Testing local area network cabling for high speed communications

Data rates of local area networks (LANs) of 10 Mb/s for Ethernet and 16 Mb/s for the token ring are being superseded by 100 Mb/s or higher speed systems. These new systems are specifically designed to use low cost twisted pair (TP) cabling, which is specified up to 100 MHz. At these higher data rates, the transmission performance of cabling is increasingly important. This paper discusses the most important transmission performance parameters and measurement challenges. Verification of transmission is important when installing a new cabling system or upgrading an existing cabling system from a lower data rate to a higher data rate that uses a higher bandwidth on the cabling. Any troubleshooting on a live network is considerably more challenging and is undesirable since networks are becoming increasingly mission critical for operations of the organization.