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Note: The content of this section is not required for the CCNA Exam, and it will not be on any CCNA Online Assessments.

download a printable version of this entire section (without graphics) in PDF format (242kB).

This section is provided to share with our community a major change, which is about to occur. The section contains many technical terms and concepts, which we will be elaborating upon in future months with more explanations, more graphics, Flash animations, and interactive Flash activities.

The networking industry changes very rapidly. One contributing factor to the explosive growth of LANs, WANs, and the Internet has been the ANSI/TIA/EIA-568-A cabling standards, in place since 1995. Standards greatly facilitate network interoperability, network design, network device and component manufacture, and network installation. Throughout this curriculum, you will see references to the ANSI/TIA/EIA-568-A standards.

Replacement standards, known the ANSI/TIA/EIA-B.1, B.2, and B.3 standards, are scheduled to be completed and released in 2001. But until all of the ANSI/TIA/EIA-568-B standards are released, the A standards remain in effect. Among other improvements, these standards will be in much better alignment with the standards used outside the US – especially the ISO/IEC 11801 updated standards.

The ANSI/TIA/EIA-B.1 standards, not yet released, will deal with General Requirements: Cabling and Field Testing. They are particularly important for network design of copper and fiber systems. The ANSI/TIA/EIA-B.2 standards, also not yet released, will deal with Copper Requirements: Cabling and Connectors. These standards will be very specific. The ANSI/TIA/EIA-B.3 standards, released in April of 2000, deal with Fiber Requirements: Connectors and Cables. In general, these new standards enable the installation of higher bandwidth copper technologies (such as 100BASE-TX and 1000BASE-T) and higher bandwidth optical fiber systems (such as 1000BASE-LX and 1000BASE-SX).

A notable specific change for copper is that Category 5e ("e" for enhanced) is now the minimum specified data cable. Cat 5e differs from Cat 5 in that it is required to pass more complex tests in order to guarantee its reliability for high bandwidth communications. A notable specific change for optical fiber is the recognition of small form-factor (SFF) connectors. This document provides a detailed summary of the upcoming cabling standards developments. It is a combination of the ANSI/TIA/EIA-568-B.1, B.2, and B.3 standards, consolidated to make it easier to read. Of course, even after this consolidation, it is still highly technical.

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Preface :: | 1/55