BICSI 2008 Spring Conference Field Report

Jun 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Joe Knisley, Senior Editorial Consultant

Meeting the demands of designers and installers in growing markets

Held April 15-18 at the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Conference Center in Nashville, Tenn., the BICSI 2008 Spring Conference drew more than 2,100 information transport system (ITS) registered attendees, exhibitors, and visitors to a forum where installers had a chance to show their skills for the first time. A total of 23 ITS installers and technicians competed in a skills contest right on the exhibit show floor, with the goal of becoming the BICSI “Installer of the Year.”

Jessie Spearman, an ITS technician with Vision Technologies, Inc., Glen Burnie, Md., won the first-ever challenge. “I am very excited to be able to say that I'm the BICSI Installer of the Year,” said Spearman. “The $5,000 check that comes with it isn't bad either.”

Judges in the background observe several competitors in the cable assembly event of the 2008 BICSI Cabling Skills Challenge.

The installation skills contest tied in well with the announcement of a new ITS Installation Methods Manual, 5^th edition. This vendor-neutral manual includes detailed information on pathways, spaces, associated hardware, and structured cabling/optical fiber systems within commercial buildings.

Because increasing energy efficiency amid rising demand for network bandwidth connectivity is so important today, the recently finalized ANSI/TIA/EIA-568-B.2-10 standard was also discussed throughout the conference. This new standard defines performance and testing requirements up to 500 MHz for Augmented Category 6 (Cat. 6A) cabling systems to support the operation of IEEE 802.an 10GBASE-T Ethernet applications. Vendors are now promoting their cable and hardware offerings as being able to deal with the two primary alien crosstalk sources: alien near-end crosstalk and alien far-end crosstalk.

Along with specific testing/sampling methods, the installation recommendations of the new TIA standard will be important to ITS professionals, because minimally compliant solutions won't provide the needed stability and lack the headroom or performance margins.

Conference session highlights

In “Maximizing the Benefits of Screened and Shielded Cabling Systems,” Valerie Maguire, The Simon Co., Watertown, Conn., underscored the need to control alien crosstalk when specifying 10GBASE-T capable media. Maguire described the characteristics and construction of F/UTP (foil) type cable, which supports Cat. 6A and lower grades of cabling, and S/FTP (shielded/foil) cable, which supports Cat. 7 and higher grades of cabling. The use of either an overall foil or fully shielded pairs in the cable assures superior performance compared to unshielded twisted-pair (UTP) cabling. While noting that these cables are gaining wide acceptance, Maguire dispelled a number of common myths surrounding these cable types, such as the misperception that they act as antennas and generate ground loops.

With the ratification of the 10GBASE-T (802.an) standard in 2006, IEEE identified two existing cabling systems to run 10Gb/s speeds over a full 100 meters — calling them Class E/Cat. 6 Foil Twisted Pair (FTP) or Class F/Cat. 7. In addition, a new cabling system was identified for full 100-meter distances: Augmented Cat. 6, Cat. 6A, or Class EA.