I am responsible for our company's voice and data cabling. What are my options?
Cabling options are wide-ranging and diverse. Depending on your company's voice and data needs, the choices are numerous. There are 6 parts to a company's structured cabling system:
The building entrance or MPOE.
The equipment / server room.
Backbone cabling.
The telecommunications closet.
Horizontal cabling.
Work area / end user.
Connectivity Solutions can help you in all of these areas. In a typical project, we will install a feeder cable to the MPOE and tie cables or fiber to the server room. For most of our customers,
we install at least 2 Category 5e or greater cables for network and/or VoIP use to each user. In the rapidly changing telecommunications industry, Category 5e has become the minimum
choice to accommodate new cabling transmission standards, including Gigabit Ethernet
What products and services do you offer?
We provide everything needed for your complete cabling infrastructure. This includes the cable, the jacks, the patch panels and the voice termination field. We also provide and install 2 post
racks, server cabinets, cable sleeves and cable ladder for wiring closets and server rooms. We also specialize in data center and co-location wiring.
What about fiber?
At most organizations, a very large percentage of business is dependent on the network. In the last decade, network traffic has increased tremendously. With users sending and receiving
graphics-heavy files and multimedia applications, fiber is playing a larger role in many networks. We install, terminate and test multi-mode and single-mode fiber. This includes indoor and
outside plant fiber and laser-optimized fiber. We have kept abreast of advances in the manufacture, termination and testing standards of fiber optic cable.
What type of testing do you do? Do you provide certification reports?
We scan every single cable we install. We use scanners made by Fluke (the best on the market). We utilize the latest DTX scanners and the DTX fiber modules that can test the newest 10gig
standard. These scanners are calibrated annually and updated to assure that the latest standards are utilized. Certification reports are available on soft copy or hard copy. For voice cables
we use a standard pair scanner which tests for opens, shorts and reversed pairs.
Will I receive an As Built drawing?
An "As Built" drawing is a floor-plan showing the finished job and the locations and numbers of the communications drops. This is a very useful tool for your IT team. Connectivity Solutions
will provide a CAD cabling floor-plan provided we can obtain a current background. We use the latest versions of AutoCAD and plot in color. We then provide our customers with a laminated
and an electronic version of the drawing.
We have never done business with Connectivity Solutions before. What are your credentials?
Although Connectivity Solutions is a new company, our team has many years of experience. Our ownership has over 20 years in the industry andhas been involved in minor and major projects
in the retail, construction, and commercial spaces. We carry full liability insurance and Workman's Compensation. In a time when cabling installation errors account for over 50% of network
problems, we are extremely proud of the fact that our call-back rate for cabling repairs is almost non-existent. Our senior technicians have a minimum of 5 years experience in the industry
and have been certified through multiple manufacturers throughout there years of service. Our company is based on service and dedication to meeting or exceeding your expectations, our job
is not complete until you are fully satisfied.
At what point in time do I need to contact the cabling contractors?
One of the biggest mistakes we see made is contacting a cabling partner late in the process and often too late. Planning for your communications cabling should be done at the same time as
you plan for your electrical needs, or your construction changes, or you are modifying or adding modular furniture or when you are accessing your network capabilities to handle a move.
We can assist you in the planning of your cabling infrastructure, provided we are brought into the loop early in the planning process.
How can I make sure that the cabling I am installing now will meet data transmission requirements in the future?
Since the first cabling standard was introduced in 1991 for unshielded twisted pair (UTP), there has been a series of changes and updates. To keep up with ever increasing network speeds,
new transmission specifications have been promoted by the manufacturers and endorsed by the standards community. We've seen network speeds increase from 10 Megabits/sec (10 million
bits per second) in the 1980's to 10 Gigabit/sec (10 billion bits per second) today, all over UTP.
Where to from hear? Think of bandwidth as lanes on a highway. Doubling the bandwidth is like adding twice the number of lanes to let traffic flow. The general difference between Category
5e and Category 6 is in the transmission performance, and extension of the available bandwidth from 100 MHz for category 5e to 200 MHz for category 6. We, therefore, recommend minimum
Category 6 cable for all new installations, allowing higher reliability for current applications and higher data rates for future applications.
