[c-nsp] Cisco 6500 mounting with cables

[Justin M. Streiner]

On Tue, 9 Jul 2013, Chris Marget wrote:

> I'm curious whether folks here have found any benefit in using Cat5e
> or Cat6 over Cat5 for Ethernet. Is there any?

Since about 2009, we've been wiring new buildings, or re-wiring old 
buildings when the opportunity presents itself with shielded Cat6A.  The 
reason is that in our environment (large .edu) the need for 10G to the 
desktop in certain areas is not far away.

That said, there is still lots of Cat5 and Cat5E out there, and there are 
cases where Cat5E is perfectly fine for a specific application.

One other thing that we've been factoring in is the cost of large numbers 
of copper cable runs, and the number of IDFs per floor/building.  Plenum-
rated shielded Cat6A is much more of a pain to manage than Cat5E (much 
thicker cable, much less flexible), so necessity starts to dictate more 
IDFs to serve a given number of data ports.  Trying to manage a few 
hundred runs of Cat6A into a single IDF is an exercise in futility.

Given the cost of the cable, anything that can be done to shorten 
individual cable runs can translate into cost savings.  In high-density 
environments, the cost of constructing a new IDF (physical build-out, 
switches, fiber to the MDF, etc) can be more than the than the 
material (cable, Cat6A rated patch panels, wall jacks, etc) and labor 
costs to pull cable into the IDF itself.

jms