the tester , so that way they can store the files on the server somewhere ?

Or Lou Warby says that this company has 2,8,000 testers and the field testers get a fluke IQ on the van . So some of the testers like the fluke . They actually will upload test results to the cloud as well . So management of all those test results , because when you need to go look up a single test result , you don't wanna go through 70,000 test results .

Just find that one test result . If you're trying to submit that project for warranty , you're gonna need to know which test results belong to that project . What's the naming sequence right ? Make sure what's the process for setting up the tester . That should all be detailed sheets with check marks . Did you turn on the tester ?

Did you have this tester set up for the right category rating cabling ?

I've I've project managed jobs before where technicians turned on the tester , tested a project , submitted the results to me and then when I looked it up I realized they did not change the tester from cat5e to cat6 , because this job was cat6 , and the guy who used the tester previously was cat5e .

So first thing is set it up correctly , put in the name of the project , put in the name of the person testing it , put in the type of cable that you're using . What is the category rating performance for that ? Have that set a process And then what's the ? and then again , make sure you document and download those test results on the backside of that .

On the backside of that . The next question . So let me see , what standard are we referring to ? The ANSI standards . The ANSI standards has a set of testing standards in there which details all that stuff . Thank you , kev , i appreciate that . The last question I had whoops , i flipped over . To get back over to my documentation here , the last question I had .

This one came from Phil on LinkedIn . He sent it to me , i think last night or maybe today , and his question is and I want your input on this , anthony , you paying attention , i want your input , so be ready .

He wants to know when pulling horizontal cabling , do you set the pull boxes up and pull from the telecom closet out to the work area , or do you put the boxes at the work area and then pull towards the telecom room ? He wants to know what do techs have to say about this ? So , anthony , we want your opinion .

If you're watching us on the other streaming platforms , what is your opinion ? Do you prefer to pull from the closet out or from the work area back to the telecom room ? So I'll tell you my thoughts . This'll give people time to type in their responses . My preference has always been to pull from the telecom room out to the drop .

That's always been my preference because that way you can , when you cut your cables at the telecom room after the run , you can measure out your slack , cut them and you can easily route them in to the patch panels .

I've always felt that it's better to route the cables into the telecom room while you're pulling the cable , as opposed to waiting to the end and then having this big , huge bundle that you can't wrangle to get through . You know what that means is that means you gotta build out the telecom room first , or at least put in the ladder rack right .

So that's my preference . My preference has always been from the telecom room , pull the box in the telecom room , pull them out to the drop . But there are some scenarios . There are some scenarios where I would change that . Modular furniture jobs .

Because modular furniture jobs you typically have a high cluster of jacks , work area outlets all in one small little spot . So in that kind of situation I would run from the modular furniture back to the telecom room And then , once I get done , i can then just measure out the slack for each of the cables and then drop them down and move on .

So let's see what some people are starting to say here , anthony's saying it's situational What's the layout of the building ? Preferably I stagger the head and pull them from the MDF . So that's interesting . You say that , anthony . One of the reasons that I don't like pulling from the telecom room out is when you stagger the heads .

Now you've got , you know , your head's all staggered and each one of those places where you tape is a potential spot for that cable to hook onto , like a ceiling grid or something in the ceiling . It can stop you from pulling or it gets pulled out . And then I always had a problem with once I got it to the drop .

When you went to undo the tape you had to kind of unwind it and get it all out of that bundle . So it's kind of interesting . You said that Lauren says pulling from the field gives you the ability to conserve wasting cable and allows you to pull more .

You know , in every job a good estimator , a good estimator is going to incorporate about five to a 10% wastage on a project .

So when they calculate the number of drops that they are going to have and they take those number of drops by whatever the run is , the length is , and they come up with a feat , they add another 10% on top of that because they realize think about this when you pull in cable , whether it's a spool , a wheat out box or a reel in a box , there's always a

tiny bit of cable left in the box . That's not long enough to do a run . That's called wasting . That's why a lot of companies will move to the what they call the 2000 foot pull-ups the 2000 foot pull-ups , because with a 2000 foot pull-up you're still gonna have that wastage , but you're not gonna have as much as you would if you had 1000 foot pull-ups .

So there you go . There's our questions for this week . That brings us up to the 630 mark . I answered all the questions . I even did . Lauren says I can pull 30 or more boxes and knock out 10 or more boxes in one pull . I've seen people do that .

My preference has always been to use the spools , not the boxes , because with the spools you can easily just buy a couple of pieces of two before and zap them together and pull a bunch of cables . But you know boxes work too . They absolutely work too . All right , so let's go ahead and sign off the stream Now . I appreciate everybody coming here today .

Nobody put their questions in here in the chat box in those feeds . So we're gonna end that stream now and I'll hang out on TikTok for a few more minutes while everything is downloading and doing all the stuff it does in the background so I can convert this and put it on the show next week . So until next time , everybody remember , knowledge is power .