Thanks to the efforts of two leaders within the Telecommunications Industry Association's TR-42 Engineering Committee (the group that makes cabling standards for North America), this issue includes two full-length articles with updates on several TIA standards activities. As I wrote in this space last month, the TIA approved the Category 8 standard in June. The standard document officially published July 1.
Sterling Vaden, who served as editor of the Category 8 specifications, provides an inside look at the performance specifications of Cat 8, beginning on page 11. His article includes discussion of electrical parameters that proved to be considerably challenging for cabling-component manufacturers to meet. I also found the final points Sterling made in the article particularly interesting. He explains the potential implications of using Category 8 outside the data center, in applications that will employ Power over Ethernet. The physical properties of a cable that help it achieve Category 8 performance may also be useful in PoE deployments, specifically concerning cable-bundle sizes.
An article from Cindy Montstream, who chairs one TIA TR-42 subcommittee and serves as vice-chair of others, walks us through a number of standard developments, beginning on page 5. After discussing Category 8 and laying groundwork for Sterling Vaden's in-depth article, she details the standardization and practical applications for Wideband Multimode Fiber (WBMMF). From there, Montstream's discussion covers ANSI/TIA-568.3-D (fiber cabling and components), 568.2-D (copper cabling and components), TIA-942-B (data centers), TIA-1179-A (healthcare), and a number of other standard and Telecommunications Systems Bulletin (TSB) projects.
Among the TSB projects currently underway is TSB-5021, which provides guidelines for 2.5GBase-T and 5GBase-T over existing cable. Just as this issue was going to press, I received news from The Ethernet Alliance that the group expects the IEEE 802.3bz 2.5G and 5GBase-T specifications to be ratified in September. That news arrived alongside the Ethernet Alliance's announcement that it will collaborate with the NBase-T Alliance to conduct a multi-vendor interoperability "plugfest" in October. This planned "plugfest" suggests that 2.5 and 5GBase-T products are getting close to interoperability and while they may not be there yet, IEEE standardization certainly will be a milestone for the technology. We'll keep you posted on the TIA's TSB-5021 as well.
Patrick McLaughlin
Chief Editor
[email protected]