When doing data cabling, it is necessary to make sure that all of the cables to be installed in its intended destination without damaging it or its data-carring capabilities. Most networking suppliers including fibre optic cable manufacturers provides many different cabling products protect cable. Cable management tools helps you cable plant looks good, and help you find the cables faster. There are three categories: physical protection, electrical protection and fire protection.
Physical protection
Cable can be fragile, easily cut, stretched and broken. Cable should be protected in ways of conduit, cable strays, standoffs and D-rings.
Conduit is the simplest form of cable protection which can a metal or plastic conduit to protect the cable as it travels through walls and ceilings. Conduit is a thin-walled plastic or metal pipe which is used in many commercial installations to contain electrical wires. When conduit is put in place, the individual cables are run inside it.
Cable trays is needed when the cable must be supported every 48” or 60” handing horizontally. It is installed in ceilings to prevents the cable from sagging and putting stress on the conductors inside. The horizontal cable from the telecommunications rooms that run to the individual telecommunications outlets are usually placed into this tray to support them as they run horizontally.
When terminating UTP wires for telephone applications in a telecommunications room, you will often see telephone wires run from a multipair cable to the 66-punch-down block. To be neat, the
individual conductors are run around the outside of the board that the punch-down blocks are mounted to (as show in Figure 13.11). To prevent damage to the individual conductors, they are bent around devices know as standoffs.
After the cables come out of the cable tray and enter the telecommunications room to be terminated, special metal rings called D-rings are needed to keep the individual cables in bundles and keep them close to the track. D-rings are also used on punch-down boards on the wall to manage cables, much in the same way stanoffs are. It is put in pace to support the individual cables, and the cable are run to the individual punch-down block on the wall.
Electrical protection
In addition to physical protection, electrical protection is also important during the designing and installing you cabling system. Electricity powers the network, switches, hubs, PCs and computer servers. Variations in power can cause problems ranging from having to reboot after a short loss of service to damaged equipment and data. A number of products-including surge protectors, standby power suppliers, uninterruptible power suppliers. And line conditioners are used to protect sensitive systems from the dangers of lighting strikes, uneven power, and accidental power disconnection.
Fire Protection
A few cabling-design concerns to prevent fire, smoke, or heat from damaging your cabling system, the premises on which they are installed and any occupants. Make sure you specify the proper flame rating for the cable according to the location in which it will be installed. The European market is demanding that cables used in LANs, WANs, etc. Meet LSZH specification. The IEC 60332-1 governs the Flame Retardant Grade specifications in reference to LSZH cables.
Another concern is the puncturing of fire barriers. In most residential and commercial buildings, firewalls are built specifically to stop the spread of a fiber within a building. Whenever there is an opening in a floor or ceiling that could possibly conduct fire, the opening is walled over with fire-related drywall to make a firewall that will prevent the spread of fire. In commercial buildings, cinder-block walls are often erected as firewalls between rooms.
After the proper cable management job done, data and cabling security protection is needed if your cable carry is sensitive and should not be view by just anyone. You may need to take extra steps when designing and installing your cabling system to ensure that the data stays when it belongs: Two ways to prevent data from being intercepted are EM (electromagnetic) transmission regulation and tapping prevention.
EM signal interception is the process of prevent the magnetic signals and turn them back into electrical signals that can be sent to another unwanted location. Susceptibility to EM signal
interception can be minimized by using shielded cables or by encasing all cabling runs from source to destination in a grounded metal conduit. These shielding methods reduce the amount of stray EM signals.
Tapping is the interception of LAN EM signals through listening devices placed around the cable. Some stapping devices are invasive and will actually puncture the outer jacket of a cable, or the insulation of individual wires, and touch the metal inner conductor to intercept all signals sent along that conductor. To prevent taps, the best course of action is to install the cables in metal conduit or to use interlocked armored cables. If it is practical. Grounding of the metal conduit will provide protection from both EM and invasive taps but not from taps at the cross connection.