Why you need a professional
Professional network cabling installation guarantees that the job is done correctly and will support your network’s primary mission: keeping you connected and making you money. A cable plant, or physical infrastructure that isn’t properly installed can lead to a whole plethora of problems.
What Can Happen When Your Network Cabling Isn’t Professionally Installed
Sure, anyone can tug and yank some cable around your building or office, drop it down some walls to the outlet boxes and punch it down on RJ-45 jacks. They might even be able to drop it into your telecom closets and punch it down on the backs of your patch panels. But will they do it right?
Network cabling installation is more delicate than one would think. If too much force is used to pull it in, the copper cabling inside can be stretched, causing connectivity issues. If it’s pulled too hard around corners, the outer jacket and inner insulation can be stripped off, causing what we call shiners. Shiners can cause shorts in the cable, causing your data to get lost. These short circuits might not appear when the installer performs a wire map on the cable.
Cat5/6/6a/7 cabling can’t withstand very severe bend radii or kinks in the cable. Improper routing and pulling the cabling too tight/not giving the cable enough slack can cause bend radii that are out of tolerances for the installed cable, causing crosstalk that is outside of acceptable specifications. This can cause data collisions as well as packet loss on your network.
Testing the Cable Plant Versus Certifying the Cable Plant
Any so-called “network cabling installer” can go down to Home Depot or Lowes and buy a wire mapping tool and use it to test the cable they install. And they can even tell you ‘yes’ when you ask them if they test the installed physical plant after installing it and punching it down on the panels and in the offices.
However, a cable map only tells the person performing the test that the pairs are properly connected and that there’s continuity. Yes, these are two pieces of very important information. However, they aren’t enough to tell you if the network cabling installation is going to be able to live up the demands that you place on it.
On the other hand, only professional cable installers will have the latest cabling test equipment that will allow them to certify the cabling installations that they perform. When an installation company certifies the cabling that they install, they test it for all of the metrics that the EIA/TIA specified. When a cable plant is certified, it means that is has passed a series of very stringent testing for crosstalk (Near End, Far End, Power Sum, and Power Sum Extended Length), wiremap (Making sure that the same wire connects to the same pin on both ends and that the pairs are properly paired), cable length, attenuation, loss (insertion and return), just to name a few of the parameters that a cable plant must pass in order to be certified.
Our Network Cabling Installation Services
We are a professional network cabling installation company. When you contract with us, we will send our qualified techs in to walk your building. During this first step, they will make note of any peculiarities of the installation, such as if there are any firewalls that will need to be penetrated during the cabling installation. Firewall penetrations must not detract from the fire resistance of the wall, so, during our installation, we will take the proper precautions to maintain the fire rating of these walls when we must penetrate them.
Our techs will take every step possible to protect your cabling during the installation process. This includes monitoring bend radii, installation of proper cable supports, and properly dressing the cable as it comes into your telecom closet spaces. We will also properly document every single cable that we install so that you know where each of them punches down in the closet and terminates on the office floor.
When our technicians turn the cable plant over to you, it will be ready for your network people to come in and start installing patch cables from the patch panels to your routers and switches to bring your network up as quickly and efficiently as possible. They will turn over to your designated contact person a complete network cabling certification report. This report is a printed report that delineates the test results of every cable drop in your office or building, with the exact test results that each cable received. We won’t turn the plant over to you until every outlet/cable passes the certification testing.
Whether you need adds, moves, or changes done, or you’re remodeling your office space and need 50 to 100 new cable drops, single panel or switch installation, we’ll provide the professional installation service that will give you piece of mind that you have the best cabling installation possible.