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wiredInUSA - January 2013
wiredInUSA - January 2013
PRODUCTS - MACHINES
TECHNOLOGY
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INDEXDon’t get strung up on which cabling to
choose for your enterprise
RobWessels, vice president, Cable Research
and Development, CommScope Inc
Most enterprises today pay little attention
to the type of cabling they use when laying
the framework for their IT infrastructure.
When in fact, cabling supports every part
of an enterprise – from business services to
cloud access and bring-your-own-device
(BYOD) policies – and is the foundation for
all the commercial strategies related to the
basic infrastructure.
With increasing intolerance for downtime,
the choice of cabling can have a direct
impact on a company’s market reputa-
tion. Since the initial publication of the
Ethernet standardalmost 30 years ago, data
rates have skyrocketed. The 40 and 100
GbE standards ratified by the IEEE 802.3ba
committee in 2010 are a far cry from the
early 10 megabits per second connections
of the 1980s. With this pace of technological
change increasing every year, many CTOs
and IT managers can be understandably
confused by the choices they face
when selecting the best cabling for their
company.
CAT fight?
It’s clear that deploying solutions today that
will require time-consuming and expensive
upgrades in the future is by no means a
cost-effective strategy.