Connect to tomorrow. Standards. Decoding. Very high throughput Wi-Fi and the Internet of Things the impact on cabling system design.

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1 Decoding Standards NCS Newsletter August 2014 Welcome to Nexans overview of the latest developments on international standardisation within the structured cabling industry, and insights from its experts on the most hotly debated standards of the moment. Very high throughput Wi-Fi and the Internet of Things the impact on cabling system design Introduction The last few years have seen a repeat of the convergence which occurred in the late 1980s when telephony and data, previously on discrete cabling systems, were brought together over structured cabling. This time the convergence is affecting previously separate (and Facilities owned) security devices such as door lock controllers and IP cameras, Building Management System components and Intelligent Building components. Sprinkle emerging very high throughput wireless and the Internet of Things (IoT) into the mix and there are People focus Rob Cardigan suddenly some additional requirements and design challenges facing cabling designers and specifiers to ensure that cabling for these purposes is going to last more than a couple of years. Standards groups at European and International level have termed this sort of cabling as being for Distributed Building Services. The purpose of this article is to explain what this means, why it s different from ordinary cabling and what thought processes need to be applied to ensure longevity of the installed system. Many of Nexans experts are involved in standardisation committee work. Each issue of Decoding Standards will take a look at a different expert. Rob Cardigan has been Senior Product Manager at Nexans Cabling Solutions since Rob has more than 20 years experience in connector and cabling design, having worked in R&D and Product Management roles with Amphenol, MOD-TAP and Molex, prior to joining Nexans. He is Chairman of TCT/7 - UK National Committee mirroring work in ISO JTC1/SC25 and CENELEC TC215 and is also Chairman of TCT/7/-/3 the UK mirror committee for Data Centre standards in CLC TC215 WG3. Here, he is actively working on EN series of standards

2 Why it s different... Internet of Things Importantly, cabling for these distributed services is fundamentally no different at a component (cable, connectors and cords) level it can be constructed from the same components as traditional office cabling. The differences are related to the locations in which this cabling resides (and that does have some product implications), the devices it interconnects and probably most crucially WHEN it gets installed into the building. Where and what? Well this type of cabling is mostly installed in ceiling voids and building core areas or, if you prefer, in the places where people aren t usually accommodated and connects non-user devices of the sort explained above. Because of this the designer/specifier should be aware that there may be issues of physical robustness of product closures and flammability rating to be considered. When? This type of cabling is often part of shell and core not fit-out so one of the challenges is that it can be installed quite some time before traditional cabling and may not terminate in the same floor distributors. EN and ISO standards Both CENELEC and ISO have seen the importance of this type of cabling and CENELEC have already published EN to specify requirements for distributed building services. ISO are in the process of splitting ISO/IEC into sub documents as CENELEC have done with the EN series. ISO/IEC will address the same subject matter and may well get a title which more accurately reflects the cabling it will define. The content of both the published EN and the draft ISO/IEC version is very similar with the ISO/IEC document having the advantage of following the EN and therefore having improvements made. Both documents promote a grid design (more on that below) and have the same performance recommendations. The Internet of Things (IoT) is used to describe a new generation of networked (or networkable) devices. The convergence discussed in the introduction is really beginning to take off. The building of the (near) future will be full of devices that can communicate with each other and supervisor programmes to share and work with data. This communication may be via the Internet but in many buildings will be restricted to LAN connectivity partly because of a shortage of unique IP addresses in the IPv4 scheme but mainly because of concerns over security. IoT devices may be mobile in which case wireless connectivity makes sense or static and therefore hard-wired to a socket. In both cases it is the cabling for Distributed Building Services that will ultimately provide the connection ac There are very few truly wireless networks and often the best wireless infrastructure has a really good wired backbone. Traditionally this wired backbone has been scaled to suit the wireless connection speeds to the devices and with n networks the ~576Mb/s data rate down to connected devices has driven a 1Gb Ethernet backbone easily encompassed by a Category 5e/Class D cabling overlay. This has also fitted nicely with the view that the connected non-user devices transfer relatively low quantities of data and therefore a 10/100 Mb Ethernet service is more than adequate and lead to cabling being specified as Category 5e. Unfortunately this now appears to be inadequate... the first wave of IEEE ac WAPs are available and offer up to 1.3 Gb/s wireless connectivity which potentially means that the 1Gb Ethernet backbone is already a bottle neck. Consequently both the EN and ISO/IEC standards are recommending a minimum of Category 6A cabling for WAP backbones allowing each node to be provided with a 10GbE backbone connection n ac Transmission Frequency 2.4/5GHz 5GHz Channel Bandwidth 20/40MHz 80/160MHz Modulation 64 QAM 256 QAM Maximum Number of Streams 4 8 Theoretical Maximum Data Rate per Stream 144 Mb/s 866 Mb/s Theoretical Maximum Data Rate per WAP 576 Mb/s 6.93 Mb/s

3 Grid design Both EN and the emerging ISO/ IEC cabling standards describe the concept of Service Area (s), which are based on Service Outlets (SO) proposed as a honeycomb structure. The predefined locations of SO (s) may be used to connect WLAN Access Points, IP Cameras or building management equipment (sensors, etc.) Summary The Internet of Things will drive an increase in the amount of Distributed Building Services cabling required in an installation. Standards Round-up August 2014 ISO/IEC Cabling Standards The most significant news from the ISO/IEC meeting in Kyoto (Feb/Mar 2014) was the confirmation that ISO/IEC would be split into parts in a similar way to EN The 3rd Edition will therefore be sub-divided as follows: Part 1 General Part 2 Offices Part 3 Industrial Part 4 Homes Part 5 Data Centres Part 6 Distributed Building Services Click here Cat6A solutions from Nexans The requirement for high speed wireless backbones will drive the adoption of Category 6A in ceiling voids (in particular). EN and ISO/IEC standards provide guidance on the design of cabling infrastructure and the selection of materials. Editors have been appointed for each part and the complete document has been circulated for comment PRIOR to the split so that comments affecting multiple parts may be captured. During the split there are a number of changes which will be made; principally that the OF Classes will be prepared for removal and CCCB will also potentially be removed. Proposals have also been made to redefine the sub-components of a channel to more accurately reflect the construction of 2 and 3 connector permanent links. The 3rd Edition will contain the emerging Cat 8 specifications with an upper frequency of GHz and will specify Channel I and Channel II requirements along with their components.

4 ISO/IEC Automated Infrastructure Management The ISO/IEC AIM document has reached a level of maturity that will allow it to go forward for National Body comment following the Beijing meeting in September CENELEC Cabling Standards Current work within CENELEC cabling standards focuses on the following: EN series: Information technology: Generic cabling EN 50346: Information technology: Cabling Installation: Testing of installed cabling (Ed.1, A1 and A2 published, no work underway) EN 50700: Information technology - Premises distribution access network (PDAN) cabling to support deployment of optical broadband networks - CLC TR series: - CLC TR : Cabling in support of 10GBASE-T - CLC TR : Implementation of BCT applications using cabling from EN CLC TR : Information technology - Home cabling infrastructures up to 50m CENELEC Data Centre Standards Progress on the EN Series of standards continues at an impressive pace. In addition to the publication of the General part EN , Part 2-1 (Buildings) and 2-2 (Power Distribution) have now also been published. EN (Environmental Control) is circulated for Final Vote and should be published before the end of Part 2-4 (Data Centre Cabling) is reaching a state of maturity and will be prepared for Final Draft status following the November meeting which indicates publication in Early Similar timescales are predicted for Part 2-5 (Security). The group will now concentrate on the development of Part 2-6 (Management). IEEE The following covers activity in the May and July meetings of IEEE Fibre Protocols 802.3bm 100Gb/s Next Generation Optical PHYs This proposal is for interconnection via 4 lanes of 25Gb/s rather than 10 lanes of 10Gb/s and will include: 40G PHY for 40km of SM fibre 100G PHY for 100m of MM fibre 802.3bs Next Generation Ethernet This proposal is for the definition of 400GB/s Ethernet over Duplex SM and Parallel MM fibre and includes PHYs for: 100m of MM fibre 500m of Duplex SM fibre 2km of Duplex SM fibre 10km of Duplex SM fibre Copper Protocols 802.3bj 100Gb/s Copper This proposal is for high speed backplane and twinax protocols for switch interconnection via 4 lanes of 25Gb/s rather than 10 lanes of 10Gb/s and will include: 100GBASE-KR4 for new blade backplanes 100GBASE-PR4 for legacy blade backplanes 100GBASE-CR4 for TOR switching 802.3bq 40GBASE-T Decisions reached at the recent meetings include: 30m length Signalling rate of 3,200 Mbaud (4x10GBASE-T) adopted ISO/IEC Channel I Insertion Loss and Return Loss specified with 2GHz upper frequency ISO/IEC Channel I PSANEXT specified with 2GHz upper frequency ISO/IEC Channel I PSAACRF specified with 2GHz upper frequency Draft 0.9 in preparation ready for the September meeting bt 4 Pair Power over Ethernet The purpose of this is to define a 4 Pair PoE protocol to deliver 49W to a Powered Device (PD) Comply with SELV of ISO/IEC (IT safety) up to 100m over Class D (or better):2002, Class D: 1995 Include 10GBASE-T option

5 Standards Calendar Standard committee Covering Date of meeting Recent meetings IEEE Ethernet Working Group May bm Next Generation 40Gb/s and Norfolk, USA 100 Gb/s Optical Ethernet Task force updated: 16 June Next generation Base-T task force (and other topics) ISO/IEC SC25 WG3 Microprocessor systems; and O/F interfaces, 30 Sept - 4 Oct 2013 protocols and associated interconnecting Kista, Sweden media for information technology equipment 25 Feb 1 Mar, Kyoto, Japan TIA TR 42 Copper cabling Systems (42.7) Mar 2014 Sustainable information technologies (42.10) Beijing, China CENELEC TC 215 WG3 Data Centre Cabling, EN Sep 2013 Amsterdam, The Netherlands Upcoming meetings Jan 2014 London, UK June 2014 Berlin, Germany ISO/IEC SC25 WG3 Microprocessor systems; and O/F interfaces, Sep 2014 protocols and associated interconnecting Beijing, China media for information technology equipment TIA TR 42 Copper cabling Systems (42.7) 06 Oct 2014 Sustainable information technologies (42.10) Austin, Texas USA IEEE GBase-T task force 8 Sept 2014 IEEE P802.3bp task force Kanata, Ottawa Canada 3 6 Nov 2014 San Antonio, Texas USA CENELEC TC 215 WG3 Data Centre Cabling, EN Nov Athens, Greece Disclaimer This document is for guidance only and Nexans cannot be held liable for any implementation of a system which fails to deliver expected results, whether implied or implicit from the interpretation of this document.