What Is a Structured Cabling System?

A structured cabling system is a standardised infrastructure of cabling and connectivity components that enable the transmission of data, voice, and video signals within a building.  Having this within your business will provide a complete and organised approach to network infrastructure allowing  for flexibility, scalability and ease of management. 

As mentioned above, a structured cabling system within your building premises will provide many benefits to running a successful business.

By having a structured cabling system that meets the standards of  BS EN 50174-1 and ISO 11801 it will provide:

• a network that allows for expansion and reconfiguration to suitably support your business and its ever evolving needs. 
• A network with improved performance and reliability ensuring there is little no downtime for your business, by ensuring all cabling is tested.
• A system that is easy to troubleshoot, by using clearly labelled cables and outlets, ensuring a quick diagnostic and repair.
• A cost efficient way of maintaining a network infrastructure  by ridding the need of multiple cabling systems and using such things as VOIP and IPCCTV instead.
• A stable and fast network for your employees to use therefore increasing productivity.
• A secure network with firewalls safeguarding  your business from cyber-attacks and data breaches  ensuring you adhere to GDPR 

How a structured cabling system works:

Incoming Connection from ISP To main comms room: This is where the ISP (internet service provider) brings in your network connection to your main communications room using a fibre optic cable.. Within a comms room there will be racks/cabinets which hold your cabling and other networking components. The ISP fibre cable will be terminated into a patch panel, which will then be connected to a modem/router, then eventually hitting a switch. The switch is then connected to all the horizontal cabling using patch panels and patch leads. You can have multiple comms rooms within your building to reduce the length of cabling needed, and to ensure future data installations are quick and less disturbing of your workforce. You can connect multiple comms rooms by using;

Backbone cabling: This is usually done by having multiple fibre optic cables pathed using diverse routes. This ensures there is no downtime on your network if a single fibre optic cable  gets damaged. Using fibre optic cable links, ensures high speed internet throughout the building and is much more reliable than using copper over long distances. . From each of these comms rooms you have;

Horizontal cabling: This is usually Copper (Cat6, Cat6a) cable which goes from your comms rooms patch panels to outlets throughout the building to supply a wired LAN(Local Area Network). These outlets can be used for many things such as computers, phones, CCTV, automation, TV, and many other applications. 

All cabling be it fibre or copper, will be tested and labelled to ensure simple diagnostic and repairs, and also simple connectivity for IT to maintain. All data cabinets in comms rooms will be supplied with cable management bars and tie wraps, to ensure all patch leads are tidy and can be traced from patch panel to switch with ease.