Bryant Brown
Physical Networking
Keywords
Twisted Pair - a type of wiring in which two conductors of a single circuit are twisted together for the purposes of canceling out electromagnetic interference (EMI) from external sources.
Fiber-Optics - a cable containing one or more optical fibers that are used to carry light.
Coaxial Cables - a type of cable that has an inner conductor surrounded by a tubular insulating layer, surrounded by a tubular conducting shield.
Decibel - a logarithmic unit used to express the ratio between two values of a physical quantity, often power or intensity.
Attenuation - the gradual loss in intensity of any kind of flux through a medium.
Specification - an explicit set of requirements to be satisfied by a material, design, product, or service.
Standard - a level of quality, achievement, etc., that is considered acceptable or desirable.
Topology - the way in which constituent parts are interrelated or arranged.
Building Codes - a set of rules that specify the minimum standards for constructed objects such as buildings and non-building structures.
Application - A high performance, reliable, and secure integrated technology infrastructure for managing multiple hosted applications by Application Service Providers.
Unshielded Pairs Twisted-Pair - a popular type of cable that consists of two unshielded wires twisted around each other.
Shielded Twisted-Pair - a special kind of copper telephone wiring used in some business installations.
Dark Fiber - unused fiber-optic cable.
Coaxial Cable - the kind of copper cable used by cable TV companies between the community antenna and user homes and businesses.
Plenum - the space that is used for air circulation in heating and air conditioning systems, typically between the structural ceiling and the suspended ceiling or under a raised floor.
Riser - a slot found on certain PC motherboards and used for specialized networking, audio, and telephony equipment.
Rip Cord - a voice and video cryptographic security company.
Core - the central part of a telecommunication network that provides various services to customers who are connected by the access network.
Noise - unwanted electrical or electromagnetic energy that degrades the quality of signals and data.
Headroom - any additional ACR (measured in dB) better than specification.
ANSI - a voluntary organization composed of over 1,300 members (including all the large computer companies) that creates standards for the computer industry.
NFPA - a United States trade association, albeit with some international members, that creates and maintains private, copyrighted, standards and codes for usage and adoption by local governments.
FCC - An independent U.S. government regulatory agency responsible for overseeing all interstate and international communications.
NIST - the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a unit of the U.S. Commerce Department. Formerly known as the National Bureau of Standards, NIST promotes and maintains measurement standards.
OSHA – Occupational Health and Safety Act for the workplace.
Equipment Room - a room or space within a building for the storage or installation of mechanical or electrical/electronic devices.
Horizontal Cable – A type of inside cable designed for horizontal use in non-plenum areas.
Backbone - a part of computer network infrastructure that interconnects various pieces of network, providing a path for the exchange of information between different LANs or sub-networks.
Patch Cords - an insulated cord with a plug at each end, for use with a patch panel.
Connectors - a device for keeping two parts of an electric circuit in contact.
Conduit - a tube or trough for protecting electric wiring.
Racks - a metal frame used to hold various hardware devices such as servers, hard disk drives, modems and other electronic equipment.
Punch-Down Blocks - the predecessors to patch panels and were commonly used to support low-bandwidth Ethernet and token-ring networks.
Consolidation Points - a piece of connecting hardware allowing interconnection between the permanently installed horizontal cables extending from the floor distributor (patch panel) and the movable horizontal cables extending to the telecommunications outlets (TOs).
Crimpers - to pinch or press together (as the margins of a pie crust) in order to seal.
Fish Tape - a tool used by electricians to route new wiring through walls and electrical conduit.
Cable Toner – tests cables
Continuity Tester - an item of electrical test equipment used to determine if an electrical path can be established between two points; that is if an electrical circuit can be made.
Category 5e/6 Cable - Cat-5e network cabling is used as a cabling infrastructure for 10BASE-T (Ethernet), full duplex 100BASE-TX (Fast Ethernet) and 1000BASE-T (Gigabit Ethernet, or GbE) networks.
Binder Groups - A group of wire pairs bound together, usually by some sort of color-coded plastic tape or thread.
Hybrid/Composite Cable - A communications cable having both optical and metallic signal-carrying components.
Pulling Cable - A phrase used to describe the act of running network cable from one location to another.
Wavelengths of Light - the distance, measured in the direction of propagation of a wave, between two successive points in the wave that are characterized by the same phase of oscillation.
EMI - a naturally occurring phenomena when the electromagnetic field of one device disrupts, impedes or degrades the electromagnetic field of another device by coming into proximity with it.
Optical Fiber Strand - a very thin, flexible glass or plastic strand along which large quantities of information can be transmitted in the form of light pulses: used in telecommunications, medicine, and other fields.
Index of Refraction - The ratio of the speed of light in a vacuum to the speed of light in a medium under consideration.
Cable Jacket - A protective outer covering for a cable. Depending on the intended use for the cable and the operational environment, it may protect against moisture, abrasion, magnetic fields, radiation, and so on. Some cables have more than one jacket.
Cladding Sizes - A protective or insulating layer fixed to the outside of a building or another structure.
Multi-fiber Cables - A fiber-optic cable having two or more fibers, each of which is capable of serving as an independent optical transmission channel.
Differential Mode Delay - the difference in the time delays amongst the fiber's propagating modes caused by imperfections or non-ideality of the fiber refractive index profile.
Chromatic Dispersion - a term used to describe the spreading of a light pulse as it travels down a fiber when light pulses launched close together (high data rates) spread too much and result in errors and a loss of information.