Extended Ethernet Distances Testing Explained

This episode focuses on the advancements and considerations surrounding extended distance Ethernet cabling. With expert insight from Steve Cowles, we explore solutions and testing methodologies for Ethernet runs that exceed conventional limits.

• Highlights the importance of understanding extended cabling needs 
• Discusses advances in network technology affecting cabling 
• Covers crucial testing parameters, like insertion loss and SNR 
• Offers best practices for effectively installing ethernet cabling at extended distances 
• Emphasizes communication and collaboration with manufacturers and stakeholders 
• Encourages ongoing education to adapt to technological changes 

If you enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with your crew. 

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Extended Ethernet Distances
• 11:40 The Importance of Testing Extended Distances
• 34:00 Types of Cabling and Their Capabilities
• 1:15:00 Understanding Key Testing Parameters
• 1:50:00 Best Practices for Extended Distance Installation
• 3:00:00 Planning and Communication for Projects

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey Wiremonkeys, welcome to another episode of let's Talk Cabling. This episode we're tackling on how to test those extended distances for Ethernet cabling.

Speaker 2: 0:11

Welcome to let's Talk Cabling, the award-winning podcast where knowledge is power and the low voltage industry connects. Hosted by Chuck Bowser, rcdd. We're here to empower installers, designers and industry pros with the tips, stories and best practices you need to stay ahead. From copper to fiber, standards to innovation, this is the show that keeps you plugged into success. So grab your tools, turn up the volume and let's talk cabling.

Speaker 1: 0:46

Welcome to the show where we tackle the tough questions submitted by technicians, installers, apprentices, project managers, estimators, customers. 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 and click on the bell and the notification 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 giving us a five-star rating? And if this show is not a five-star rating, get in touch with me and tell me what I need to do to make this a five-star rated show. And while this show is free and will always remain free, would you mind clicking on that QR code right there? You can schedule a 15-minute one-on-one call with me after hours, of course, or you can even buy me a cup of coffee. You can even go on Amazon and buy let's Talk Cabling shirts. That's kind of new. I haven't really been pushing it out there, but it's out there. So I was at the Bixie Conference last week, got lots of great show content ideas, lots of potential shows coming up. So stay tuned for lots of great content.

Speaker 1: 1:50

But one of the things that seemed to seem to be a theme was extended distances for Ethernet cabling. Now there's lots of different ways you can do this. You know there's manufacturers that do extended distances with balanced twisted pair copper cabling. Some will do with hybrid fiber, but that leaves the technician in the field in the dark because they're not used to having to test those kind of distances. And when they hook up a regular certifier to it and they hit test and it's extended distances, guess what's going to happen? Yeah, it's going to fail. So I got that. Thinking about that. And of course you know I can't go through the exhibit hall without stopping by one of my favorite booths, the AEM booth, and talking to my friend Steve Cowles to say, hey, man, we need to talk about this. He's like, absolutely so. Welcome back to the show, mr Steve Cowles. How are you doing, my friend?

Speaker 4: 2:51

I'm doing great, chuck. Thanks for having me back. It was good seeing you at Bixie. And yeah, you're right, extended distance Ethernet cabling was all the rage. A lot of the sessions, the breakout sessions.

Speaker 1: 2:57

It's really starting to take on. Yeah, it seemed like there must have been I don't know four or maybe even five masterclasses, slash speeches, slash information on extended distances, and that's probably one of the biggest questions I get on the show, and I do have a show on extended distances. It's just not quite being done yet. I've already recorded with the key manufacturer, recorded something with Fluke, and I just got to record the third part of it, but this is so important. I was like man, I've got to get this information out there faster to help that technician in the field. So since the last time you've been on the show which, by the way, it's been way too long I've gained a few followers. So why don't you give the audience a quick introduction on who you are and your experience and who you work?

Speaker 4: 3:44

for All right. So my name is Steve Cowles and I've been in the industry. Oh geez, next year is going to be 40 years, chuck. I've been around a while, an old timer like Chuck. I am the product manager and I manage the technical support team at AEM Precision Cable Test. The last 25 years of my career has been focused on test equipment, from certification test equipment to your basic cable locating, tones and probes, dsl testing, fiber testing, you name it. So I've been heavily involved in testing for the largest part of my career.

Speaker 1: 4:28

So you know a little bit about testing Just a little yeah.

Speaker 1: 4:30

And I hate the competitive nature of me. I'll always be ahead of you in years of experience, always. You'll never catch up with me. No, you'll get closer, you'll get closer, but you'll never catch up. I'm at 42. So I'm at 42 years, 42 and a half years experience right now. 42 and a half. Oof Gosh, I'm getting old. Oh man, I hate when that happens. Anyways, the industry stands for Ethernet. You and I both know permanent link 90 meters, channel 100 meters those are drilled into our heads, right? Yeah, what are some of the main reasons that you have seen in dealing with technicians in the field and stuff and network designers? Why are they pushing for these extended distances?

Speaker 4: 5:12

So the Ethernet PHY, the physical layer chipset that is driving the Ethernet signal. They've improved these over time and many of them not all, but many of them are now capable of going beyond that 100 meter, the 100 meter. When we first started doing structured cabling it was put in mostly because Ethernet at 100 meters. If you started to go beyond that you'd start to get collisions on the network. But now the technology has improved and we're able to go farther on the network. But now the technology's improved and we're able to go farther and you have situations where maybe you need to put a network outlet, telecommunications outlet, someplace that's beyond that 100 meter distance from your nearest closet right. So you've got to come up with solutions.

Speaker 4: 6:02

You mentioned hybrid powered fiber. That's one option. You can get power and data. The fiber will go a lot further. But if you just wanted to deploy copper, can you go a little further? On regular Cat6A, maybe Standards allow you 10% on tests. So when you test a cable, if it's 10% higher than the limit, as long as it's within that range, it's still going to pass. But the extended distance that we're talking about, these people are talking about running 150 to 200 meters in many cases, which your regular Cat6A isn't going to get there.

Speaker 1: 6:35

I think the biggest driver, or maybe the biggest eye-opener that really I think kind of drove, the whole extended distances was cameras, Right, so a company would get this job and this, this customer would want cameras all the way out in the parking lot. That was well beyond the 328 feet or a hundred meters. And since cameras don't really I mean most cameras only use like a hundred megabit and you probably, you know Some are 10 megabits, yeah, exactly, and you and I both know the less bandwidth that you need on a copper cable.

Speaker 4: 7:12

The further the cable can be, the more bandwidth, the shorter the cable's got to be, exactly.

Speaker 1: 7:16

And so, since we're doing 1 gig, 2.5 gig, 5 gig, 10 gig, some scenarios, 40 gig over copper.

Speaker 2: 7:25

You get shorter and shorter.

Speaker 3: 7:26

That's why we're limited.

Speaker 1: 7:28

That's why we're limited to the 100 meters, right? Actually, cat 8 is even shorter than that. Cat 8 is what? 90 something feet, which is 60 meters, or something like that. I don't remember the rough numbers.

Speaker 1: 7:38

You do the math yeah exactly, take 92 feet divided by 3.28. You'll figure out how many meters. Yes, and I think that's kind of what the need for that kind of opened up the industry's eyes. And I was in one of the classes at Big Seed last week and for the life of me I can't remember who it was and they were talking about extended distances and they had ran a poll to their customers and they said, okay, of all the needs that you know for doing extended distances, what is the maximum amount of length that you think you need to do? And there were a few that were said 100 meters, a few that said 200 meters, but the vast majority of the respondents were 150 meters or below right. The respondents were 150 meters or below right. And so the whole gizza thing was looking for an off-the-shelf balanced, twisted-pair copper cable system that the installer is already familiar with, terminating and testing and all that stuff, right. So once we go beyond that, right beyond that 100 meters, what are the specific parameters that become more problematic at those longer distances?

Speaker 4: 8:46

So first, right out of the gate, is insertion loss.

Speaker 4: 8:50

Now, insertion loss is you measure the signal at the beginning of the cable, measure the signal at the end of the cable and the difference between those two is how much signal you've lost. If you've got too much insertion loss, the signal is too weak when it gets to the far end and that starts to cause problems. So now insertion loss will also impact your SNR, your signal to noise ratio on your cable. Because if your signal is too weak when it gets that far end and the noise, the noise is going to be the noise, the noise is going to be the noise, and if your signal is not strong enough to overcome the noise, that means you've got low SNR, which is that's another test we could talk about running on this cable. In addition to the RF certification is, you can run an SNR test on a cable to see how it performs at various speeds. So you know, insertion loss is one, dc resistance is another one, especially when it comes to handling power over Ethernet. So the higher the resistance value, the lower your power delivery is.

Speaker 1: 9:52

Would that be DCRU?

Speaker 4: 9:54

I think, that's DC resistance unbalanced. So there's DC resistance, there's the loop resistance which we all had drilled into our heads to pass the test 25 ohms loop resistance per pair, but the DC resistance unbalanced and this is a critical test that you should be running if you're deploying cables for PoE. This will compare the resistance in the pair, so each conductor in the pair, and it compares each pair to every other pair in all combinations and there's a tolerance that you're allowed with that DC resistance unbalance and if you exceed that it will fail. Consult your test equipment manufacturer when you're running that, because some testers not ours the same six-second test is going to give you those results anyway, but some testers when you add that it starts to add 10, 15 seconds to the test time. So you need to be sure you know if you're planning to test for that. Take that into account for how much time you're going to plan for the job.

Speaker 1: 10:54

Right, I want to expand on one thing real quickly, because I don't ever want to assume that everybody understands everything we're talking about. And you've mentioned signal to noise ratio. I know what it is, you know what it is, but there might be a technician out there who doesn't understand signal-to-noise ratio in the way that I always explain it in class. Imagine it's a Friday night, you got your wingman with you, you go into the local club to try to go dancing and the music is boom, ba-choo, boom environment. You go to a church, you try to talk to your buddy with the same voice, it's going to seem like the guy's screaming. That's signal-to-noise ratio, right.

Speaker 1: 11:34

So in the club the noise is so loud that it's kind of hard to hear the message Exactly. But in the church, where everybody's being quiet, it doesn't have to be a church, it can be a library, right, where everybody's quiet, you don't. You know there's a big difference between the noise that's in the room, the ambient noise, and the volume. So that's what signal-to-noise ratio is and that's why it really is critical for cabling. One of the things you didn't mention is how does extended distances affect near and crosstalk it?

Speaker 4: 12:03

doesn't Extended distance and near and crosstalk. So the near and crosstalk you're measuring at the near end, so the distance it's a signal transmitted at the near end that you're measuring. It's not really there. But one other parameter that does get influenced by this extended distance cabling becomes critical is return loss. Because that return loss essentially it's reflected signal. And when you get a reflected signal two things happen it reduces the signal going to the far end, but it also is sending a mixed signal back to your transmitter end which can confuse the Ethernet chipset, the PHY. And this is where it comes into play, where some PHYs will handle this better than others, because as you get out further and further distances, depending on the filter types in that Ethernet chipset, it may or may not be able to handle that. So that's something that is a consideration when you're doing that extended distance cabling.

Speaker 3: 13:00

Let's take a short break. Are you looking to grow your low voltage business? At Bowman Vision Media, we don't just market to the low voltage industry. We come from it With decades of experience. We uniquely understand your business and how to help it grow. From social media to content creation, we deliver marketing that works as hard as you do. And while you're leveling up, check out the 49 volts podcast, your go-to source for industry insights and expert interviews. Visit bowmanvisionmediacom to learn more and subscribe to the 49 volts podcast on YouTube or wherever you listen.

Speaker 1: 13:42

So you know, when you pick up your regular off the shelf certifier right, it comes already preloaded by the manufacturer all of the information found in the standards for which, for the acceptable levels for near cross talk, insertion loss, signal, noise ratio, all that stuff, right yeah. What does a technician need to understand about customized settings for extended distances? Do they go to you and get it from your database or do they need to go into the tester to set up for extended distances? How does that all work when they're testing extended distances?

Speaker 4: 14:19

That's a great question. So there's a couple things you need to do. Most technicians already know that when they're using a specific cable they need to go into in the tester settings. When you're setting up a project, you choose the cable and the importance of choosing the cables. First, you have a record for the manufacturer that you're testing their cable. But also that MVP, nominal velocity of propagation value, which is essentially it's it's expressed in a percentage of the speed of light.

Speaker 4: 14:45

I like to call it the speed limit of the copper, because it tells you how fast that signal travels down the copper, which that impacts your length measurement. So you want that to be accurate. So you want to choose that cable. But what happens?

Speaker 4: 14:58

The mistake people make when it comes to testing extended distance cabling is they do that but they leave the test limit set at a TIA, cat 6A or 5E or a channel permanent link, whatever they're doing, and they don't change the test limit. So that 100 meters for channel, 90 meters for permanent link, is in those limits and if they exceed that it's going to fail if they exceed it by 10%. So when you go in to set your limits you need to set your limit for what you're testing. So it's not going to be a TIA or an ISO limit. It's going to be a vendor-specific limit. So in our tester you go in where the limits are and you scroll down past the TIA and there's a vendor folder. Then you select the vendor folder and you'll see multiple different manufacturers in there who each have their test limits.

Speaker 4: 15:50

The manufacturers know the cabling they build the test limits. The test limits are based on the TIA limits but there's some subtle changes in there. Length and insertion loss are typically two of the parameters that they look at when they modify these, so they allow additional length on these. If you exceed the other parameters, that's when the cable will fail. So it's still testing all the same things that you're testing in a TIA or an ISO limit, but it looks at them a little differently and it doesn't hold your feet to the fire if your cable is too long. It's really looking more at the performance which the manufacturers, the construction of these cables and I'm sure you're going to get into talking about that a little bit but the construction of these cables is different from our traditional cables, especially the wire gauge, which is what makes a big difference.

Speaker 1: 16:45

Right. So let me ask you this is actually a question that just kind of popped in my head Is it better or worse to use a shielded cable for extended distances or an unshielded cable for extended distances?

Speaker 4: 17:00

So the use of the unshielded or the shielded, whether it's extended distance or our standard cabling, really depends on the environment. You know where is this going to be installed? Are you going to be subject to a lot of external noise? Maybe you should think about a shielded cable. And if you do put a shielded cable in, call Chuck and make sure you're doing your bonding and grounding correctly. Call Chuck and make sure you're doing your bonding and grounding correctly. We've both been out on job sites me recently where it wasn't done properly and it can create problems.

Speaker 1: 17:35

Yeah, absolutely. You know a lot of. One of the biggest arguments that I see on social media on low voltage groups is cabling and the quality cabling, cabling and the quality cabling. And I understand you know somebody who's just starting off you know with their new communications cabling company that money's tight. You know you may not be able to go out and buy the biggest and best you know category-rated cable, so they go with the cheaper ones and even some of the low-quality ones. Is there a role that somebody or not a role? But I mean, however I phrase this, is it better to select a good quality category rated cable Cat6, cat6a as opposed to a one that's a lesser brand, when you're trying to get reliable performance beyond that 100 meters?

Speaker 4: 18:25

Yeah, it absolutely is. So there's a couple things that come into play there. First off, we'll just talk about the cable, the cable itself. If you use a lower quality cable, the copper can have impurities in it. You may even see I've seen this out there copper clad aluminum out there in the field, and you talked about DC resistance unbalance. Those two things right there impurities in the copper or a copper clad aluminum will screw up your DC resistance unbalance. That's going to cause problems, and not just with the POE. It'll cause signaling problems.

Speaker 4: 18:56

The other thing to think about is you want to make sure you have a cable that is designed to work with the jacks and the panels that you're installing. You just start throwing stuff together. Yes, in theory, because we have standards, everything's supposed to be interoperable and it'll work. But manufacturers design things. They design the cable to work with specific jacks and vice versa. For a reason they're compatible, they're optimized and if you mix and match whatever you want, the performance won't be there, and part of that has to do with the impedance changes. When you start mixing this stuff up, you can cause return loss problems, and we just talked about return loss being one of the factors.

Speaker 1: 19:45

Yeah, yeah, it's funny you just mentioned because I was going to use that as an example right? So when you look at balanced twisted pair cabling, it has a characteristic impedance of 100 ohms plus or minus 5%, so the cable literally might be 99 ohms, right? The connector also has a characteristic impedance of 100 ohms plus or minus 5%, so it might be 100.5 ohms. The cable is 99.5 ohms, the connector is 100.5 ohms. There's a tiny bit of a difference there. That difference is what caused that energy to get reflected back towards the transmitter. That's what return loss is.

Speaker 1: 20:21

So manufacturers, what they'll do is they will tweak to match their cables to their connectors. That's why it's always best to get cabling from somebody who has a working relationship with. Either buy from a company that does both cable and connectivity products together, which there are not that many of them out there, or a connectivity manufacturer who works with a cable manufacturer, and they fine tune the parts together, because the closer those two numbers are to each other, the more energy goes through that transmission point and the better performing it's going to be.

Speaker 4: 20:50

And those R&D engineers put a ton of work into figuring this stuff out, and with good reason. They're not just writing down a jack design on a napkin and going, oh, let's go build this. They do a lot of study, they do a lot of interoperability studies and it's worth it to spend the money and do it right.

Speaker 1: 21:15

While the idea might start out as a drawing on a napkin yes, as soon as fall. We both know people who started that way, exactly, exactly. It may start there, but sooner or later it starts getting into some heavy thought and calculations, stuff that's well above beyond any RCDD level like you or me that ever deal with, right, yeah?

Speaker 3: 21:35

Hey friends, I want to tell you about a great organization, tech Knowledge Worldwide, an active community of tech professionals dedicated to elevating our industry and each other. It's the real deal and I'm grateful to be part of this community. Their annual tech conference is coming up April 23rd and 24th in Nashville, tennessee, and will feature amazing speakers, workshops and even Bixie continuing education credits. Stay up to date and lock in your spot now at techfestorg. That's T-E-K-F-E-S-T dot org. I encourage all my low voltage followers to consider joining to see if they want a seat at TKW's table too. All are welcome to learn, grow and see what putting community over competition can do. Go to techfestorg for more information.

Speaker 1: 22:33

So what are some best practices installers can use when they're putting in the cable for extended distance to make sure they still meet those requirements?

Speaker 4: 22:41

So the best practices are really going to be the same as your best practices in your standards-based cabling, your 100-meter cabling. You know. Follow your best practices for your cable support for your termination. Maintain your pair, twist to the point of termination like you're supposed to. Don't pull the cable with too much pulling force. Don't tie it to the bumper of your F-150. We know people who've done that. You know it's. You know, follow the guidelines. And I say guidelines. You know the standards aren't laws, right, they're guidelines, recommendations, and I think at some point we're going to see some of this stuff in the standards the extended distance stuff.

Speaker 1: 23:27

This is how it always works, right. The industry starts doing something and then the standards group kind of looks at that and they kind of sit back a little bit and then they've got to wait for a time when they revise the standards and then eventually gets put it back. The standards always seem to run three years behind what we're doing in the field before they adopt stuff, and that's just because of the process. It's not because they're old boomers and they're resistant to change, it's just, first off, the standards don't get revised every month, they only get revised once every five, three years, five years.

Speaker 4: 23:58

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 24:00

And they look at all the new stuff that's come out. Let me ask you this, because one of the things I hear quite often is, especially in those groups, people you know start talking about extended distance. Somebody will always say, oh, just get a, get a repeater, get a power extender, right? Um, how do you feel about that, as opposed to going with an extended distance?

Speaker 4: 24:20

I, I, I prefer the extended distance cabling because you've got your permanent link, your cable is installed. It's adding a repeater, adds another point of failure into the equation. It adds an expense into the equation and if you're using repeaters you have to start thinking about how many repeaters am I going through from point A to point B? Right, I mean chances. If you're using a one-off repeater somewhere, you're not going to worry too much about that, right, and you have to have power for that repeater. So maybe it's powered by PoE, but all things to think about. But to me you're adding another failure point, whereas if you just pull the extended distance cabling, you're better off.

Speaker 1: 25:12

Yeah, the big thing for me is there's an old acronym G-I-G-O garbage in, garbage out. And when you're putting a repeater on something that's, you know, 80 meters down the line, it's not just amplifying the signal, it's also amplifying the EMI that that cable's picked up over that distance. Now it might be a tiny bit Right, might be a lot, it just depends on the environment. Yeah, so I mean and don't get me wrong it is an option. It is an option, but I don't think it's going to be a reliable option. It's trying to use a solid piece of cable with extended distances that has been tested by engineers and cable certifiers like you guys to make sure that it works. Let's shift and talk about PoE, because we're putting PoE over a lot of these cables. If somebody's got an extended distance and they've got PoE on it, how does that affect the cable testing?

Speaker 4: 26:07

So I mentioned before when we were talking about DC resistance unbalanced. Your cable tester will be capable of measuring this. That's going to come into play. Your loop resistance and your DC resistance unbalanced are going to come into play. Typically, if you're going to take a Cat 5E or 6 or 6A and you're going to run it out to 150 or 200 meters, you're going to fail on resistance. It's going to have too much resistance, what the manufacturers are doing and if you've got too much resistance your power delivery is going to be a problem.

Speaker 4: 26:38

You have to think about the I squared R formula. You take the current squared times, the resistance, and that tells you how much power you're going to lose along the length of that cable. So the higher the resistance, the less power delivery you get at the end. What the manufacturers of the extended distance cabling are doing is they're using a heavier gauge. So our typical Cat6A is a 23 gauge. They're using in most cases a 22 gauge on this extended distance cabling. So it's a heavier copper. It's got lower resistance per foot than the 23 gauge. So it's going to help you with that power delivery and in turn with the heat dissipation that you get from POE as well, because you've got a heavier gauge wire.

Speaker 1: 27:23

So let me ask you, because you work for a cable testing manufacturer, right? What advancements have you guys or I'm not saying just you guys specifically, but when I say you guys I mean the testing industry right? What advancement does test manufacturers, what are they looking at to make their cable testers easier to do testing for extended distance more effectively?

Speaker 4: 27:45

So, first off, getting those limits, working with the manufacturers to get those test limits and get the cabling database in there for the physical RF test, and for the most part that's what the certification tester manufacturers do. We've taken it a step beyond where we do. I mentioned the signal to noise ratio testing so you can test up to 10 gigabits with SNR, so you can take that extended distance cabling, run an SNR test on it and see how it's performing. You do that on an active network, so you've got other cables around it that have network traffic so you can really see what that alien crosstalk is doing to the cable. The other thing is being able to test at greater distances. Now we think of 150 to 200 meters as, as a quote, unquote long haul cable, but it's not really. It's it's extended distance.

Speaker 4: 28:32

But single pair ethernet is something else. That's that's out there and they're talking right now it's a thousand meters. They're talking about going beyond a thousand meters, right? So what? What you need to do is find out how far can your test equipment test. We can go up to 2000 meters on ours, which the testers are going to be required. The ones that are going to develop single pair ethernet are going to have to go out to at least 1500 meters and allow the units to still communicate. So that's one of the things is see how far the tester can go. So manufacturers are pushing the limits For SPE, single-pair Ethernet. In fact you're going to have to test lower frequencies. We're used to higher frequency stuff in the world we live in, but the single-pair Ethernet is going to be a lower frequency, lower speed, type cable, longer distance and still deliver power. Great advice.

Speaker 1: 29:23

So you and I were already talking about how, at some point, the industry standards will catch up with what we're doing in the field, hopefully sooner rather than later. But what advice would you give the installer in the field who has to work with and deal with standards that are currently written now, but yet the demands of the customers who maybe would want to go beyond these extended distances?

Speaker 4: 29:47

So what I would say is consult with the manufacturers of the extended distance cabling during the planning process, Because you're being asked by a customer to do something that's outside the scope of the standards. And you and I've had this conversation where the standards aren't law. They're a guideline that you should follow, for good reasons. But as technology changes, as the needs of our industry change, the standards will have to adopt. So we've all been on job sites where you've had to do things outside the normal scope of the standards just because of the environment or the necessity of that particular job. So my recommendation would be make sure that you engage with the manufacturer of the extended distance cabling and the consultant who's planning the project and any of the other parties involved to say, look, here's what the standards say, but here's what you're scoping out for us. We can't do this if we stay within the standards and here's what we recommend.

Speaker 1: 30:52

Yeah, educating the customer and the consultant is absolutely a great thing to do, and you mentioned that the standards are guidelines and they are voluntary. Don't get me wrong. But if you enter into a contract with the customer and it stipulates in the contract that your work will meet and or exceed the standards and you haven't educated the customer, saying, look, this extended distance is an outlier, it's not within the standards, and get them to sign off and document, document, document, right, that's right. Get them to sign off that they understand that those particular runs are going to be extended distances and they're going to really fall outside of the ANSI standards, and get them to educate and sign off in that head time. That'll save you headaches down the long run.

Speaker 4: 31:37

Absolutely, and it's you know. Communication is key. You know, I spoke at a master class at the Bixby conference last week and one of the sections I was talking about was the project planning phase and all the specifications, and one of the key points in my presentation was the communication up front. The planning meetings, the communication make sure that all the parties involved know what the plan is and if there's anything that's going to deviate, everybody needs to be aware of it and have signed off on it.

Speaker 1: 32:10

Steve, you probably heard me say this a million times. I know my listeners sure have. Just because we work in the communications industry doesn't mean we communicate, or at least we don't communicate well sometimes. True, true, true, true. Well, thanks for coming on and shedding some light on extended distances and maybe helping a few technicians out there. So if somebody wants to get in touch with you or AEM to find out more about some information on extended distances or your testers, how do they get a hold?

Speaker 4: 32:38

of you. So I can be reached at stevecowles, at aem-testcom, and our website is aem-testcom, and if you go to the website and click the little hamburger button in the upper right corner, you'll get a menu of all the things on the site. We have a blog called Straight Talk Blog and in that Straight Talk Blog we have an article that talks about extended distance cabling. So you can go there and read that, and there's a lot of other articles in there as well. And don't forget Tech Talk with Steve. Tech Talk with Steve, that's right. That's right. We're doing that this year. We're trying something new. We're doing it every other month this year. So we've got one coming up in March, I think.

Speaker 1: 33:22

There I go, setting the pace that nobody else can keep up with.

Speaker 4: 33:27

You know I tried the weekly thing in the beginning. Try two. Try two a week. I know, I know you are.

Speaker 1: 33:37

Yeah, it's a good thing. I love talking about cabling. That's all I got to say. Yeah, thanks for coming on, steve. I appreciate you all right good seeing you, chuck.

Speaker 2: 33:47

Thanks for listening to let's talk cabling, the award-winning podcast where knowledge is power and the low voltage industry connects. If you enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to subscribe, leave a review and share it with your crew. Got questions or ideas for the show? Chuck wants to hear from you. Stay connected, stay informed and always aim for excellence. Until next time, keep those cables clean, your standards high and your future bright. Let's Talk Cabling empowering the industry, one connection at a time.