Fig. 11: Structured Cabling System

Structured Cabling provides a standard infrastructure to support multiple applications. The standards cover cabling and building spaces network structure but not the actual networking equipment.

Structured Cabling includes these subsystems as shown in Fig. 13: TIA-569 Space Definitions:

• Entrance Facilities that connect the building to carriers and other campus buildings.
• Equipment Rooms hold equipment for the building including the Main Cross-Connect for the core network.
• Telecommunications Rooms typically on each floor are the location of the Horizontal Cross-Connect linking the backbone or core network with the Horizontal Cabling and Edge Network.
• Backbone Cabling for the core network typically runs vertically within  a building.
• Horizontal Cabling for the edge network extends out to the work areas.
• Work-Area Components connect end-user equipment.

There are multiple standards based on this framework including:

• TIA-568 Generic Cabling System shown in Fig. 14: TIA-568 Structured Cabling System is the basic structured cabling system.
• TIA-862 Building Automation System Cabling shown in Fig. 15: TIA-862 Building Automation System Cabling provides additional facilities to support building systems.
• TIA-942 Data Center Cabling shown in Fig. 16: TIA-942 Data Center Cabling provides additional capabilities for data centers.

Cables are classified by category or Cat as shown in Fig. 12: Cable Categories. Some categories of cables are no longer allowed under TIA-568-B.