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Category 6 - The New Standard

Introduction

Structured cabling has grown globally into a 4.0 billion dollar market and is expected to continue growing at about 4% Compound Annual Growth (CAG) according to leading independent analysts*. Category 6 cabling is the latest addition to the structured cabling standards and has twice the bandwidth of Category 5e cabling. This improved bandwidth together with vastly improved signal to noise ratio and immunity from external noise provides the potential for Category 6 to support multi-gigabit applications. This white paper provides an update on Category 6 cabling and applications standards together with references for finding category 6 information and products.

ANSI TIA/EIA-568-B.2-1 published on June 20, 2002

The TIA TR42.7 Copper Cabling Systems Committee unanimously approved to publish the Category 6 standard on June 5, 2002. This represents the consensus of 46 telecommunications cabling manufacturers, consultants, users, who submitted ballot comments during the industry ballot, and several others that regularly participate in the committee. The document contains category 6 end-to-end cabling specifications, component specifications, field tester requirements, measurement procedures, together with accuracy and reproducibility guidelines that ensure a reliable cabling system. The standard satisfies all the original objectives established by TR-42.1 (formerly TR-41.8.1) at the outset of the PN-3727 project including:
· Backward compatibility to categories 5e, 5, and 3
· Open standard that allows products from different vendors to work together
· Plug and Jack Interoperability for modular (RJ-45 type) connections
· Full system specification including testing of components, patch cords, channels and permanent links
· Twice the bandwidth of category 5e with positive Power Sum Attenuation to Cross-Talk Ratio (PSACR) up to 200 MHz
· All specifications for components and cabling are tested to 250 MHz (25% higher than 200 MHz) at the request of IEEE
The attached press release from TIA contains additional information on the publication of ANSI/TIA-568-B.2-1.

Key Issues that have delayed the Publication of the Category 6 Standard

The following are the top 3 areas that required much new development work and took a lot of time to incorporate into the Category 6 specifications.

· Qualification of a test Plug for NEXT and FEXT. This is important to ensure that there is plug and jack interoperability between manufacturers.
· Specifications for the test heads used to qualify Patch cords. The test heads are used to plug in Category 6 patch cords to measure NEXT and Return Loss and need to be both practical so that they can be manufactured and at the same time be able to discriminate good cords from bad cords.
· Measurement procedures for connecting hardware FEXT. These procedures required the creation of brand new fixtures, calibration procedures, and many refinements to ensure repeatability in different laboratories.

ISO/IEC JTC1/SC25 WG3 Committee responsible for IS 11801

ISO/IEC JTC1/SC25 WG3 is the international standardization committee on structured cabling. The second edition of the ISO 11801 standard includes Category 6 cabling. In ISO 11801, Category 6 cabling is referred to as "Class E Cabling". The latest draft of the ISO 11801 document is currently about to be sent out as a "Final Draft International Standard (FDIS)". At this stage, only national re-affirmation with a "Yes" or "No" vote is permitted. Technical changes are not allowed so the document and the Category 6 specifications inside can be considered to be very stable. It is expected that the ISO 11801 document will be published sometime in the fourth quarter of 2002.

It should be pointed out that the Category 6 specifications in the ISO 11801 document are essentially the same as in ANSI/TIA-568-B.2-1. This allows manufacturers and customers to choose Category 6 cabling systems that have the same performance anywhere in the world to support all emerging applications.
CENELEC TC-215 Committee responsible for EN-50173

CENELEC TC-215 is the European standardization committee on structured cabling. The second edition of the EN-50173 standard includes Category 6 cabling. This document is due to be sent out in the immediate future for the "3MP" ballot process that allows individual member countries to cast a "Yes" or "No" ballot but does not allow any technical changes. It is expected that the EN-50173 document will be published sometime in the fourth quarter of 2002.
The Category 6 specifications included in EN-50173 second edition, are essentially the same as in ANSI/TIA-568-B.2-1 and the ISO 11801 second edition to facilitate global compatibility of cabling and emerging applications.

ANSI/TIA-854 1000BASE-TX standard for Gigabit Ethernet over Category 6 Cabling

The ANSI/TIA-854 "A Full Duplex Ethernet Physical Layer Specification for 1000Mbit/s (1000BASE-TX) Operating over Category 6 Balanced Twisted-Pair Cabling" standard, published in March 2001, provides a data rate of 1000 Megabits/second similar to the IEEE 802.3ab Gigabit Ethernet standard. The main difference is that it requires Category 6 cabling instead of Category 5e cabling. Because of the improved performance of Category 6 cabling, the ANSI/TIA-854 standard does not implement NEXT cancellation or echo cancellation and therefore reduces the cost, complexity, and power consumption of TIA-854 chipsets compared to IEEE 1000BASE-T chipsets.
ATM Forum LAN Standards

ATM Forum published the cell based ATM FB-PHY-0162.000 standard in January of 2001. This standard provides 1000 Megabits/second data rate over standard Category 6 channels of 100 meters using the standard ATM cell format. This standard is now included in the ISO 11801 list of recognized application standards for Class E (Category 6). The ATM version of the Gigabit standard provides seamless connectivity between LAN, MAN, and WAN networks that use the ATM protocol.
Other Application Committees

Now that the Category 6 installed base is poised to quickly overtake the Category 5e installed base, there is interest in using Category 6 cabling in several other application committees. This work should gain momentum in the next few months and new projects announced to develop applications faster than 1 Gigabit over 100 meters of standardized Category 6 cabling.
Category 6 Market Penetration

The Gartner Group predicts that by 2003, 90% of all new copper cabling systems will be Category 6 with a probability of 0.8. This information was verified verbally with a Gartner group consultant in October of 2001. According to the Gartner Group, the only thing holding up the acceptance of Category 6 in the Market is the lack of a published Category 6 standard. Similar conclusions have also been reached by BSRIA, a UK based analysis group specializing in customer owned telecommunications networks.

A recent poll conducted by Cabling Installation and Maintenance magazine indicated that 84% of those who responded to the 11 day online poll indicated they would choose category 6 cabling.

Summary

The opportunity to take advantage of the superior performance of Category 6 is very clear for customers, application developers, and cabling system vendors. Category 6 will provide improved throughput compared to Category 5e because of the improved signal to noise ratio that is directly related to throughput. This improved performance will also improve the reliability of premises networks by reducing network errors and associated downtime. Emerging applications are much easier to implement on Category 6 than on Category 5e because of the vastly improved performance of the Category 6 cabling system. The combined cost of Category 6 cabling and network equipment should provide the most cost effective solution to increase data rates for customers. With the publication of the Category 6 cabling standard in TIA and publication of the equivalent ISO and CENELEC standards in the fourth quarter of 2002, it is expected that the sales of Category 6 cabling will increase rapidly and become the predominant media in the structured cabling market, as predicted by industry analysts.

*CIM Volume 10 Issue 5, May 2002, Market Trends by BSRIA

Written by Phil Huett Area Sales Manager (Hubbell Premise Wiring) and published with permission