[KwartzLab] Discuss Digest, Vol 30, Issue 4
Bob DeGregory
bob.degregory at gmail.com
Mon Sep 3 21:15:31 EDT 2012
A few things to consider regarding plenum cable decision
1) Presumably, you will be running your network cabling in the same spaces
currently
occupied by your existing electrical wiring, Is your existing power
wiring plenum rated?
I serious doubt it.
2) Although plenum cable *may *have more durable jacketing than "riser"
cable, its mainly
due to a materials choice by mfr aimed at meeting fire spread/toxic
combustion
products standards associated w/plenum cable.
3) Are the spaces you will be running the cable actually "plenums" under
the building
code? Again I have doubts.
4) Have you read the wikipedia article on plenum cable? I did, mainly
because the only
type of plenum cable I had ever seen when I was managing
infrastructure was really
stiff teflon jacketed stuff that was obviously distinguishable from
its "riser" and "patch"
cousins. As it happens, it ain't quite that simple anymore (if it
ever was).
What I'm suggesting is that just as the Cat5/Cat 6 decision contains
cost/benefit tradeoffs based upon "future considerations", the decision
whether to use (more expensive) plenum cable begs the question of whether
its benefits are worth the premium.
On Mon, Sep 3, 2012 at 12:00 PM, <discuss-request at kwartzlab.ca> wrote:
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> Today's Topics:
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> 1. Re: Where to get Cat6 cable? (Eric Gerlach)
> 2. Re: Where to get Cat6 cable? (Darcy Casselman)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Sun, 2 Sep 2012 14:15:50 -0400
> From: Eric Gerlach <eric+kwartzlab at gerlach.ca>
> To: KwartzLab Public Discussion List <discuss at kwartzlab.ca>
> Subject: Re: [KwartzLab] Where to get Cat6 cable?
> Message-ID:
> <
> CAAdVD3Xmjaec-MM3ofeJwU1n1Rm3su1FhM6m1ZqqGrzcMTrfGA at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> Given the price difference that you're suggesting, you're right, it's
> probably regular cable. We never would have spent that much on cat5e
> :-)
>
> On Sun, Sep 2, 2012 at 2:03 PM, Ben Brown <ben at kwartzlab.ca> wrote:
> > That sounds like regular Cat5e cable... plenum is usually around $180+.
> >
> > Ben
> >
> > On 9/2/2012 1:53 PM, Eric Gerlach wrote:
> >> Don't know off-hand, and the spool isn't in front of me right now.
> >> Maybe someone with more expertise (I'm looking at you Cedric) can
> >> comment on whether or not it's likely fire-rated based on the price of
> >> $82+tax for 1000 ft.
> >>
> >> Cheers,
> >>
> >> Eric
> >>
> >> On Sun, Sep 2, 2012 at 1:50 PM, Darcy Casselman <dscassel at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>> It's it fire-rated? It occurs to me that that is a good idea.
> >>>
> >>> On Sep 2, 2012 1:22 PM, "Eric Gerlach" <eric+kwartzlab at gerlach.ca>
> wrote:
> >>>> How does $70 sound? It was $82+tax originally (from Primespec)
> >>>>
> >>>> Cheers,
> >>>>
> >>>> Eric
> >>>>
> >>>> On Sat, Sep 1, 2012 at 4:14 PM, Darcy Casselman <dscassel at gmail.com>
> >>>> wrote:
> >>>>> How much do you want for it?
> >>>>>
> >>>>> On Sep 1, 2012 3:50 PM, "Eric Gerlach" <eric+kwartzlab at gerlach.ca>
> >>>>> wrote:
> >>>>>> I have a spool of 800+ft of cat5e that I'm willing to sell off.
> >>>>>> Interested?
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Cheers,
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Eric
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> On Sat, Sep 1, 2012 at 3:41 PM, Aaron Wiebe <epiphani at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>>>>>> Sayal Electronics is good for this kind of thing.
> >>>>>>> http://www.sayal.com -- they have a store out near sportsworld
> drive.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> That said, I've done the same thing, and couldn't justify the extra
> >>>>>>> cost of cat6 over cat5e. IIRC, cat6 is more than 3x the cost of
> >>>>>>> cat5e.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> -Aaron
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> On Sat, Sep 1, 2012 at 3:35 PM, Darcy Casselman <
> dscassel at gmail.com>
> >>>>>>> wrote:
> >>>>>>>> I'm starting to wire up the house for ethernet, something I've
> >>>>>>>> wanted
> >>>>>>>> to do since I moved in.
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> Yeah, wifi's great and all, but who doesn't want to cut holes in
> >>>>>>>> plaster and fish wires? Srsly.
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> Anyone have a decent supplier for Cat6 networking cable? I don't
> >>>>>>>> need
> >>>>>>>> much, probably just a couple hundred feet for the whole house.
> Home
> >>>>>>>> Depot seems a touch pricey to me...
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> Darcy.
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
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> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Sun, 2 Sep 2012 14:51:47 -0400
> From: Darcy Casselman <dscassel at gmail.com>
> To: KwartzLab Public Discussion List <discuss at kwartzlab.ca>
> Subject: Re: [KwartzLab] Where to get Cat6 cable?
> Message-ID:
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> 1aErUu339wdc30Q at mail.gmail.com>
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>
> Thanks for the feedback.
>
> My reasoning for Cat6 is if I'm going to be putting this stuff inside
> walls, behind 70s-era plaster, I want it to be relatively
> future-proof. So yeah, 10gig is a factor, but mostly for when the day
> comes when it's standard on motherboards and you can pick up a 10gig
> PCIsuperultramegaeXpress card up from Future Shop for $40.
>
> But I think I can trust your judgement: it seems reasonable to assume
> when that day comes, we'll be talking about fibre and not twisted
> pair.
>
> And I agree I should probably go with plenum cable, since if I do have
> to pull it out, I want it to be for a technology upgrade I can be
> excited about, not because an inspector says I have to when I want to
> sell my house.
>
> Darcy.
>
> On Sun, Sep 2, 2012 at 12:58 PM, Cedric Puddy <cedric at ccjclearline.com>
> wrote:
> > Another thing to keep in mind is whether or not Cat6 buys you anything,
> in terms of capability. The main thing with Cat6 is that it allows you to
> achieve ethernet signal integrity over a longer length, or more signal
> adverse conditions; if you are dealing with lengths of 50m or less (given
> that your average house is generally less than 15m wide, that's usually a
> given), then Cat6, and it's additional cost, weight and Pain-In-The-Ass
> (PITA) factor buys you absolutely *nothing*.
> >
> > "Oh, but what about 10GigE?", I hear you ask? Nobody runs 10GigE over
> Twisted Pair. Why? Four reasons:
> > - limited to 15m, much less if you have patch panels and patch
> cables that create insertion loss, or anything less than perfect
> termination.
> > - 25% higher transceiver latency over CX4 or Fibre transceivers
> (10GigE is standardized for 3 different physical medias: TP, CX4 and
> various wavelengths on Single Mode fibre for long haul, or Multi-Mode fibre
> for short haul distances)
> > - 50% higher power cost for TP transceivers VS CX4 of Fibre
> > - since nobody uses 10GigE over TP, the cards cost more
> >
> > Bottom-line: to do 10GigE over TP, you need to a network card pulling
> almost as much power as a nice video card, and it gets you significantly
> less performance (why did you go 10GigE, if you didn't want performance,
> again?), for higher cost, and less assurance that your physical layer isn't
> going to impact your performance.
> >
> > 10 GigE is still pretty expensive:
> > - probably about $1000-2000 per port to deploy, for around 4-12
> ports, depending on interface carts, what switch you choose, etc, and
> > - looks to remain pretty expensive for some time yet, insofar as
> there is no mass-market need for it that anyone has yet discovered.
> >
> > Yes, very lovely for business with racks of gear:
> > - at one client site, we are *looking at* deploying rack top
> switches with 10 GigE between the switches, for about 15 racks of misc
> gear; at another,
> > - we did six 10 GigE links a few years back for about $21k, at
> an industrial facility:
> > - each 10 GigE blade was $2k, and it supported up to 4
> connections (MRSP of ~$3.5k, if memory serves),
> > - each transceiver that went in one of those 4 ports was
> $1.5k (we bought them from a gray market reseller on eBay; through normal
> channels, they went for about $2.5k/ea,
> > - then there was the cost of the fibre runs through the
> facility at about $1k each, etc;
> > - that cost does not include the switches themselves
> that we plugged the blades into;
> > - bottom line: it was about $4k per port, and while the
> cost has gotten better since we did that job, it's by no means cheap, yet,
> and probably won't be cheap for a few years yet.
> >
> > Now, granted, we were *very happy* with the results that we got at the
> industrial facility; even though none of the links comes close to
> saturating the 10 GigE connection, the biggest benefit was the lower
> latency -- the moment a packet hit the 10 GigE port, it was *gone*, done
> and delivered to the other side, so in effect no packet *ever* had to wait
> for transmission, and compared to the GigE links, transmission was
> effectively instantaneous. The network had a "feel" that we smooth as
> glass; latencies were always low, resources that were available over the
> network always were snappy, etc -- this was primarily the result of very
> low packet latencies, and very little to do with the available bandwidth.
> (so long as you have more bandwidth than you need, available bandwidth
> makes no difference to the performance of the network, and you instead
> start caring about time-in-flight, interface latencies, and so forth in
> order to get extra performance).
> >
> > This is why Infiniband networks are so cool, and used for scientific
> computing: while they can provide between 2-300 Gbit/sec communication (it
> gets complicated -- see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InfiniBand if you
> crave details; basically you figure out how much bandwidth you need, and
> then hope you have enough money in your bank account to buy that particular
> level of hardware), between connected points, their biggest claim to fame
> (as I understand it) is that they have a latency that's around 1 ?sec (1000
> nano seconds, or 0.001 milliseconds), which is pretty damn good.
> Scientists will use this to have multiple processes running on physically
> independent computers share vast amounts of state data in real time.
> (There is a nice paper talking about what latency can buy you in HPC
> applications, comparing 10GigE to Infiniband here:
> http://www.hpcadvisorycouncil.com/pdf/IB_and_10GigE_in_HPC.pdf )
> >
> >
> > But I digress. In conclusion, my recommendation is save your money for
> something fun, and go with Cat5e cable. I would buy the fire rated cable
> if installing in walls. PrimeSpec has been my chosen local supplier of
> such things for years -- generally their prices are good, and they're a
> local business worth supporting (full disclosure: in past couple years,
> they've also become a client, but I liked them long before that :)
> >
> > All the Best,
> >
> > -Cedric
> >
> > On 2012-09-01, at 4:19 PM, Ben Brown wrote:
> >
> >> One thing to keep in mind, is if you're planning to run cable in drop
> >> ceilings (and other spaces without a conduit), the fire code specifies
> >> using Plenum cable, which is more expensive than the PVC stuff (the
> >> added factor being it's less likely to kill you when it burns). I dunno
> >> if you care about code or not :)
> >>
> >> Ben
> >>
> >> On 9/1/2012 3:35 PM, Darcy Casselman wrote:
> >>> I'm starting to wire up the house for ethernet, something I've wanted
> >>> to do since I moved in.
> >>>
> >>> Yeah, wifi's great and all, but who doesn't want to cut holes in
> >>> plaster and fish wires? Srsly.
> >>>
> >>> Anyone have a decent supplier for Cat6 networking cable? I don't need
> >>> much, probably just a couple hundred feet for the whole house. Home
> >>> Depot seems a touch pricey to me...
> >>>
> >>> Darcy.
> >>>
> >>> _______________________________________________
> >>> Discuss mailing list
> >>> Discuss at kwartzlab.ca
> >>> http://kwartzlab.ca/mailman/listinfo/discuss_kwartzlab.ca
> >>
> >>
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> >
> >
> http://www.techdata.com/(S(gec5go45l3e3a2ecpbinz055))/netgear/files/NETGEAR-Whitepaper-10_Things_10_Gigabit-v1.pdf
> >
> >
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>
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