Mastering Copper Certification: Tips, Techniques, and Pitfalls in Structured Cabling Part 2

They're patching that to another patch panel in the consolidation point and that goes to the telecommunications outlet at the work area outlet . What is Softing's point of view as far as testing it ? Do you segment test it or do you test it through the consolidation point ?

So essentially , you're not going to test a segment of that , you're going to test the entire channel or the entire permanent link and if it meets the standards , it meets the standards . So I'm not dodging the answer here . No , you're not . I'm not dodging the my the answer here yeah , you're not answering at all .

So so what you're saying is , if you test it by the standards and then softening is , good , yes , yes , yeah , okay , yeah .

So there's those two , and then the third , which is the new wrinkle and it's probably the hottest topic right now in structured cable copper testing . That's out there right now is mptl or direct attach .

Okay , so instead of going to like a typical work outlet , which would be to a pc or a phone or some other device , typically at knee level , right or so in the wall , mptl is designed to go to specifically in the ceiling applications . And what's in the ceiling ?

Wireless access points and cameras , okay , also PoE lighting , but the majority of it right now is wireless access .

There's some specific test scenarios around that . In other words , you need to choose the correct testing hardware . There's typically a patch cord adapter at the direct attach side and on the other side it's going to be a permanent link adapter . So identify your test limit You're sorry , your link definition .

Set up your tester accordingly and then make sure that it says that on the screen , because that's what's going to be on the report and that's what's important .

the patch code adapter has to match the category rating of the cable .

So I get a 6A permanent link or a 6A channel and I can just change in the tester to category 6 or even category 5E , right , but direct attach is specific connecting hardware for that category . Yes .

That has to be a Cat 5E patch cord adapter because that 6A patch cord adapter is not backwards compatible . That's correct . That's what I want to make sure I understood . Because it's funny , I just had somebody ask me that question today and I was teaching a class today and they asked me that question . That's exactly what I told them .

I was like I couldn't say 100% positive that that was the case , but I was pretty sure that the patch cord adapters were not backwards compatible .

Yeah , so what happens is , when somebody hasn't been trained to how to test an NPTL , they're going to go grab a channel adapter and throw it on the end . And the reason you're using a patch cord adapter is because of where that measurement actually starts . So the permanent link adapter , the measurement starts in front of that mod end connector .

The permanent link adapter the measurement starts in front of that mod end connector , the patch cord adapter not patch cord adapter , but the channel adapter . The measurement starts after the mod end connector .

So the thing that you crimped on , the thing that's most likely messed up if you use a channel adapter , you're not measuring the thing that's most likely messed up what ?

And I'll just say this you know , like when we , when we relay this information to technician , project managers , various people , they're always like oh , this is so complicated and uh , why can't you just make all these things test the same way and stuff like that .

And it's not , it's not the , it's not the sort of the you know the many like , it's not us , it's not the other cable tester manufacturers , we're not in like a group trying to make things difficult for people . It is . It is a reality of the standards .

In other words , if you want these standards to be accurately measured and also essentially easy to measure for Category 6 , 6a , 5e and stuff like that , that's just the reality of what it takes to be able to get these accurate measurements together it is you know .

And I hear that more often than I like to hear , because technicians feel that the standards and the best practices are written by a bunch of people who are just because they ain't got nothing else better to do , so they got to come up with a new process to justify their being are written by a bunch of people who are just because they ain't got nothing else

better to do , so they got to come up with a new process to justify their being .

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But yeah , yeah , yeah , tie wraps versus Velcro there's another one , right , there's , there's a few of them . Yeah , snips or scissors there's , there's another one , good , right , another , but one that that I just don't understand . I , the other , the other issues , I understand both people's points of view . I do in union .

I've been non-union and I've heard people call it decision , whatever . I understand the difference between velcro and and tire apps and how you can technically use both according to the standard . A lot of people don't realize that . But you know he does what it is .

But one of the ones I don't understand is and you see this in a lot of the social media communities to certify or not to serve . Yeah , and my , my point of view is then , and then I'll let you tell me what , what , how softening , or how Tom feels about this .

I feel that if you have the ability now again , there's , sometimes you don't always have access to a certified , so I get that , but if you have the ability , you should certify every cable that you install . It's like a birth record .

Now , whether or not you sell that certification record to the customer is a different discussion , because in my mind , what that does and I've had enough customers that have done this to me well , they'll come back and say well , you know that cable's still not working and it hasn't worked since the day that you've installed it .

Well , if I tested it with a qualifier and I can't even say a qualifier , but if I test it with a verifier I don't really have a physical document that says look , here's the electrical properties of the cable on this day , this time , and it's being calibrated and all that other stuff .

So I feel that if you have the ability , you should certify every cable because it's a birth record . What's your thoughts on ?

So the arguments that you're talking about are saying oh , this is overpriced , it's too expensive , it's too time consuming for all this kind of stuff , and I mean it takes more time to certify cables , it costs more money to own a certification tester . OK , these are devices that you have to have calibrated yearly , that kind of thing . But let's go .

Let's go back of thing . But let's go , let's go back . Why would you ? Why would somebody let's put , put yourself in the shoes of this a stakeholder in that network Okay , somebody who's going to work at that office for in the IT , or let's just say that they're going to do anything at that office involving technology , which is anything .

Nowadays , everybody's a beneficiary of our technology that we're testing . But you know what ? What is , what is , what is the payoff for them ? Having certified cable ? When you certify cable , you're testing that cable to an extremely high degree of performance , especially when you compare that to a simple wire mapper , right ?

So if the argument that you're saying is I don't want to certify , I think I should just wire map , I don't believe in that . That's not . And again , I was talking about a wire mapper earlier on this same podcast , right ? So- .

Capabilities not just for that instance , but to a standard that's high enough to say that cable manufacturers have confidence in it for decades , decades of use . That's a pretty strong reality . That is , in cabling You're not just making I mean you're not wiring up your own home network , for for you know just , and you're also passing off this information .

You're building this , this structured cabling system , in a repeatable , professional manner that other professionals or other users can walk into , easily identify and understand its performance levels . There's a ton of value in that . Your office could pack up and move to another place and another tenant could come in , take over that cabling and use it for years .

So , you know , one of the reasons I'd want to certify it is , you know , and what I hear quite often is well , the customer doesn't want that , the customer doesn't want to pay for that Okay . So then you don't sell them the certification test . It's insurance for you then at that point .

But then you got to ask yourself is that really the kind of customer that I want ?

It's also important for us to be able to relay the value of what we're doing to the people who are buying this . So , like , if you're quoting a certification job and that looks identical to a job where you're just doing wire map testing , then shame on you . On you , it needs to say specifically and you need to have your guarantee for this work .

In other words , you've put more effort into this , you're going to charge more , but there's going to be a heck of a lot more detail to this confidence in what you're doing and expectation of success because of the level of testing that's gone on , as opposed to just a simple wire amount on , as opposed to just a simple wire amount Most of the people who are

in those communities talk about .

You know , like you kind of already hit on it , but I've always heard it addressed as educating the customer . A customer may say I don't want that because they think it's cost , but it gives them insurance because , like you said , you don't . People don't realize cable , even though they say the average lifespan is seven to ten years .

You know there's some cable out there that's 30 , 40 , 50 years old because it's been used for .

Exactly , you have the advent of PoE . You have bandwidth . That has gone . We went from 10 meg to 10 gig , even beyond that with some of the cabling right . Yeah , all managed power systems .

But if you're , if you're , if you have a middle proposition for like for , let's say , qualification testing and also clearly defining what it is and what it isn't for your , for your customer , then I think that there could be space for that and there is space for it and it may . It does make sense in many scenarios .

Because if you go out and spend , well , even though a qualifier is cheaper than a certifier , it's still not cheap . I mean , if I was to buy a qualifier , we'd take a chunk of change out of my checkbook . That's right so . So if I was to buy a qualifier , we'd take a chunk of

change out of my checkbook . That's right . So if I know that that's part of my five-year plan , I'm not going to want to buy two testers in a five-year plan . I'm just going to say , okay , I'll get the Softing Cable Master 210 , which , by the way , it's not on Amazon .

And that makes that because some customers when they see that you're doing again premium products , premium services , they will pay extra for that .

That is a premium that you can be charging for right when you go over to our qualifier , which does the BERT testing right , bit error rate testing . It does this BERT testing one gig . You can license it up even all the way up to 10 gig . But it also does PoE testing . It does active network testing . It has reporting capabilities in there .

So there's a ton of other value built into that tester to perform other functions and it really provides . It provides users of this , test equipment contractors , whoever they may be , with options about how they want to go about their business Right . And certification test is a great way to do it . We're talking about it today .

You should definitely clearly enunciate what it is for them , for your users , so they understand the value in certification testing . But you could also do BERT testing , qualification testing , and use that solution to be able to provide it basically a different type of test report .

Those test reports are easy to understand , that kind of thing , and there's perhaps a different amount that you charge for that service based upon that tool .

Or or by room numbers I've never understood the whole room number thing . Or they follow , or they come up with some weird labeling scheme themselves , Right ? So what is the impact of somebody using the wrong labeling scheme themselves , right ? So what is the impact if somebody uses the wrong labeling scheme in their uh , it depends on what certifier you have .

Have to go back to the job site and nobody wants that , nobody wants to do the testing over . That could be like the limitation of your certifier .

Okay , but it also could be because you are because your labeling scheme is so far off you're not able to make heads or tails of what the labels actually should be , and so you may have to go back to the job site just to make sense of it , to make it correct , okay , so either of those things , the two things , are probably worst case scenario that I can

think of . Maybe you can think of another , but but but that's what I'm saying . So for you know , what we suggest here is again , in the tool identifying , having having first off , you need to have a plan before you ever go to the job . Okay , you've talked about it many times on your podcast . There's others who talk about it .

It's important Understanding what you're going to do on a project and having a thought process and a I'll say labeling scheme . Okay , prior to showing up , is important .

Project managers can help kind of identify this and , depending upon the capability of your tool , your certification tool , that tool can help you realize the scheme to minimize and optimize your test time and your project time and all that kind of stuff . So let me show you what we're talking about with our tool , right ?

So again , I'm going to pull up our wire expert tester here . This is our wire expert tester . You can see in the project settings . Okay , I can simply click into the project settings and you can see I've got a job site . You can see the last show that I was at .

Okay , there's a project for me , me , this is my tester that I get to drag around everywhere . I can just go into the site and you can see there's all kinds of sites and I can just click on an individual site . So let's go to this one , let's not give anybody and you can see that within that site there is a label .

You can see that , panel F , port 36 . I've also got multiple label sources I can choose . So within the softening tester . We have five different labeling schemes that can be chosen . Some of those are what you mentioned earlier the TIA 606 labeling scheme so you can actually choose that and work within that template .

You can work with none , which I don't recommend . Well , maybe I mean I don't want to say that none is never a choice you may just have like a one-off test , or you may have forgotten to drop , or you need to go in to do like one or two more . Then none is totally realistic in there because there's no setup time for none .

You just go in and do the test and you redo it . Because there's no setup time for none , you just go in and do the test and you redo it . You can use Freeform , which is like from point to point . There's also list-based testing , so that option is really interesting .

You can actually build out the labels in Excel or in the reporting software prior to going to the job site and load it on the tester prior to going to job site , like , if you're a project manager , I'm going to I'm going to say this clearly , right For everybody to understand if you're a project manager who gets irritated because the dots are in the not or

not in the right place , or there's dashes where there shouldn't be dashes , or there's lowercase letters . List-based testing can solve that for you , because , because you're going to build out those labels , every character , you're building them out and loading them on the tester , the technician . All they have to do is choose the right one .

They don't have to write anything in . Okay .

So I don't say we're partnering with it , we just we basically allow them , we take the same information that they do . So I can take a simple Excel file . They can load it in their physical labeler . We can take that same excel file loaded into our reporting software and eventually into our testers and go to site and be on the same page .

So it's that simple . The the last labeling scheme that we have is simple cable label which kind of uses like a predictive text . So I can just show that real quick . Here's simple cable label . I can go in and choose something . Let's just choose something a little more complicated here .

So , rather than a1 , so let's go in and say chuck's uh , um , Chuck's TR . Let's go back and I know I'm already upsetting all of the project managers out there because I'm not uppercase , so let's make that correction real quick Chuck's TR . And I'm going to say space port check . So now it says Chucks TR , port one .

Ok , and I don't have to write in the word Chucks , the works , the word or the letters TR or the word port ever again . It will automatically go to that number one and then increment to number two , number three , number four , and I'm done with that . Right , you can see that it's got the next label there , right ?

When I do the test it'll put that information in , and because I don't have autosaves on my tester , I can actually edit that on the fly . So let's say that for some reason , port number five is not used . Okay , if , if it says port five is up next , I can just overwrite that .

Go on to Nick , number six , and the tester will automatically increment to number seven for me .

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Now let's dive back into our episode .

Well , I'll just drop that tester down to category six and all of a sudden I've got so many passes . It's an easy job , right ? Okay ? So that happens .

Regardless of what's happening , let me say this Having a view of the category that you're testing with both technicians provides accountability and two brains thinking about this issue . Two sets of eyes , that's right . Do the math . Four eyes , two brains four hands .

Avoiding the problem before you or the mistake before it happens is really the best plan of action , and you should choose a workflow , a project plan and a test tool that helps you do that in any scenario that you can imagine . Right , that is really the optimal way . Right ? If you do that , make that mistake , let's say that you've done everything .

Right , you follow the instructions given to you by the project manager . So the project manager was given instructions and he did what he was told . And you go and you test the cable and you get back to the office . A week later , somebody calls and he says oh , this is supposed to be a category 6A job site , not a category 6 job site .

One of the things that we have on our tester is in the reporting software . You can actually recertify that test result . So think about this .

We take a 500 megahertz sweep of that cable every single time , and so , even though the test was completed weeks ago , you can simply pull up that test result , choose to recertify to the new category and it will reapply that limit . Now , it's not guaranteeing a pass or a fail . Okay , it's taking the existing performance .

And you know they go back and retest anyway and then we have to give them the essentially the bad news there that they missed out on that opportunity .

But understanding what's going on and avoiding that problem from the , from the , from the onset , is really the best way to deal with that issue I could tell right now , as a project manager , if I had a 500 cable job , that they accidentally set it at cat6 instead of cat6a .

Who's responsible for that , who's responsible for getting them calibrated , making sure that they're monitoring the calibration dates , training on the testers when new people come in , and tracking the testers and what to do with all those test results . I could do a whole show just on training plan if I wanted to .

I really should do that , because that way you can create that consistency . So no matter if it's technician a or technician B , the , the expectation is the same . You don't have , you know , like you said , one person labeling the TRS with lowercase , another person doing with uppercase , and , and they have . That's . That's not uniform .

It's doing with uppercase and , and they have you . Just , that's not uniform , it's not uniform . You know so . So I get that , tom . What a great show , man . I appreciate you taking time and and coming on today to to challenge these . Uh well , we exceed our expectation . We said five . Yeah , of course , I don't know . What did I ? What did we do ?

This topic is when you , when you , when you talk to people who have to live , uh and and work with this issue and wrestle with it , it becomes one that that you enjoy because you can help navigate them and save time , save money , help them be better at their job , help organizations succeed . It's a fun topic for us . It really is .

Okay , uh , but we build a license limitation into the uh , inexpensive wire expert to only test up to 500 megahertz . So , if , if , if your user wanted to test cat 8 and there's not a lot of it out there , we know that inexpensive wire expert to only test up to 500 megahertz .

So , if , if , if your user wanted to test cat eight and there's not a lot of it out there , we know that it's , it's .

It hasn't been as popular , I guess , as as some people kind of prognosticated it to , to be right , um , but if your user wanted to test cat eight and they bought the simple wire expert 500 , they can just buy a license upgrade and plug that into the tester and that hardware will test the 2,000 megahertz Category 8 limits .