Structured cabling refers to building infrastructure with the use of standard materials that are called subsystems. There are usually five of these subsystems and they include a demarcation point, telecommunications rooms, vertical cabling, and horizontal cabling as well as work area components.
The demarcation point is a point in a network that marks the end of the telephone network company and establishes a connection with the premises of the company where the network is installed. This is the point that determines the person that is charged with the responsibility of installation as well as maintenance of the cables and other equipment. Note that this point may vary in different countries.
The telecommunications rooms are used for the storage of equipment and they also act as wiring consolidation points which serve the users in the premises where the cabling system has been installed. As for the vertical cabling, it links the different equipment rooms that are usually found on different floors or situated in different places of the building.
The horizontal wiring is used to connect telecommunications rooms to the independent outlets that are found on the floors of a building, conduits, or in some cases ceilings of the floor. The work area components link end user tools to outlets.
There are standards that govern structured cabling design as well as its installation. These standards usually specify offices, wiring data centers as well as apartment buildings for voice or data communications with the use of a variety of structured cables such as fiber optic, category 5e, category 6 and other modular connectors.
The cabling standards are very crucial in defining how the cabling will be laid depending on the topology in order to meet the specific needs of the customer. This is usually done using a patch panel which is the point where every modular connection can be utilized as needed. Every outlet in the network is then patched to the switch. In other cases the outlet may be patched into a private branch exchange telephone system patch panel.
There are some lines into the network that act as data ports and they require straight through patch cables at their ends in order to establish a connection with workstations. As a way of identifying the kind of connection that is being used, the patch panel cables in some cases are color coded. This is not necessary in structured cabling standards except when doing a demarcation of a wall field.
In general, structured cabling solutions may be composed of techniques as well as systems that are used for routing, organizing and also managing optical fibers, wires and other cables. These solutions may be one or many chassis that are coupled to a frame in order to provide access to the signal connectors found on the chassis. They may also have labeling schemes that are used for identifying the patch connectors which keep up a correspondence with the outlets in a structured cabling installation.