8 Tips for Successful Structured Cabling Installation

Cabling for small and medium enterprises may include wiring of hundreds of feet of cables throughout your building that also past other types of wires, powerlines, pipes and cords. While the tasks may involve lots of drilling, cutting cables and attaching jacks, you should always get help from professional structured data cabling service providers.  Structured data cabling service provider can deal with the complexity of data cabling by following step by step approach and best practices that may help you save lots of time and money.

Here are few tips that can make these taunting tasks relatively simple and easy to handle.

Don’t start without Planning.

Planning is important. Because without proper planning your structured cabling network will not be able to fulfill your business needs. You must keep your current needs and future growth in mind. In planning process, first step may involve selection of cable type that you may want to install for example Cat5 may not be a good choice because it is slower and only supports speed between 10 Mbps and 100 Mbps ( in some cases you may get better speed), but it’s not guaranteed.  How do you see your business expanding in future?  Is your need going to stay same in next few years?  You must also find out if this particular cable will be available easily in future or not.  On the other hand, Cat5e that is extended/newer version, is capable of handling up to 1000 Mbps speed or Cat6 that can handle up to 10 Gbps so look for what you need and make an appropriate choice.

You use the Same Cable for Voice and Data transmission.

In the past using the same cable for voice and data transmission was not financially viable. Perhaps, most of the companies were using cheaper option of inexpensive copper wires for the internal phone system and then setting up data network with Cat 3 or Cat 5 cables.

However, nowadays with rising popularity and decreased price of cloud PBX systems and VoIP phone service, the use of voice and data with the same cable has become possible.  Many businesses today are running their entire internal telephone system and data network on the same network while keeping external phone line at the entrance.  

Cable Management and Maintenance is important.

You must always remember, once the cable is installed, its management and maintenance is important. It’s not a luxury but an essential need. Although, you may have to spend some money on maintenance and management that may involve purchasing a rack and other cable management equipment however without it will become very difficult for you to troubleshoot, upgrade and replace any part of your cabling system. This management should also involve putting color codes on them, using Green letters, and other information that you may want to put on cables for to help quick troubleshooting.

Do NOT run cable alongside electrical cables.

Always remember structured cabling for data and phone should not run alongside electricity cables. This is important because data cables are made up of unshielded twisted pairs of wires inside it. It generates a magnetic field that is important for it to work efficiently.  It does not have any protection against magnetic field produced by electricity cables.  Therefore, if you do this in most cases, you will have to reinstall your cabling because your signal will be static or even would not run.

Be cautious about interference.

You must also be cautious about anything like motors, fluorescent lighting that may give off a lot of interference via electricity or magnetism will also do the same thing as electrical cable does. Therefore, you must remember if anything buzzes loudly then avoid putting it next to the cables.

Know your cable length limitations.

You must always take care of maximum cable length for which your cables support, for example a standard cable would run approximately 90 meters. There are specific instances and cable types in which you may increase or decrease this standard length. However, it differs from case to case basis.

Always Follow the Cabling Standards.

Cabling standards are here for a reason. Following standards can help you installing cable by following standardized approach, can significantly improve the efficiency of cables and data networks. There are some standards, following which depends entirely on your specific needs. You may find these standards from Telecommunications industry association website.

Stay Updated and Well Informed.

It is important that you keep your self-prepared to meet the challenges of future, Keep your self-informed with the latest technological changes that help you to improve the efficiency of your cabling system. Therefore, keep learning and stay current with latest technological trends.

If you need to upgrade your current cabling system or need to install structured cabling in Dubai for your new office, then you can contact us at +971 4 3382 500 and get help from professional Cabling engineers