EIT PREPARED BY: CHARITY.

M DEE I

STRUCTURED CABLING
A structured cabling system is a complete system of cabling and associated
hardware, which provides a comprehensive telecommunications infrastructure.

This infrastructure serves a wide range of uses, such as to provide telephone

service or transmit data through a computer network. It should not be device
dependent.

We further define a structured cabling system in terms of ownership. The

structured cabling system begins at the point where the service provider (sp)
terminates. This point is the point of demarcation (demarc) or network interface
device (nid).

The industry standard term for a network installation that serves a relatively small
area (such as a structured cabling installation serving a building) is a local area
network (lan). There are also metropolitan area networks (mans) and wide area
networks (wans).

Structured cabling systems fall into six subsystems.

Entrance facilities.

This is where the telephone wiring or internet access provider connects to the
business’s network.

Equipment rooms.

Large networks have this environmentally controlled room that houses wiring
equipment and consolidation points.

Backbone cabling.

These systems facilitate communications between the equipment rooms and

entrance facilities.

Horizontal cabling.

This cabling connects telecommunications rooms to individual outlets and work

areas on each floor.

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Telecommunications rooms.

These connect between the backbone cabling and horizontal cabling.

Work-area components.

This hardware and cabling connect end-user equipment to outlets, dialling them
into the network.

The advantages of structured cabling are:

• consistency – a structured cabling systems means the same cabling systems for
data, voice and video.

• support for multi-vendor equipment – a standard-based cable system will support

applications and hardware even with mix & match vendors.

• simplify moves/adds/changes – structured cabling systems can support any

changes within the systems.

• simplify troubleshooting – with structured cabling systems, problems are less

likely to down the entire network, easier to isolate and easier to fix.

• support for future applications – structured cabling system supports future

applications like multimedia, video conferencing etc with little or no upgrade pain.

Overview

Structured cabling network diagram.

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Types of Topology
There are five types of topology in computer networks:

1. Mesh Topology
2. Star Topology
3. Bus Topology
4. Ring Topology
5. Hybrid Topology

Mesh Topology

In mesh topology each device is connected to every other device on the network
through a dedicated point-to-point link.

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Advantages of Mesh topology

1. No data traffic issues as there is a dedicated link between two devices
which means the link is only available for those two devices.

2. Mesh topology is reliable and robust as failure of one link doesn’t affect
other links and the communication between other devices on the network.

3. Mesh topology is secure because there is a point to point link thus

unauthorized access is not possible.

4. Fault detection is easy.

Disadvantages of Mesh topology

1. Amount of wires required to connected each system is tedious and
headache.

2. Since each device needs to be connected with other devices, number of

I/O ports required must be huge.

3. Scalability issues because a device cannot be connected with large

number of devices with a dedicated point to point link.

Star Topology

•
In star topology each device in the network is connected to a central
device called hub.

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•
Unlike Mesh topology, star topology doesn’t allow direct communication
between devices, a device must have to communicate through hub.

•
If one device wants to send data to other device, it has to first send the
data to hub and then the hub transmits that data to the designated device.

Advantages of Star topology

1. Less expensive because each device only need one I/O port and needs to be
connected with hub with one link.
2. Easier to install
3. Less amount of cables required because each device needs to be connected
with the hub only.
4. Robust, if one link fails, other links will work just fine.
5. Easy fault detection because the link can be easily identified.

Disadvantages of Star topology

1. If hub goes down everything goes down, none of the devices can work without
hub.
2. Hub requires more resources and regular maintenance because it is the
central system of star topology.

Bus Topology

In bus topology there is a main cable and all the devices are connected to this
main cable through drop lines. There is a device called tap that connects the
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drop line to the main cable. Since all the data is transmitted over the main cable,
there is a limit of drop lines and the distance a main cable can have.

Advantages of bus topology

1. Easy installation, each cable needs to be connected with backbone cable.
2. Less cables required than Mesh and star topology

Disadvantages of bus topology

1. Difficultly in fault detection.
2. Not scalable as there is a limit of how many nodes you can connect with
backbone cable.

Ring Topology

In ring topology each device is connected with the two devices on either side of
it. There are two dedicated point to point links a device has with the devices on
the either side of it. This structure forms a ring thus it is known as ring topology. If
a device wants to send data to another device then it sends the data in one
direction, each device in ring topology has a repeater, if the received data is
intended for other device then repeater forwards this data until the intended
device receives it.

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Advantages of Ring Topology

1. Easy to install.
2. Managing is easier as to add or remove a device from the topology only two
links are required to be changed.

Disadvantages of Ring Topology

1. A link failure can fail the entire network as the signal will not travel forward due
to failure.
2. Data traffic issues, since all the data is circulating in a ring.

Hybrid topology

A combination of two or more topology is known as hybrid topology. For example

a combination of star and mesh topology is known as hybrid topology.

Advantages of Hybrid topology

1. We can choose the topology based on the requirement for example, scalability
is our concern then we can use star topology instead of bus technology.
2. Scalable as we can further connect other computer networks with the existing
networks with different topologies.

Disadvantages of Hybrid topology

1. Fault detection is difficult.
2. Installation is difficult.
3. Design is complex so maintenance is high thus expensive

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