Page 116 - Security Today, September 2018

Carl Smith, Network Engineer, ScanSource
Dear IP Man:
I’m looking to get the fastest network speeds for my customer, while being conscious of their budget. They’ve got existing cabling that would be economical to use, but could slow their speeds. Should I rip them out, or is there a better solution?
- Tangled Up
Dear Tangled:
It has been 20 years since the introduction of gigabit Ethernet. Since that time, it is estimated that nearly 70 billion meters worth of cat5e and cat6 cable have been run. That’s roughly 10 meters for every man, woman, and child on this planet. Most enterprise networks today still rely on these two cables, and are still running at gigabit speeds. Gigabit isn’t quite
what it used to be. There are countless applications around large data sets, high resolution imaging, and video applications that can easily max out these speeds.
There was a time when wireless used to be the bottleneck on the network. But those days are becoming the past. Now, with the introduction of 802.11ac wave
2, wireless is already capable of speeds faster than gigabit, which means that gigabit Ethernet is now the bottleneck. You might be asking, what about 10 gig Ethernet, isn’t that a thing? Yes, it sure is, but that typically requires ripping out old
cat5e and cat6 cabling, and replacing it with cat6a or fiber optic cabling. This can be a very costly exercise, and not one that many are in a rush to do.
SO WHAT OTHER OPTIONS ARE THERE?
The Nbase-T alliance has developed a new technology, which is capable of running 2.5GbE and 5GbE on the cables you already have. As a matter of fact, this new technology was taken to the IEEE, and standardized as 802.3bz. By increasing information density, and adjusting spectral bandwidth, they’ve made it possible
to achieve five times the speed, with a simple hardware upgrade. Many of the wireless and switching manufacturers today have hardware that takes advantage of this technology. The Nbase-T alliance even created a downshift feature that automatically responds if there is too much noise, by switching to the next best speed. This means no down time, and no impact to users. The use of 2.5GbE and 5GbE is rising, and this time around, just a simple upgrade is all that is needed. So leave those cables alone for a little while longer, and call ScanSource to help get you a little more ‘pep’ in your network step.
Sincerely,
Carl “IP Man” Smith
3 | ScanSource Networking and Security Focus FALL 2018