Why invest in 10-Gigabit Ethernet cabling?
A May 2012 white paper from General Cable is entitled 10 Gigabit Ethernet in the Marketplace: When Gigabit Ethernet is Just Not Enough. Authored by Anthony R. Ursini, RCDD, LEED-GA and regional technical manager for General Cable's Datacom Products business unit, the paper explains how 10-Gigabit Ethernet "empowers companies to expand application capabilities, reduce time to solve complex financial and scientific applications, [and] quickly respond to changing customer needs and market conditions.
In addition to providing an overview of common uses or applications for 10 Gigabit Ethernet technology, the paper also presents 11 recommendations for cabling installers in answer to the question, "Why [should enterprises] invest in 10-Gigabit cabling now?" The recommendations are as follows:
-- How often does a company get a chance to rewire?
-- Can you be assured that money to retrofit will be there when needed?
-- Will other parts of the infrastructure, like conduit, tray, and raceways be suitable for retrofitting?
-- What if you have to pull out the old cable? (add 2x labor)
-- Would you really want your cabling infrastructure to be the bottleneck?
-- Installing technology that has “dead end” implications is counter-intuitive.
-- What about costly downtime associated with retrofit?
-- There are no standards on the horizon that will make Category 5e or Category 6 work to 100 meters for 10G Ethernet.
-- 10-Gig is backward compatible – no fork lift upgrades needed!
-- Immediate benefits like reduced power usage for PoE (+) devices, enhanced throughput, and higher versatility with applications like security will be immediately relevant.
-- Better bandwidth and support for impending applications like 802.11ac for 1G Wireless/Wi-Fi.
