For Immediate Release
June 8, 2002
TIA/EIA to Publish Final Category 6 Standard
Officially Ratified Category 6 Cabling Standard (TIA/EIA-568-B.2-1) Opens the Door to a Whole New Realm of Possibilities for Copper-based Infrastructures
Watertown, CT — Years in the works, the TIA TR-42 sub-committee yesterday reached a major milestone by voting to publish the category 6 standard for telecommunications cabling. This represents a giant step forward in standardization of copper-based cabling infrastructures, offering performance parameters that are vastly improved over the TIA/EIA category 5e standard, which was officially approved in November, 1999. Ideal for applications running at 1 gigabit per second or better, the category 6 standard opens wide the door for future high-speed application development.
"This is a tremendous victory for the industry," said John Siemon, VP of engineering for The Siemon Company, and former chairman of the TIA TR-42.1 commercial building cabling committee. "Now, end-users throughout the world can install a standards-based copper cabling system that will provide them with a minimum of 250 MHz bandwidth and guaranteed power sum attenuation to cross talk (PSACR) margins up to 200 MHz - over twice the bandwidth they can get out of category 5e systems. This is the culmination of countless hours of work by members of the TIA TR-42 committee under the leadership of Masood Shariff and Valerie Rybinski. The timing is excellent. With the emergence of real-time data applications such as VoIP, lost packets have an audible impact on transmission quality. Category 6 not only provides a platform for new networking applications, but it enables higher quality of service for digital voice and video to the desk."
Final ratification of the category 6 standard will have a resounding effect on the telecommunications industry. Many end-users and applications developers who were reluctant to invest in technology that was not yet officially standardized can now install a system with confidence that will provide significantly improved performance.
"The approved category 6 standard provides an important benchmark for the industry," said Frank Velleca, business development manager for The Siemon Company. "It gives end-users a common set of performance parameters against which to judge competitive systems."
The Siemon Company is a pioneer in the category 6 marketplace, delivering the first solution to market in 1998. Siemon recently introduced the Ultra 6 line. The first system independently verified to surpass category 6 requirements extrapolated to 300 MHz for both components and systems. Siemon's Ultra 6 solution offers unsurpassed headroom over the new category 6 standard and provides the high-performance required for today's high bandwidth applications while future-proofing the network for the even more demanding multi-gigabit applications of tomorrow.
"The benefits of category 6 vs. category 5e are eye-opening," says Brian Celella, a lead electrical engineer for The Siemon Company and an active member of the TR-42 committee. "For small additional investment, you can have a cabling infrastructure that will deliver significantly higher bandwidth and system performance. When weighed against the time end-users wait for processing or downloads - real productivity time - a category 6 system is actually less expensive than a category 5e system."
For information on calculating total cost of your network and comparing the cost of a Category 5e system with a new Category 6 system, please visit www.siemon.com.
Final publication of the TIA/EIA-568-B.2-1 standard is scheduled for early July.
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- About Siemon
- Established in 1903, Siemon is an industry leader specialising in the manufacture and innovation of high quality, high-performance network cabling solutions. Headquartered in Connecticut, USA, with global offices and partners throughout the world, Siemon offers the most comprehensive suite of copper (unshielded and shielded twisted-pair) and fibre cabling systems available. With over 400 active patents specific to structured cabling, Siemon Labs invests heavily in R&D and development of industry standards, underlining the company's long-term commitment to its customers and the industry.
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