RE: [10GBASE-T] Reflections
Jacob,
I accept what you say from an engineering viewpoint however the choice of
cabling must also consider its market significance. At the January interim
meeting in Vancouver I made the following statements as part of my
installed cabling analysis:
"- about half of the horizontal cabling installed in Western Europe is
screened, with a trend for overall screened cabling (FTP) in France and
individually screened pairs (STP, F/STP) in Germany, Austria, Switzerland.
- a significant amount of Cat 7 CABLE has been/is being installed for
Class E links (perhaps 50%)."
As you say, the Cat 7 CABLED Class E links may be upgraded to Class F links
by swapping the connecting hardware and re-qualifying. This would increase
the Dec 2005 base of Class F from an estimated 3 million outlets (0.4%
base) to a maximum of 18 million outlets (1.9% base).
I accept that the above forecasts will be influenced by the type of cabling
adopted for 10GBASE-T but, on the face of it, the case for Cat 7/Class F is
not very strong. Rather than exploit the high bandwidth available in the
very small sector of Class F cabling, it might be worth capitalising on the
Alien NEXT advantage with all screened horizontal cabling. I haven't sized
the combined volumes of Class E and Class F screened. Just a thought.
Regards,
Alan Flatman