Cabling Jargon
Objectives: From this
lesson you should learn:
The language of premises cabling
The meaning of specialized cabling terms
The jargon to help you understand the next lessons more
easily
The key to understanding any technology is understanding
the language of the technology – the jargon. This lesson
is an overview of cabling jargon to introduce you to the
language of the technology and help you understand what
you will be reading in this section. We suggest you read
this section carefully to help your understanding of the
rest of the pages and refer back to it when you encounter
a term that you do not recognize.
What is Premises Cabling?
By premises cabling, we mean the cabling used inside
buildings (and in restricted geographic areas like
campuses or among business facilities) that follows
industry standards. Mostly we are refering to structured
cabling systems defined by TIA-568 or ISO/IEC 11801
and related standards that are used for LANs, telephone
systems and even other systems adapted to structured
cabling like CCTV, security or building management. Other
systems that depend on cabling such as security and
building control are migrating to structured cabing for
its widespread availability and predictability.
To begin with, what do we call this technology of cabling?
People call it lots of things:
- VDV
(for voice/data/video) cabling
- Premises
(e.g. indoor) cabling
- Structured
cabling (from the standards)
- Data/voice
cabling
- Low
voltage cabling (less than power cables)
- Limited
energy cabling (mostly harmless)
- Teledata
cabling (a made-up word from telecommunications and
data)
- Datacom
cabling (an abbreviated version of data
communications)
- Some
people just call it "Cat 5" from the first widely used
copper cable
....but
most people call it"premises cabling" for its application
or "structured cabling" after the "568" standard.
Student Assignment:
Read the references and take the quizzes (Test Your
Comprehension)
Online FOA Reference:
Jargon
There is also an online
glossary with definitions of many more
technical terms you can use for reference.
Book Chapter:
FOA Reference Guide to Premises Cabling, Chapter 2,
Appendix C Definitions of Terms
Test Your Knowledge:
Online
Quiz
- Next: Lesson
3: Communications Networks and Applications
-
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