Unraveling the Art of Cable Management: Insights from a Standards Expert Henry Franc RCDD OSP

Prepare to be enlightened and entertained as Henry Franc, a master of the cabling universe and chair of the TIA TR-42 Engineering Standards Committee, joins us for a lively exchange on the often contentious world of cable combing. Whether you're a staunch Velcro supporter or a tie wrap aficionado, Henry's anecdotes and insights promise to add spark to the old debate. From trade talk to laughter, we bridge the gap between the nitty-gritty of installations and the stories that color our industry, reminding everyone that your voice and expertise matter in shaping the connectivity landscape.

Cable myths? Debunked. Best practices? Demystified. As we steer through the complexities of cable installation, we'll clear up common misconceptions that even seasoned pros might believe. Discover how attention to detail is not just about workmanship but also speaks volumes to customers who don't mind paying for top-notch reliability. You'll also get a sneak peek into the technical trenches, where we dismantle fears about Power over Ethernet and dissect real-world applications that assure the integrity of our data highways.

Join us on a journey from past to present, reminiscing about the days of Cat5 and the leap to Cat6A, and how these evolutions in standards have impacted the field. Henry's stories from the trenches bring to life the need for practical standards that resonate with the hands-on experience of technicians. So, unravel the mysteries of cable management with us, and learn why sometimes, the best insights come from those who've been in the pathways, conduits, and telecom rooms themselves.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey wire monkeys, welcome to another episode of let's talk cabling. This episode we're talking about cable cobing. Should you do it? Do it or should you not do it? So welcome to the show where we tackle a tough question submitted by installers, estimators, project managers, ict personnel, where we are connecting at the human level so that we can connect the world. If You're watching this show on YouTube, would you mind hitting the bell button and the subscribe button to be notified when new content is being produced? If you're listening to us on one of the audio podcast platforms, would you mind leaving us a five-star rating? Those simple little steps helps us take on the algorithm so we can educate and encourage and enrich the lives of people in the ICT industry.

Speaker 1: 1:00

Thursday nights, 6 pm Eastern Standard Time. What are you doing? You know I do a live stream, right, I do it on LinkedIn, facebook, youtube, where you get your ask your favorite rcdd, and you know that's me. Questions about installation, certification, estimation, project management. I even do career path questions, but I can hear you now. But, chuck, I'm driving my truck at 6 pm On Thursdays. I don't want to crash and get into an action. Not a problem, I got you covered. They're recorded and you can find them at let's talk cablingcom. And finally, while this show is free and will always remain free, if you find value in this content, would you mind clicking on that qr code right there? You can buy me a cup of coffee. You can even schedule a 15 minute one-on-one call with me after hours, of course, and you also can visit our amazon link page on the web page when you can see the tools of stuff that we recommend, and then I'll make a small stipend off that you won't pay more, but I'll make a small commission with all that stuff goes back and helping pay for the podcast.

Speaker 1: 2:05

On this episode I wanted to address cable coming. This is one of those topics that almost always starts an argument On the internet. Not that it takes a whole lot to start an argument on the internet nowadays, but you want to start an argument. It's. It's to use velcro or tire apps, that's one. Union or non union, that's another. And then the third one is should you cable come or not? Cable come because technicians are opinionated about it. Now I know I've got my feelings on it, but I wanted to bring in a fellow subject matter expert on this. So I want to welcome to the show first time. Mr Henry Frank Henry, how are you doing today?

Speaker 2: 2:43

I'm doing fantastic, chuck, thank you. And there's actually a fourth way to start an argument, because do you know what rcdd Really stands for?

Speaker 1: 2:52

really can't do diddly.

Speaker 2: 2:54

Nope, royal canadian donut designer. Oh, okay, yeah, yeah, I don't, I don't like, that's what we called it.

Speaker 1: 3:01

Yeah, I don't like the really can't do diddly because it kind of downplays the rcdd, but. But I've heard lots of them over the years but I've never heard the donut one, the donut design. I like that one.

Speaker 2: 3:12

Oh yeah, well, you know you can't throw a stone in Canada without hitting the Tim Horton.

Speaker 1: 3:16

So that's a fact. That's a fact. I've been to Canada a couple times. I've been up here to teach classes. Um, I've done classes in toronto. Um, I even went to a small little town called smith falls or smiths falls or some some little mining town. It only had like one hotel in the whole entire place, so it was a pretty interesting place. I love, I love teaching up there. I just don't like coming back to the us, because when I'm coming back, I've got my black pelican cases loaded up with gear and you would think that I was on the 10 most wanted list, you know coming back here with all the kind of gear you know? Yes, sir, it is what it is. So for the people who may not know you, henry, why don't you go and give yourself an introduction?

Speaker 2: 3:58

tell us who you are, um, how you got in this industry, who you work for, so we can build some credibility, yeah absolutely so, henry Frank, and you know, right now my day job is with bellden and I'm the smart building solutions Um consulting team leader for the americas. So if you're working with us and working with my team, um, you know that that's who I work for as my day job. But then the company is also gracious enough to uh Sponsor me to participate in industry standards. Uh, my background is much like yours, chuck. You and I both started out in the field Um, I started out in the 80s.

Speaker 2: 4:43

After leaving university, I started being an installer and worked my way up Through in the throughout the industry into different jobs. Every time somebody said, do you want to try this? The answer was yes. So I encourage everybody that's listening, you know, especially if you're an installer, try something and if you like it, do it. And if you don't keep doing what you're doing, that's fine. But keep growing, keep learning. Um. And back in the late 90s I was really interested about industrial networks and how they were evolving, and you know I saw ethernet and structure cable hanging over the world. So I became part of standards and I've made that uh part of my day job.

Speaker 2: 5:25

So the company supports me. So I'm the chair of the tia Uh tr 42 engineering standards committee. So whenever you hear people talking about, you know 568 for uh Generic cabling, or 942 for data centers or 1179 for health care. That's those engineering committees. Much like bixie has the, the committees for the rcd and for its standards, the telecommunications industry association also has a group of engineers that uh create standards, and so I participate in that. And the reason I do is because, even though I work for a vendor, I don't know how to make a cable. I don't know how to make a fiber or copper cable. I look at it from the customer perspective and I've always found that was something that was missing in standards. So I asked them to uh Continue to support my work there so I can represent Uh the same people that you're serving. Chuck, the, the, the, the builders of these networks, the designers of these networks, and the users of these networks.

Speaker 1: 6:26

So that's my back, nice, so you must run in the same circles as jonathan jew, yeah absolutely yes, jonathan jew is a precious resource of our organization.

Speaker 2: 6:38

Uh, and there will be a collective outcry is sort of. You know we'll hear a disturbance in the force if and when he ever retires. And I just have to force him to retire later than me. So it doesn't bother me too much. Uh, because he is the editor of so many documents and contribute so heavily. It's uh.

Speaker 1: 6:57

It's amazing, yeah, he's uh. A lot of times I've got a complete set of the copy of the the ti standards. I'm the podcast bother when I've got him here and uh, and you know the finding some it's funny because I've read the standards. But sometimes somebody will ask me a question about the standards. I'm like I know I've read that and then and then trying to find it because I don't have, I haven't print for him, not in, not in, uh, um, pdf file. So it's kind of harder to find it print for him. So jonathan jew's my go-to. I usually shoot a message hey, um, I know the standard says this, but where does it say that? Again, I mean literally. Well, like within 20 minutes, build my god response back from him and he's like oh, here it is and he's just, he is just, this industry, like you said, and when he retires, this entry is gonna take a hit and he really will.

Speaker 2: 7:44

And this industry is built upon the backs of people that Give back. This is part of what I love about this industry. I mean you and I and jonathan and guys like ray amplet who, who sadly passed away this year Were people that built this industry Through school of hard knocks, you know so it was really an infancy in the 80s and 90s, as we all did this, and it requires that continued investment and commitment in that community that I don't think it exists really anywhere else. So for those of you listening, you know, please participate. You know, whether it's big C, tia or however you can, you're in a great industry and the more you Give the industry, the more the industry is gonna give back to you.

Speaker 1: 8:30

Yeah, one of the things I like to tell people all the time, and I usually do that. I usually do this when Jonathan's on the show. You know you usually tell people look, you don't have to be a, a PhD in electronics, you just have to have a Giving heart to want to give this all, because there's some, I guarantee you, there's some part of experience that you've got to that you can go to this group and you can bring that valuable information. You don't have to be a subject matter expert, you don't have to be an RCDD, you don't have to have that. You know, like I said, that PhD you set to have the heart to serve and and and from serving on committee that's.

Speaker 1: 9:06

I've never served on a standards committee, but I've served on a couple Bixie committees. You know, wow. And one of the thing I learned pretty quickly is it's like free training, you learn a lot of stuff. And how do you calculate? How do you calculate the what's the word I'm looking for? You can tell it's first show of the year, because I don't have all the words in my head right now. How can you calculate the benefit? There it is. How can you calculate the benefit of all the relationships that you build from that, from those committee meetings.

Speaker 2: 9:38

And I'm glad you, you brought up relationships because you know people will look. You know, like I expanded you know I talked about my team earlier like I expanded my team, I doubled my team and people said, hey, you know, we want to hire. You know, hire more people, can we get another? You said you're never gonna get another. Me, no one is ever gonna be able to replace Chuck or Bob or Anna or Rita or Christy or whoever is in your team, because we're some of our experience and expertise and that's all different.

Speaker 2: 10:10

But it's that relationship word that you keep keyed in on is when I first and don't let this ever scare you away from participating in Bixie or Nika or any industry organization, at first you're gonna be overwhelmed and you're gonna say, oh, my god, there's all these people that are smarter than me, and that was my certainly my first reaction. And then you're gonna realize we all put our pants on one leg at a time. Yep, they're not really any smarter than you. They might have more experience than you and they might have more expertise than you, but the way they get that is through their relationships. So the value that a person like you bring, chucker or myself, to my organization my colleagues Isn't with. What I know is with the relationship networks right, you know, like you said, it's like.

Speaker 2: 10:57

It's like phone a friend. You know I got a phone, jonathan. And again, you know ray emplit was. There's only so much room on my desktop and I'm not a grounding and bonding expert, so soon as something grounding and bonding shows up on my desktop it gets pushed off. You know I'm quicker rather than later. But then Participate, participating in standards, is like okay, I know who Mark Harger is, I know who ray emplit is, I Can phone them and get an answer, email them or text them or whatever, and that's really the the benefit of participation and community.

Speaker 2: 11:31

I hope we never lose that spirit and because there's too many things that are nuanced, like our discussion about combing when, if you just read the available literature online, I Talk about a knowledge hierarchy. We talk about big data. Well, data is only ones and zeros and then it becomes information and then you have to Take it from data to Information, to knowledge, to wisdom, and you add context and you know that is more forward-looking. You know the data is more historical backwards facing and you need to be able to filter it. You may have some great Google kung fu, but if you don't understand the contents and the nuance, sometimes it'll lead you to the wrong direction.

Speaker 1: 12:21

I'm glad you put, I'm glad you bought that. I'm in front of you for the keen on that. I want to say I'm glad to know that I wasn't the only one who felt intimidated the first time I said I'm committee meetings, I'm looking at these guys and these are industry Titans because you know, I've seen them around Bixie conference stuff and they're kind of like almost like the, the rock stars and stuff and I'm like I'm in the same room with these guys. You know, and you do, you learn, you learn, you learn so much, you learn so much and it's it's absolutely a great thing to do.

Speaker 1: 12:49

And you, you know, you mentioned about like bonding and grounding. You know, that is kind of one of my, one of my fortes. I'm not gonna say I'm a son, not a, I'm not a bonding, grounding engineer, but I have a lot of experience and I was a volunteer firefighter for about five years. So safety is really one of my key things of fire stopping and bonding and grounding. So I'm really fluent with what the standards say to do and why you should do it. And all this up although I'm still trying to find somebody to come on the show to to explain at a Technician level, not an engineer level. Okay, ground loops, what they are, and how do you find them? How they? Because that's that's one of those Gray, nebulous areas in our industry that everybody says, well, that's gonna cause a ground loop. And you know, I've had, I've talked to engineers offline and they're like yeah, that's not a ground, that's not a ground.

Speaker 2: 13:44

So well, bad news and good news, bad news, bad news for you. Good news for me is I have no clue on how to explain that. Remember brown bonding grounding off my desktop. Good news is and again this is highlights the importance of relationship. I do have a couple names, so I'll follow up with you and before I out them, you know, live on camera, I'll get you.

Speaker 1: 14:07

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't don't call the names out here, just in case, because you know it's, it's. I found that a lot of people are willing to come on the show. The biggest fear that they usually have is they think that they're gonna be talking to a large group of people and, yes, you will be talking to a large group of people, but recorded. I'm really good at editing right. So I'm you. Meet me in person, you know you ever see me walking on a big city conference? I am nowhere near as articulate as I am on the podcast, because I'm really good at video editing, you know right, and people like you and I will never be company spokes.

Speaker 2: 14:45

People will never be marketing experts, right, but I hope that we all have credibility because we're earnest. Yeah, we may misspeak, we may use colloquialisms, we may drop the occasional expletive, but I Think that shows a candor. Yes, as opposed to pandering right. Yes, and so I love to make fun of marketing people when I make my speeches like I'm not gonna be perfect, far from it, but that's okay. I don't need to work in marketing, I work in the real world.

Speaker 1: 15:21

There you go. Where were the rubber meets the road?

Speaker 2: 15:23

So you wrote yeah, and you and they and hopefully marketing people never in my organization never watch my presentations when I say that, because otherwise they'd be grossly offended, because it's another valuable skill, but I just don't have.

Speaker 1: 15:36

Yeah so you had mentioned earlier about how the information changes and stuff, and and this is why I wanted to Remember how I came across your article. You must have, you must have posted it on LinkedIn and then, yep, because I don't remember if you and I were friends before I reached out to you or not.

Speaker 2: 15:53

I don't remember, but somehow popped up in my feet and yeah, we were connections but hadn't talked a lot and it probably popped up in your feed because there's a lot of tribal knowledge that we're losing.

Speaker 1: 16:06

Oh yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And and that's why I let me know how long ago did you write that article? Just out of curiosity, you remember?

Speaker 2: 16:12

I Think it was sometime last year, but it's been something that's so. I have a whole longer list of these articles. Then I'm working on, with marketing's help and our professional writer to clean up my language. But it's been a sore point for years Because there's a lot of myth and Misconceptions in our industry about guidelines. Yes, you talked about the fight zip ties versus Velcro. Use zip ties if you want. You stainless steel zip ties that you sharpen the edges if you want. Just make sure you don't over cinch them and just make sure that they're not on a bend so they don't just or cut the jacket right now, considering they have sharp edges and sharpening them would make it more Difficult. You have to ask your question why in the heck would you want? But there's always gonna be a place for them though.

Speaker 1: 17:06

There's always gonna be a place for them. Yeah, you know, especially if, like you're, you're tie-rapping like inter doctor or maybe some high-pair count backbone cable and stuff like that and a lot of technicians, they're their preferences to use tie wraps in the cable tray on the floor but then use Velcro in the telecom rooms. Yeah and like and that's you read. It's another thing. But what I was tying into was and just kind of shows you why our industry is so confused Right, yes, there was, and this kind of what he came in like.

Speaker 1: 17:36

When I saw this post and I can't remember where I saw the Post was on a once it was faced, but I can't say it but somebody said look, fluke says you should randomize your cable. Fluke, a well-known company in our industry. You know they're considered thought leaders and I don't get wrong, fluke's a great company. They got a lot of great engineers and so I went and luckily, the guy put the link in there and I went and looked at the link. The article was from like 2009. Yep, dude, that that's old news. That's old news you got. You gotta be careful when it was, especially with our industry when you look up information. When was it published?

Speaker 2: 18:16

Yes and.

Speaker 2: 18:18

What was the context? So Alien crosstalk has always been an issue, but we've never defined it, we've never quantified it, we've never Created the guidance around it like we did until we came to category 6a. Is Is crosstalk or alien crosstalk from one cable to another cable instead of between pairs? Sorry to waggle my fingers at you, it's always been an issue, but it became a bigger issue when we got to category 6a because we were trying to do 10 gig signals, which you know, the closer to the edge that you go, there's the smaller margin for error if you look at it that way, including crosstalk, an alien crosstalk, which again is between adjacent cables. And so I always loved combed cables.

Speaker 1: 19:19

The statement of pride in your workmanship.

Speaker 2: 19:23

That is exactly why, because if I see a nicely combed job and a neatly done job, I'm almost guaranteed that it's going to be done right, and then it's going to work because somebody took pride in their installation yes. So for people that are old like you and I like thick wire ethernet where you had. If you have a really old building, you might see this yellow thick wire ethernet cable but the size of your thumb every couple of meters you'll see a black band that's thick net and we had a guy that was so good.

Speaker 2: 20:02

when you remember, you used to put your thick wire in a telecom room. You had to loop it. He figured out how to make the Olympic rings and he had a system of doing it. So those black rings where you'd put the transceivers with the vampire tops would be on the bottom of all the Olympic rings. Nice.

Speaker 2: 20:21

And so you knew as soon as you walked in that he was eliminating chances for error, eliminating chances for things to be done incorrectly, and because it took pride in workmanship and pride and ownership, the customer was satisfied. And that's the same reason I'll say you know, skip to the end, comb your cables If you want to take pride in your workmanship, do it, not saying that having things loosely arranged isn't appropriate. Sometimes you know if I'm doing something and again I'll use the example of like a temporary sporing event where you know I'm going to go in one day and out the next Not that it should be a randomized rats nest, but you don't necessarily have to have it comb. Right.

Speaker 2: 21:00

If you're doing something combed I know somebody took pride of ownership and again, it's not an issue for alien crosstalk, with a caveat. So if you're dealing with a reputable manufacturer, any of the ones that you can name off the top of your head, the top 10 manufacturers or you know whatever manufacturers, top five or top 10 manufacturers in the Americas you will not have a problem with alien crosstalk Because what we do is as manufacturers. When you're designing a cable, you have engineers that do it. Engineers always work to the worst case. When you build a building, you know in Canada, you worry about snow load, so you calculate what's the most amount of snow. You might have 20 feet of snow on your roof. So let's calculate the snow load for 20 feet of snow Using the analogy of alien crosstalk where you have, you know, your victim cable and then your aggressor cable doing signaling.

Speaker 2: 22:00

And I can't give you a. I don't have enough fingers to do the six around one. But if you look at a honeycomb, a honeycomb is arranged in a six around one scenario. You have your center cable and then there's the six cables around. So you would have six aggressor and one victim in the middle. That's the worst case for alien cross, because we don't know how things are going to be done in the field, because there's variabilities in the field. You know your cables get bent, the geometry gets changed, you might be installing next to lights or power cables or anything else.

Speaker 2: 22:36

We always have to take the worst case scenario so a reputable manufacturer again, any of the top list will go and test everything in a six around one configuration For a full hundred meter channel, while 90 meter permanent link, where what we do is because I've seen it in the lab and I've seen our setup and I've seen other people's setups, because you see it, when they do, when they give a testing and standards Is they go six around one and then they go and tape it up either with like a mesh grip or they tape it or tie wrap it every meter for the 90 meters and then they test for alien crosstalk just to make sure it's not a problem. So that's what the manufacturers do. The myth around not doing that is because a you don't always have reputable manufacturers. Some of the offshore stuff, some of the really weird, you know? Hey, I can find it for $1.99 on Google types.

Speaker 1: 23:38

Amazon.

Speaker 2: 23:39

Amazon's got cat six a for $32 a thousand feet, yeah you get what you pay for Exactly Well, and you see some of the things and they can't even spell category right Exactly. And then you know, which is a dead giveaway. So go to the CCCA website. Ccca, so three season of a, that that's a group of manufacturers, it's an industry organization like Big C or TIA, but not as well known, but they come up with a lot of content about this and they talk about counterfeits. But again, while we were all doing the testing, while we were developing the cables.

Speaker 2: 24:18

So you have your physics one on one from high school. You know you have your right handed rule and hopefully my camera's flipped so showing the right handed rule. Otherwise it looks like I'm holding up my left handed, my left fist, which is what not to do. So if any of you are taking electricity and magnetism and you're right handed, put your pencil down when you're doing your test, because then otherwise, instead of doing the right hand rule, to do the left, and that's how you'll fail. You know, I'm the first time like I did, but if you remember your high school physics, the worst case for interference is conductors in parallel.

Speaker 1: 24:54

Right.

Speaker 2: 24:56

The best case is conductors perpendicular, and that's where that guidance came about randomization. So the best thing you can do is not have things in parallel. So the reason that guidance came out is because in category six a, the a stands for nothing, doesn't stand for anything at all. That's another myth that we can talk about. People call it augmented cat six, which it's, which it's not. But when we're testing cat six for higher speeds, we noticed the problem of alien crosstalk and they said what's going on Well with poorly designed cables? This is going into the engineering behind it. It's, it's balanced between the pairs. So the difference between a four conductor cable wagging my fingers at you and a two pair cable they're both four conductor cables but only a two pair cable or, in the case of our category cable, a four pair cable, is because there's balance between the pairs. That's why you'll see different twists on blue, orange, green and brown and you'll see different recipes depending on the manufacturer, depending on the part number. They have different recipes, just like a chocolate cake. You have a thousand different chocolate cake recipes. They're all chocolate cake, but they do that. They have different twist lays, different ways of twisting it, per inch, more or less, you know clockwise or anti clockwise, to keep the randomization going, and that's why we do all this testing. But when you have all those neatly combed you know historical cables in a tray, cat five, the cat six, which weren't tested for alien crosstalk, we had a how to augment your cable plant if you have to go beyond one gig and things like you know, swapping out your, your connectivity or higher grade of connectivity or randomizing the bundles. Instead of having them all neatly comb, just have them all sort of randomization so you don't have the parallel effect. And so that became. Because that was published in the TSB, because the, the final document wasn't ready, it became a rule and that myth just kept growing and growing, and growing. And this is why participation in standards or in Bixie or your industry organization is important, because anybody can read it in a book. We could create an iPhone app for the Bixie TDM. We could create an iPhone app for the TIA family of standards, but there's all the context that's missing. It's not just what's in there, but why things aren't or how things get in there. So once we did the testing, any reputable manufacturer can go six around one, because we have to offer warranties around that for that full 90 meters.

Speaker 2: 27:45

So, as far as I'm concerned, comb your cables. It shows pride and workmanship. It'll get you, as a technician, called back to a job. So long as you're not, you know, finally combing it. You know, like combing the desert using that old spaceballs analogy. As long as you're not taking too long, they're going to call you back. Because it shows pride in your work, You're going to have better yields. The thing is going to work right the first time. Because you're taking pride in your work. And because you're taking pride in your work, your customers are going to want you back. Your partners are going to want you back, you know. If you want to go to the ultimate version of combing, you know, do a search for lacing cables. Yes, the telcos used to do this with lacing threads and it was a skill I couldn't do it.

Speaker 1: 28:31

Yeah, look up, look up Sean Rep. Sean Rep's all over social media. He, that guy, is a cable dressing artist. Even in my best day I was only half as good as him.

Speaker 1: 28:43

And I mean you could, you could put for those who don't know what cable combing is it's just a practice of bundling your cable, so literally where you can put your finger on any one of the cables on the outside, bundle and then follow it all the way down, all the way across the rack, all the way down the panel. There's no diving in and out and all this stuff. And what I wanted to add to that was if somebody's, if somebody's paying that attention to detail, to something as simple as dressing a cable, then you know what the important stuff, the testing, the terminations, you know those are going to be done right because they pay the attention to details, to the small details. And there are some companies, like you said, I've got a lot of installation experience there are some customers out there who are early adopters of technology and stuff like that, but they also like to have the best of the best and they're willing to pay extra for that beautifully cable comb job. That's. That's another argument you get into.

Speaker 1: 29:39

Some people argue about is why I spend all that extra time. Why not just throw it in there Again?

Speaker 2: 29:46

but. But, chuck, let's turn that around. I want the customer that wants it combed because they realize it has value. And if they realize they have value, they're willing to pay for a good contractor instead of the again the misconception of two bobs in the truck, because you can be a small outfit and still do really great work. Some of the best outfits I know are small outfits, essentially a two bob in a truck.

Speaker 2: 30:15

But if you're doing good work and a customer doesn't want to pay for that good work, it also works in reverse. So from a customer perspective, seeing good workmanship should attract you to them, should make you want them want to keep you. By the same token, if you're working for a customer that just says, slap it in, I don't care, just throw it in. Why do I not want to put a wiring closet in a janitor's closet above the sink? Yes, if you don't care, they're not going to value your work or your craft or your skill or your experience. So those are the people where you're always going to have to win the race to the bottom. Well, somebody's going to do it for $200 a drop man, it's going to be $199, $198, and so on. As they keep googling. You're just going to have to keep winning the race to the bottom every time, because they don't value quality.

Speaker 1: 31:08

Until you find that two bobs in a truck will do for a hundred and a quarter run. I don't know if you guys have this term up in Canada, but down here in the US we call them trunk slammers.

Speaker 2: 31:22

Yes, when I used to be a technician, one of our biggest competitors were trunk slammers and they did piece work. So at the time it was showing my age because not only was it in the 1900s, it was the last century of the last millennium, they were putting in drops for like $15 a drop, $20 a drop for labor. Then they would say it's like $15 a drop, we'll do anything. They were always hiring and they always had ads in there. And again, when you see those trunk slammers out there, those piece work type guys, it's a great conversation with your client too, because it's sort of a win fast, lose fast. They said how come you can't compete with company X? Because company X says they'll do every drop for $15.

Speaker 2: 32:19

I was like, okay, well, here's the newspaper article for again showing my age, the newspaper article with the ad for labor company X is looking for installers. We pay men on a wage, no experience necessary. Okay, is this who you want, mr Customer? Seriously, and maybe there was a myth that data was a convenience or a nice to have. Oh, it's a requirement nowadays.

Speaker 2: 32:47

But data is becoming absolutely mission like they talk about mission critical systems and everybody goes to data centers right away. But if I'm a hospital, when I'm on that hospital bed, that really you know stealing from Monty Python the most expensive machine, the machine that's supposed to go bing. Better, go bing when I'm on the freaking table.

Speaker 1: 33:12

I'm a huge Monty Python fan and my wife isn't, and I tell her all the time. There are two types of people in this world Monty Python fans and the people who just don't get it. And I say that every time I get in an elevator I always say quick go Get the machine that goes bing.

Speaker 2: 33:29

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 33:30

As soon as. I'm in a hospital.

Speaker 2: 33:31

I use that and I use that analogy with people, but it's absolutely mission critical. It's like how many people like okay, you have convenience Wi-Fi in a hotel, but I guarantee you, if you go to that hotel and that Wi-Fi doesn't work, you're either looking for another room at the very least, or for sure you're going to be never going into that hotel again.

Speaker 1: 33:56

We're not using that chain ever again.

Speaker 2: 33:58

Yeah, oh, absolutely. It's not convenient. You know, like when a retail store loses its point of sale because everything's now connected to the cloud, they shut down because they can't work in isolation.

Speaker 1: 34:17

And how do you? How would a company factor in how much money they lose Because a network went down? How do they factor in replacing that lost data? How do they factor in the human labor it's going to take to regenerate that data again? And these are critical things that can happen if you don't pay attention to the details and can cause problems in the long run.

Speaker 2: 34:45

Right, and this is why that quality of workmanship is important, and it's not just for things like combing and alien crosstalk, which is why we created it because there's another myth around combing.

Speaker 2: 34:59

That's not alien crosstalk related. But if you hear about things like limited power limited power was just a way of marketing people to create fear, uncertainty and doubt say, oh my God, what happens if you know I'm sorry if you're using my sarcasm voice what happens if, oh my God, I'm using power over this cable that's going to melt and it's going to start a fire? It's like, well, wait a minute, that's not going to be the cables fault. What happens if your toaster fries out? You blow the breaker. You know, if I go to any wire in my house and take my snips and cut it, what happens? A I get shocked because I'm stupid, but me and my house doesn't go on fire because I've tripped the breaker. So this whole so having the right cable for the right job is important, but this whole myth about oh my God, limited power cable and power over, even if things are going to go on fire, is absolutely ridiculous.

Speaker 2: 35:55

We talk about 100 watts of power for a category cable and they'll talk about loosely bundling things. Well, if you look at how the limited power requirements were taken care of, they did the same thing. They did six around one, and then I forget what the number is past that. So I just kept making the honeycomb. You know, you got one and then you got the six around the one, and then the honeycomb gets bigger and bigger, and bigger and bigger. And then what you have to do is you have to tightly bundle that every meter for the full 90 meter channel.

Speaker 2: 36:26

Take your PoE, run it at full power, Okay, and because you know your devices have their power ratings they had 100 watts but they don't draw anything close to that. You know like most devices are still in the low single digits or low double digits for power consumption on average and then you have to tightly bundle them together, then put them in an environment with no air flow, with a high ambient temperature, and then, yes, you might have temperature rise that exceeds the recommendation of the manufacturer. The reason I'm saying it's not a problem is is, well before you get to the point where they're going to melt or do anything else, the temperature gets so high that the ethernet part of the power over ethernet doesn't work. And as soon as ethernet doesn't work, the power comes off.

Speaker 1: 37:16

The insertion loss will go through the roof as soon as you start getting hot.

Speaker 2: 37:21

Exactly. The only time it's a problem is if you take your category 6A cable, take all the whites and all the colors, twist them together and replace them for an 18 gauge lamp cord, because I know people are doing that every day and again that's my sarcasm voice in there. So even with things like that, what you have to realize is that you know the worst place that you have for power. When you talk about bundling and hey, you know when, when TIA came out with their, their, their power over ethernet, I said you know, keep them loose. You know, keep them randomized. You know, don't bundle them too tight. Again, that's the engineers doing it from a 6 around 1.

Speaker 2: 38:02

And then, you know, just keeping the honeycomb getting bigger into into your hundreds of cables and then discovering a problem when every single one of those hundreds of cables is drawing full 100 watt power at you know 30 degrees C ambient temperature and the temperature rise gets to eyes like is that really the case?

Speaker 2: 38:20

When is the only time those cables are closely bundled together, so a in a data center where you're not really using P O E anymore, but let's say something like a hospital or a university or a hospitality or stadium network, the only time they're really bundled that close together is for that that short three to five meters, while they're in the telecommunication space. That, by the way, is air conditioned, so you don't generally have that problem, you don't. When was the last time you went and grabbed the cable bundle and then, oh God, that's hot, that's that 40 degree C. I'm ready to burn my hand. You know it. These things practically don't happen. People think about the worst case scenario, but the reality is is I have my tight bundle of cable in the telecom and as soon as I go through that penetration, what happens? All my cables do this. Yep, this break up goes away, randomized.

Speaker 1: 39:17

You know. But the good thing is if the V follow. That's why I, like you, know, if you followed the rules again, it's going to guarantee that that cable plan is going to work 99. The old Dove commercials 99 and 44, 100s how many times it's always going to work Right. And let me ask you this since you're, since you're, heavily involved in the standards right, you give your CMP, lp, cmr, lp, and they're actually even referenced in the standards. There's a table, there's a 725, 144, I think it is, that says what's maximum bundle sizes for PoE and it gives you the number of cables based on the conductor size and some amperage and stuff like that. But it says in the verbiage that the table is null and void if you use LP cable.

Speaker 2: 40:03

Right. And then you have to go to the manufacturer and look at their ratings and I can't speak for all manufacturers because I work for one but I don't work for them all and I don't study them all. But I can say you know from my own experience from who I work for when you look at the bundle sizes, like, okay, I'm not worried about it. I rarely have bundle sizes that big Right, and when I do, they're not all drawing power at the same time.

Speaker 1: 40:31

Yeah, because some of the bundle sizes in the NEC are huge and I think the big the best practice, if I remember correctly, is 24 to a bundle, if I remember right. So that's still even far below than what the NEC allows you to go up to.

Speaker 2: 40:45

Well, yeah, like I mean when we did the again, because our engineers did the testing and don't take this number as as as wrote. You can look it up on the website. I don't even know what it's, it's one of those things that's absolutely trivial, so it goes off the desktop. But our numbers are for like a 6a cable, for for type 3poe, like three or 400 cables before you have a problem. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 41:07

And I'm sure all the other you know top vendors out there in the Americas are the same and it's like it's just not an issue, right? So so again, this all comes back to combing it, because if you're combing it, you're taking pride in your work. And then, and that's why you have that three, nines, four, nines, five, nines reliability If they take that much care in their dressing, they're going to take care of the termination. And if they do take care of the termination, I'm you know, I'm sure that they're going to do the right testing.

Speaker 2: 41:39

And when it comes to, you know again, alien crosstalk testing, just and I'm circling back around to that topic, just because this is something I often get from technicians and contractors, chuck is, they'll say, you know, vendor ABCD, you know, through their warranty and certification program they don't require testing for alien crosstalk. And that's true for those vendors, abc and D. But just because I and this is the only, it's not a fight but it's consternation for the contractors They'll say you don't want me to do alien crosstalk testing. It's like, no, I don't care because I've done worse case. But sometimes again, people that don't know better write it into their specifications. So if it's written in the construction specification that you have to do alien crosstalk testing, either in whole or in part you're doing, you're doing, you're doing.

Speaker 1: 42:36

Alien crosstalk testing is what you're doing.

Speaker 2: 42:38

You're stuck doing it. Now, if you want to go and use that as a value engineering option to say, hey, rather than me doing alien crosstalk testing, you know, reach out to a person like Chuck or myself or whoever your, your, your, your manufacturer's rep is. They'll probably write you a letter saying that you know we'll certify without testing it. But I would rather have you invest in work instead of spending money on doing alien crosstalk testing. I'd rather have you invest money in doing the calling, because then I know the pride of the ownership's there.

Speaker 1: 43:09

So what changed in the cable? Because, like I said, I know, when Cat6800 first came out, you said there were and I remember this too. I mean there was a lot of manufacturers saying randomized, randomized, randomized. And now now most manufacturers, most manufacturers now, will say well, you can cable come or randomized, whichever you want to do, we're fine with it. So what changed within the cable? It's still Cat6800 cable. It's it's.

Speaker 2: 43:34

People did all the testing so that guidance came out and was a holdover from the TSB. And again, I forgot the TS TSB, like TSB alphabet suit. I know it's a three-digit letter, whether it's 184 or whatever it is. We can. We can look it up and put it in the notes later. It talked about testing for augmented testing procedures and troubleshooting procedures, just like we did when. You know.

Speaker 2: 44:00

So you and I are old enough to remember the category five to category 5e. Often everybody just calls it category five, which isn't actually correct. It's actually 5e. You and I are old enough to remember when category five was a category and then 5e was different. And remember when we came up with those testing islands, like what happens if your cat 5e system doesn't pass cat 5e? What do you have to do?

Speaker 2: 44:26

And there was, you know, reduce the number of untwists on your termination. There was randomization of cables. There was try changing to new patch chords. Then the next step was try replacing the jacks and then, if that didn't work, then replace the cable. It was absolutely ludicrous, but that's the way you have to think about it as an engineer, because no one's gonna go through all that stuff and test it and go. Hey, it didn't pass cat 5e. Maybe I'm gonna go and loosen all my bundles and test everything again. Well, that still didn't work. So I'm gonna go and replace all my patch chords and test it again. Oh my God, that still didn't work. I'm gonna go and replace it.

Speaker 2: 45:06

You know what I mean, like when it doesn't pass, you just replace it, and so it's absolutely nonsensical. But God love engineers, and again these guys are waiting to your point. You're gonna be intimidated if you join these things, because these people are way smarter than you ever will be. Yep, like, the number of PhDs outnumbers the number of people in the room for God's sake.

Speaker 1: 45:28

Yeah, we definitely need more field people, more installation people, more project managers involved with the standards community.

Speaker 2: 45:36

More practical people to demand answers and demand that they write for the audience. And it's not faulting with people with the PhDs that can figure out how to do the twist lays, it's just they've never been in the field, so they never had to worry about it, right?

Speaker 1: 45:48

and then there's the thing right, I remember this because I took a college class one time. It was statistics and even though I was an estimator, I was good with numbers. It was one of those college class where there's statistics 101, 102. So you had to take two of them back to back. And I remember, halfway through the first class I'm like I'm gonna fail this class because the teacher was not teaching. He was teaching at the PhD level, not our level, and it was just going over my head. You know, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 46:22

So this is why that same thing came about. So it's like, hey, if we have category five-year six systems and we wanna go beyond a gigabit, what are we gonna do? Right? And then because, because remember, Cat 6A came out and Cat 7 even before that.

Speaker 1: 46:41

So, it's not even talking about the whole problem. It's not talking about Cat 7 on this show. Well, that's a different subject.

Speaker 2: 46:46

Yeah, that's a discussion for other days. That's like you know, ron has a good blog on that. Why put a spoiler on a Pinto? Exactly exactly. I wanna put Mickey's on my Pinto.

Speaker 3: 46:58

He's like okay, you can, but why the heck would you want?

Speaker 2: 47:00

to and, sorry guys, you're gonna have to look up what Mickey Tires are and what a Pinto is. But so when we were developing Cat 6A, the 10 gig IEEE interfaces didn't even exist. Okay, they were starting to be developed, so we knew what they were, how they were gonna start doing things, how they were gonna start to do it, and we realized that alien crosstalk was gonna be an issue and we, you know, again being hey, we have all these things that we have to worry about.

Speaker 1: 47:36

So if I have to worry about alien crosstalk.

Speaker 2: 47:37

I'm gonna worry about alien crosstalk to hear, even though the reality is here just like we talked about with power. And so, because the electronics weren't available, people overcompensated, so they came out with all these guidelines that included. You know same things. It's like you know undo less twists, change your patch ports, change your connectors, change your cable. And before it was change your cable it was randomize your cable and then that suddenly just became a rule, right, right, and again when people were failing, and not faulting Fluke or Viavi or any of the testing manufacturers. But if you're testing and you fail, you have to try and find a way to pass. That's the reality, and so you're gonna try and go from least offensive to most defenses. So least offensive is if I can just randomize the cables and it works. Okay, great. But you know alien crosstalks. That's much of a problem. You know the amount of. I've never seen it done in the field. I'd love to see some practical examples where hey, I just randomized a bit and made the bundles a little loose and it worked out.

Speaker 2: 48:52

It's just a historical thing where all of these guidelines came out Right, you know, before there was even an application and so it just became how. In antiquity, the old man on the hill said this, and this is why you know what you're doing here. You know the Bixie manuals, the Bixie committees, the TIA committees, the NICA committees, where it's actually people collaborating is important to participate in.

Speaker 1: 49:21

And that's what I was saying earlier. That's why we need more installers and project managers in there, because that way they can hold the engineers accountable in those conversations Absolutely, because that's who the standards are geared towards. The standards aren't geared to other PhDs. The standards are for the project managers, the estimators, the installers in the field, and if they can't read and understand it because the PhDs are talking, you know, above them, then they're not even gonna read the book. I mean? What's the?

Speaker 2: 49:51

code book.

Speaker 1: 49:52

How many people don't read the code book because it's written in legalese?

Speaker 2: 49:57

And the code book. So again we're talking about. I don't want a little far field, but I agree with everything you're saying. So this is why I still want to maintain my leadership of TIA for another couple of years, because I want us to change philosophically. Instead of writing for ourselves, it's like so you have a bunch of manufacturers writing for themselves how to make their own cables Like okay, well, you already know how to make your own cable.

Speaker 2: 50:19

You're half of your standards or more are for somebody else. Learn how to write for the audience, and I gotta get us to do that. And so this is. And there's a bunch of us in standards that are doing the same thing, People like you and me. That may work for vendors, but we support contractors and end users and engineers and we're trying to do that.

Speaker 1: 50:38

One of the things you mentioned in your article and I hope you can expand on this because I would have thought it'd been the opposite. But you were talking about the bundling the six around one and the length of cable and stuff. But you said that many manufacturers can't pass a six around configuration with four connectors in a shortened channel. See, I would think that alien crosstalk would be worse for longer distances. It'd be more likely to fail longer. Why is it? Why is a four connector channel failing in that short and 24 meter channel?

Speaker 2: 51:13

It's not an alien problem at that point and again I'd have to get one of my engineers in there it's a near end, far end issue. So short is an issue. Long tends to not be an issue because think of it as, like you and I are literally thousands of miles apart. But imagine we're a hundred miles apart If I'm shouting to you. That's the analogy for near end crosstalk, so all of those people can hear that. But if I can shut out the people that are going like this, and then I'm listening for Chuck, I know. And so this is what the electronics does. It filters out that loud interference, for lack of a better word, right, that near end crosstalk, and it filter it out. And the electronics always get better.

Speaker 2: 52:03

So we come up with the guidelines, we always plan for the worst, hope for the best and the reality comes somewhere in the middle. But because you're always planning for the worst, that near end crosstalk, because it's my transmission pairs. You know one, two and seven, eight, you know it's like. I know what this is transmitting. So if I start to hear interference going, the pattern of my waggly fingers on these fingers, I know it's these guys. So I just ignore it and then it's far end is, you know the same thing the far end crosstalk. What happens is when channels get short, if you think about that, we're all shouting at each other, and so the electronic compensation and cancellation and this is where I'll find you somebody much smarter than me if needed. But this is essentially what's happening is short is more difficult because you have all of those near and far end instances being almost the same level and it's hard to distinguish. And by having a four connector channel that is short, it gets even worse because then you get all those back reflections.

Speaker 1: 53:14

So what for the lay person might be listening to this show? What's your explanation of what a four connector channel is, cause I know a lot of people don't truly understand what that means?

Speaker 2: 53:24

Right and so a four connector channel. And there's a slightly different way of explaining it for Fiverr, but slightly different terms. But let's essentially look at it. It's not four connectors, right, it's four connection meetings. And you always exclude the equipment end in the equipment end. So if I'm going from server or switch to device, those connections where I'm plugging into my computer, I'm plugging into my switch, aren't included.

Speaker 2: 53:58

But when I go from my patch cord, so I have a patch cord with a connector, another end plugged into the jacket, the patch panel, that's one made in connection. And then, assuming I have a cross connect, so I have an active to passive where that other patch cord happens, that's your made in connection. So when you have a four connector topology, don't count up the number of connectors because you actually get more than that. It's where the connectors mate, right. So you have a jack. In the case of copper, you have a jack and a plug. So when a jack goes into a plug, that's one made in connection. So you can have four made in connections, excluding the ones on the outside, in a channel Fiverr, slightly different, because there is no plug in jack, there's just two connectors mating through an adapter, right. So we always call it jacks or we call it couplers, but they're really adapters. It's a really weird terminology thing. Cop, is this whole tribal thing right?

Speaker 1: 55:01

Yes, oh yes, you guys are choosing versus power enclosure.

Speaker 2: 55:05

Right, you're cheering for the bills or you're wrong Exactly. I don't get all the hate from anybody, that's not a bills thing, but I'm close to Buffalo so I have to cheer for the bills, and it's the same thing with copper and fiber guys. So it's getting less. I'm sorry, I was gonna say it's getting less so, but it's not. It's always being competitive. So this is why you have fiber people and copper people. They're like big brother or little brother. They're always going to fight. So this is why we have, you know, white, blue, blue, white, white, orange, orange, white, white, green, green, white. But we have a 12 fiber color code where green is repeated twice in fiber and if you go to the extended color code, there's like two more shades of green in there and they can't use tracers, you know. So the fiber guys make fun of the copper guys and say, oh my God, we're so much smarter than your caveman. Oh my God copper sold.

Speaker 2: 56:00

They were using that in the 1800s.

Speaker 1: 56:03

Oh, you're so right. You're so right. The people who do fiber tend to look down on copper people. They absolutely do Not all fiber people, not all fiber people. But there's a definite cycle.

Speaker 2: 56:15

No, I'm saying is a generalization, but then you got to go to the best comeback for that, because I used to have a guy that used to joke like that. One of the product engineers was a fiber guy. He goes I'd ask him copper price? He goes I don't know. I'm not a caveman. I say, oh, but you know what? Maybe you know as a next copper guy, you should listen to the caveman every once in a while, because copper guys are smart enough to figure out what type of cable it is like category three, four, five, five, eight, six, seven, eight. You know outside plant.

Speaker 2: 56:44

We're smart enough to figure it out by reading a label. We don't have to color code it Exactly. Oh, I'm going to use that. And, by the way, we're smart enough that when we do color code things we don't have the same color for two different things. So we don't have one and one and two bull thing orange and all three and all four bull thing Aqua. Right, you know, we're really smart and it just started hilarious. It's that, that ego or the culture of the people that work together.

Speaker 2: 57:09

And you know, once we get beyond all these things, it becomes a lot of fun and it's another one of the great reasons why to participate in these industry organizations, because the more you know, the better off you're going to be. Every part of your job, yeah.

Speaker 1: 57:24

I want to add on to what you were just saying is you know, there's the, not the disconnect, but the, the, the between the copper and the fiber. But we're also in the industry of people who like to ravage other. We like all the time. So you had that layer on top of it. It gets. It can be kind of good. So, as a subject matter expert in the industry and a person who heavily involved in the standards, should I cable come or should I not cable come?

Speaker 2: 57:48

Absolutely you should. If it's going to, if it's going to display pride and ownership, absolutely. If it's going to be in a spot that no one's going to notice and it's going to be difficult to do, then don't bother. Make it neat and clean. I'm never going to say not make it neat and clean. But if you're in a telecom room, you're in a data center, coleman, it's going to look better, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 58:13

Henry, what a great show. I didn't. I really didn't expect us to go this long on talking about cable coming, but you know we touched a lot of good stuff and I got some ideas for some future stuff down the down the road that I'm not that cave you come back on. We're going to have to talk more in depth about it, man.

Speaker 2: 58:28

Let's talk about pathway fill buddy, because the contractors and the technicians are the most important folks out there. Pathway fill and capacity calculation is one of the most misunderstood things in our industry and I'm going to have to get some graphical things to help you with this. But somebody asked me for another quick blog on that. My rough notes was eight pages long of bullet notes on how to do this properly. Eight pages, eight pages Holy cow Of things, why this is important. And it was funny.

Speaker 2: 59:03

The more initials people had on their name, the more I found they didn't know what they were talking about. So when I had this issue, I had it with our CDDs, were also PNG's and have been in the industry for 20 years and I wanted to have their PNG and our CDD revoked because some of the things that they were saying that they were they were just like fun. It's like you should not have the pride of that degree or that designation because you've got this information so wrong. And then I found the. As I started removing honorifics, the information got more accurate and the most accurate information I got was from the first year of premises.

Speaker 2: 59:42

Oh, absolutely Absolutely, Because they're fresh in it Because they have a school of hard knocks built.

Speaker 1: 59:47

Yeah, right into them, that's. That's one of the common questions I see a lot on social media is how many cats six cables can I get through a one inch pipe? I need a little bit more information to give you the answer to that. You know what size is the cable. Are you trying to go for a 40% fill or 30% fill? How many 90 degree bends are in it? What's the length on it? There's a lot of considerations. That's not just one thing or the other.