Monday, December 14, 2020

CAT6 Manufacturers (Structured Cabling)

I was recently put in charge of hiring a company to install structured cabling at our new site. I have been reading up on CAT 6 and there seems to be a lot of opinions but little experience behind them. I have never had to purchase more than a box or two of CAT6 in the past and now I'm talking hundreds of drops. All of the drops will be going into offices for employees (under 100m). All drops will be terminated into a rack in our server room. I have two questions that I would really appreciate help with.

1) Do I need to nitpick the cable manufacturer? Each of the three companies I have quotes from are using CMP CAT 6 from major manufacturers (Hitachi, Commscope and ICC). Is there anything you wish you would have known before selecting a cable manufacturer or specific cable in a segment like CAT 6? The reason I ask is that the Commscope (CAT 6 CS37P) cable is much more expensive than the Hitachi (CAT 6 XS UTP Plenum).

2) Have you ever needed to worry about the 15-30 year warranties on your cables? Each of the installers will use a FLUKE DTX and provide a report and labeling for each cable. One of the companies is not matching the termination to the manufacturers list, so the manufacturer won't offer a warranty, but the installer warranties the cables themselves. The installer explained that in the 20 years they have been doing business they have never had a cable warranty request. (I'm just wanting to check if they are selling snake oil)

Let me know if there is clarifications that I need to make, or if you think there is anything in general that you wish you would have known before your first structured cabling adventure.



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