Cable Combing: Pride Or Problem?

We dig into the cable combing debate with Henry Frank, separating myth from practice and explaining how modern Cat 6A design and standards testing changed the rules. Along the way, we talk PoE heating, short channels, culture clashes, and why neat work still wins trust.

• what cable combing actually is and why it matters
• where old randomization advice came from
• alien crosstalk explained clearly for installers
• manufacturer six-around-one worst-case testing
• PoE heat, LP ratings, and real-world bundle risk
• short channels and four-connector topologies
• when to comb for serviceability and pride
• why joining standards groups grows your career

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Transcript

Welcome And Listener Support

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Hey Mary Monkeys, welcome to another episode of Let's Talk Cable Inc. This episode we're talking about. Cable code link. Should you not do it or should you not do it? So welcome to the show where we tackle the tough questions 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 help us take on the algorithm so we can educate, encourage, and enrich the lives of people in the ICT industry. You know I do a live stream, right? I do it on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, where you get to 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 dropping my truck at 6 p.m. on a 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 TalkCabling.com. 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 webpage where you can see the tools and 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 off. All that stuff goes back in helping pay for the podcast. On this episode, I wanted to address cable combing. 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 it's to use Velcro or Tirep, that's one. Union or non-union, that's another. And then the third one is should you cable comb or not cable comb? 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_01 2:53

I'm doing fantastic, Chuck. Thank you. And there's actually a fourth way to start an argument. Because do you know what RCD really stands for? Really can't do diddly? Nope. Royal Canadian Donut Designer.

SPEAKER_02 3:07

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 3:08

Yeah. Yeah, I don't I don't like the Canadian, that's what we called it.

SPEAKER_02 3:11

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 uh I've never heard the donut one, the donut design. I like that one.

SPEAKER_01 3:22

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

SPEAKER_02 3:26

So that's a fact. That's a fact. I've been to Canada a couple times. I've 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 Smith's Falls or some little mining town. It only had like one hotel in the whole entire place. So it was a pretty interesting place. I love teaching up there. I just don't like coming back to the U.S. 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 in 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 ahead and give yourself an introduction, tell us who you are, um, how you got in this industry, who you work for, so we we can build some credibility.

Why Industry Participation Matters

SPEAKER_01 4:14

Yeah, absolutely. So, Henry Frank, and you know, right now my day job is with Beldon, 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 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. Um my background is much like yours, Chuck. You and I both started out in the field. Um I started out in the 80s. Uh after leaving university, I started being an installer and worked my way up uh through in the in uh throughout the industry into different jobs. Every time somebody said, Do you want to try this? The answer was yes. Um 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. Um, but keep growing, keep learning. Um and back in the late 90s, I was really interested in both industrial networks and how they were evolving. And you know, I saw Ethernet and structured cabling taking over the world, so I became part of standards, and uh I've made that uh part of my day job. So the the company supports me, so I'm the chair of the TIA uh TR42 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 healthcare, that's those engineering committees. Much like Bixie has the committees for the RCED 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 builders of these networks, the designers of these networks, and the users of these networks. So that's my background. Nice. So you must run in the same circles as Jonathan Jew. Yeah, absolutely. Yes. Jonathan Jew is a precious resource of our organization, 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 that it doesn't bother me too much. Uh, because he is the editor of so many documents and contributes so heavily. It's uh it it's amazing.

SPEAKER_02 7:08

Yeah, he's uh a lot of times I've got a complete set of the copy of the uh the TI standards. Um the podcast bothered him, I've got him here. And uh and 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 have it in print form, not in not in um PDF file. So it's kind of harder to find it in print form. So Jonathan Ju is 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, with like within 20 minutes, boom, I got a 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 industry's gonna take a hit. And he it really will.

SPEAKER_01 7:54

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 Amplett, who who sadly passed away this year, were people that built this industry through school of hard knocks. You know, so it was really in its infancy in the 80s and 90s, uh, as we all did this. And it requires that continued investment and commitment and 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 Bixie T I A or however you can. Um, you're in a great industry, and the more you give the industry, the more the industry is going to give back to you.

Setting Up The Cable Combing Debate

SPEAKER_02 8:39

Yeah, one of the things I like to tell people all the time, and I usually do, I usually, I usually do this when Jonathan's on the show. You know, you usually tell people, look, you don't have to be a PhD in electronics. You just have to have a a giving heart to want to give this heart because there's some that 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 just have to have the heart to serve. And and and from serving on committees, I've I've never served on a standards committee, but I've served on a a couple Bixie committees, you know, um, and one of the things 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 uh what's the word I'm looking for? You can tell it's the first show of the year because I don't have all the words in my head right now. Um, 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_01 9:48

And I'm glad you you you brought up relationships because you know people will look um, 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? It's like 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, but it's that relationship word that you 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, Chuck, or or myself to the my organization and my colleagues, isn't with what I know, it's with the relationship networks. You know, like you said, it's like uh it's it's like phone a friend. You know, I gotta phone Jonathan. Um and and again, you know, Ray Amplet was there's only so much room on my desktop, and I'm not a grounding and bonding expert. So as soon as something grounding and bonding shows up on my desktop, it gets pushed off. You know, uh quicker rather than later. But then participate participating in standards is like, okay, I know who Mark Harger is, I know who Ray Amplett is. I can phone them and get an answer, or email them or text them or whatever. And that's really the the the benefit of participation and community. I uh I hope we never lose that spirit because there's too many things that are nuanced, like our discussion about combing, where 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, uh, 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 to the wrong direction.

Myths, Old Guidance, And Fluke 2009

SPEAKER_02 12:30

I'm glad you put I'm glad you brought that up. And before I get 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 sat in that committee meeting. I'm looking at these guys, and these are industry titans, because you know, I've I've seen them around Bixie conferences and 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. And you, you know, you mentioned about like bonding and grounding, you know, that is kind of one of my one of my forte. I I'm not gonna say I'm I'm a I'm not a I'm not a bonding and 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. So 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 stuff. 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 do they fit 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 loop. That's not a ground loop. So well, bad news and good news.

SPEAKER_01 13:58

Bad news, bad news for you, good news for me is I have no clue on how to explain that. Remember, ground bonding rounding 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 uh you know, live on camera, I'll yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:17

Don't call the names out here just in case. Because you know, it's it's I've I've found that a lot of people are willing to come on this show. Um, the 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 I am if you meet me in person, you know. Have you ever seen me walk around at a big city conference? I am nowhere near as articulate as I am on the podcast because I I'm really good at video editing, you know, right.

SPEAKER_01 14:51

And and people like you and I will never be company spokespeople, right? We'll never be marketing experts. But I hope that we all have credibility because we're earnest. Yeah. We may misspeak, we may use colloquialisms, we may drop the uh occasional expletive, but I think that shows a candor as opposed to pandering. Right.

unknown 15:18

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 15:18

Um, and and so I love to make fun of marketing people um uh when I make my speeches and say, I'm not gonna be perfect. Far from it. But that's okay. Uh I don't need to work in marketing, I work in the real world. There you go. We're we're where the rubber meets the road. So you wrote a rule. Yeah, and 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 that I just don't have. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:46

So you had mentioned uh earlier about how the information changes and stuff. And and this is why I wanted to ask I don't I don't remember how I came across your article. You must have you must have posted it on LinkedIn and then because I don't remember if you and I were friends before I reached out to you or not. I don't remember, but somehow it popped up in my feed.

SPEAKER_01 16:06

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

SPEAKER_02 16:16

Oh, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And and and that's why letting you know how long ago did you write that article, just out of curiosity. Do you remember?

SPEAKER_01 16:23

I think it was sometime last year, but it's been something that's so I I have a whole laundry list of these articles that 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. Um you talk about the fight zip ties versus Valcro. Use zip ties if you want, use 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 disturb or cut the jacket. Right. Now, considering they have sharp edges and sharpening them would make it more difficult, you'd have to ask your question why in the heck would you want?

SPEAKER_02 17:14

But there's always gonna be a place for them, though. There's always gonna be a place for them. Um, especially if like you're you're tie wrapping like interduct or or maybe some high pair count backbone cabling, stuff like that. And a lot of technicians, their 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're right, that's another thing. But what else what I was tying into was and just just kind of shows you why our industry is so confused, right? Yes, there wasn't, and this kind of what key key me in like when I saw this post, and I can't remember where I saw the post, it was on I want to say it was Facebook, 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 me wrong, Fluke's a great company, they got a lot of great engineers. And so I went and I 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 especially with our industry, when you look up information, when was it published? Yes, when was it published?

Alien Crosstalk 101 And 6-Around-1

SPEAKER_01 18:28

And 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 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, um which you know, the the 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 uh adjacent cables. Right. And so I always loved combed cables. The statement of pride in your workmanship. That is exactly why. Because if I see a nicely combed job and a neatly done job, I'm almost guaranteed that it's gonna be done right and then it's gonna work because somebody took pride in their installation. Yes. So for people that are old like you and I, um, like thick wire Ethernet, um, where you had if you have a really old building, you might see this yellow thick wire Ethernet cable about the size of your thumb. You're talking about thick net? Oh, yeah. Every couple meters you'll see a black band. That's thick net. And uh we had a guy that was so good when you used remember you used to put your thick wire in a telecom room, you had to loop it. Yep. He figured out how to make the Olympic rings, and he had a a uh system of doing it, so those black rings where you'd put the transceivers with the vampire taps would be on the bottom of all the Olympic rings. Nice. 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 he took pride in workmanship and pride in 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 sporting event where you know I'm gonna go in one day and out the next, not that it should be a randomized rat's nest, but you don't necessarily have to have it combed. Right. But if I see 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 ten manufacturers in the Americas, you will not have a problem with alien crosstalk. Because what we do is uh uh as 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 you know in Canada you're worried 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 your victim cable and then your aggressor cable doing signaling. Um I can't give you a I don't have enough fingers to do the 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, uh you know, cables get bent, the geometry gets changed, you might be installing next to lights or power cables or anything else, we always have to take the worst case scenario. So a reputable manufacturer, again, any of the top list, will go and um test everything in a six or round one configuration for a full 100-meter channel, well, 90-meter permanent link, um, where what we do is uh, 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 the testing at standards, is they go six or round one and then they go and tape it up either with uh uh like a mesh uh 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. So some of the offshore stuff, some of the really weird um, you know, hey, I I can find it for$1.99 on Google types.

SPEAKER_02 23:48

Amazon, Amazon's got Cat 6A for$32 a thousand feet.

Pride In Workmanship And Visual Standards

SPEAKER_01 23:53

You get what you pay for. Exactly. Well, and and you see some of the things in the they can't even spell category right. Exactly. Um you know, which is a dead giveaway. So go to the CCCA website, CCCA, so three C's in a day. Um that that that's a group of manufacturers, it's an industry organization like Bixie or TIA, but not as well known. But they come up with a lot of content about this and they talk about counterfeits and things. But again, while we were all doing the testing, while we were developing the cables, if you remember your physics 101 from high school, you know, you have your right-handed rule, and hopefully my camera's flipped so it's showing the right-handed rule. Otherwise, it looks like I'm holding up my left-handed uh uh 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-handed rule, you'll do the left, and that's how you'll fail EM the first time, like I did. But if you'll remember your high school physics, the worst case for interference is conductors in parallel. Right. 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 um in category 6a, the A stands for nothing, doesn't stand for anything at all. That's another myth that we can talk about. People will call it augmented cat six, uh, which it's which it's not. But when we were 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 balance between the pairs. So the difference between a four-conductor cable, waggling 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 cloned, you know, historical cables in a tray, Cat 5E, Cat 6, which weren't tested for alien cross-tank. We had a how to augment your cable plan 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 bundle. So instead of having them all neatly combed, just have them all sort of randomization so you don't have the parallel effect. Uh, and so that became, because that was published in a 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 um 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. So as far as I'm concerned, comb your cables. It shows pride in workmanship. It'll get, you know, you as a technician called back to a job so long as you're not, you know, finely combing it, you know, like combing the desert using that old um space balls analogy. So long as you're not like taking too long, they're gonna call you back because it shows pride in your work. You're gonna have better yields, the thing's gonna 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 gonna want you back, your partners are gonna want you back. Um, you know, if you want to go to the ultimate version of combing, uh, 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.

Manufacturer Testing And Reputable Cable

SPEAKER_02 28:41

Yeah, look up, look up um Sean Rep. Uh, 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. And uh, I mean, you could you could put for those who don't know what cable coming is, it's just a practice of bundling your cables to 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 none 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, I I've like you said, I've 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 combed job. That's that's another argument you get into. Some people argue about is well why I spend all that extra time. Why don't I just throw it in there? Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_01 29:56

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 the myth and misconception of two bobs in a 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 you know, a two bob in a truck. But you know, if you're doing good work and a customer doesn't want to pay for that good work, it also works in reverse. Yes. So, you know, 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, you know, put you know, why do I not want to put a wiring closet in a janitor's closet above the sink? Yes. You know, if they don't care, they're not gonna value your work or your craft, nope, or your skill or your experience. Nope. So, you know, though those are the people where you're always gonna have to win the race to the bottom. Well, you know, if somebody's gonna do it for$200 a drop, and then it's gonna be$199,$198, and so on. And as they keep Googling, that you're just gonna have to keep winning the race to the bottom every time because they don't value quality.

SPEAKER_02 31:19

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

SPEAKER_01 31:32

Yeah, yeah. Yep. Yeah. And and we we we when I used to be a technician, one of our biggest competitors were trunk slammers. Uh, and they they did piecework. So, you know, at the time it was, you know, showing my age, because not only was it, you know, in the 19th, it was in the 1900s, it was the last century of the last millennium. Uh, they were putting in drops for like 15 bucks a drop, 20 bucks a drop for labor. And then they would say, ah, well, you know, it's like 15 bucks a drop. You know, we'll do we'll do anything. And they were they had they were always hiring and they always had ads in there. And again, you know, when you see those trunk slammers out there, or the the the those piecework type guys, it's a great conversation with your client, too, because it's it's sort of a win fast, lose fast. They said, well, you know, how come you can't compete with you know company X? Because Company X says they'll do every drop for$15. That's 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 minimum wage, no experience necessary. It's like, okay, is this who you want, Mr. Customer? Like, seriously. You know, and and maybe there was a myth that data was a convenience or a nice to have. Oh, it's a requirement nowadays. But data's becoming absolutely mission, like they talk about mission critical systems, and everything goes to you know, um uh data centers right away. But if I'm a hospital, when I'm on that hospital bed, that 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_02 33:19

Oh, you're you I'm a huge Monty Python fan, and my wife isn't. And I 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 I say that all the time every time I get in an elevator, I always say, quick, get the machine that goes bing.

SPEAKER_01 33:39

Yeah, exactly. As soon as I'm in a hospital, I use that joke 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 gonna be never going into that hotel again, or not using that chain ever again. Yeah, oh absolutely. So it's it's it's not convenient, you know. Like when a when a retail store loses its point of sale because everything's now connected to the cloud, um, they shut down because they can't work in isolation.

PoE, LP Ratings, And Heat Myths

SPEAKER_02 34:26

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

SPEAKER_01 34:55

Right, and this and this is why that quality of workership is important, and it's not just for things like combing and alien crosstalk, which is why we we created it. Because there's another myth around combing that's not alien crosstalk related. Um, but if you hear about things like uh 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, my my and sorry for using my sarcasm voice, what happens if, oh my god, I'm using power over this cable, it's gonna melt and it's gonna start a fire. It's like, well, wait a minute. That's not gonna be the cable's 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 B, my house doesn't go on fire because I've tripped the breaker. Right. 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 internet, things are gonna go on fire is absolutely ridiculous. We talk about 100 watts of power for 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 they 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, take your PoE, run it at full power, okay, and um, because you know, your devices have their power rating, say at 100 watts, but they don't draw anything close to that. You know, like most devices are uh 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 airflow, 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 well before you get to the point where they're gonna melt or do anything else, the temperature gets so high that the Ethernet part of the power over Ethernet doesn't work.

SPEAKER_02 37:24

And as soon as Ethernet doesn't work, the power the insertion loss will still go through the roof as soon as you start getting uh start getting hot. Um exactly.

SPEAKER_01 37:32

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 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 six around one, and then you know, just keeping the honeycomb getting bigger into your hundreds of cables, and then discovering a problem when every single one of those hundreds of cables is drawing full hundred watt power at you know 30 degrees C ambient temperature and the temperature rise gets too high. It's like, is that really the case? When is the only time those cables are closely bundled together? So, A, in a data center where you're not really using PoE anyway. But let's say something like a hospital or a university or a uh a hospitality or stadium network, the only time they're really bundled that close together is for that the 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 at 40 degrees C. You know, 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 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 that.

SPEAKER_02 39:24

Yep, they break open randomized. You know, but the good thing is if the if you follow, that's why like you know, if you follow the rules, again, it's gonna guarantee that that cable plant's gonna work 99. The the old Dove commercials, 99 and 44100 of a time. It's it's always gonna work, right? And and 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. Uh there's a table, there's uh uh 725144, 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_01 40:13

Right. And then you have to go to the manufacturer and uh and look at their ratings. Um, 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 I can say, you know, from my own experience from who I work for, when you look at the bundle size, it's 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_02 40:41

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

Bundles, Environments, And Real-World Risk

SPEAKER_01 40:55

Well, yeah, yeah. Like I mean, when we did the uh again, because our engineers did the testing, and and don't take this number as uh uh as uh as road. 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 type 3 PoE, like three or 400 cables before you have a problem. Yeah, 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 because if they take that much care in their dressing, like they're gonna take care of the termination. And if they're doing taking care of the termination, I'm you know assured that they're gonna do the right uh testing. 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 A, B, C, D, you know, through their warranty and certification program, they don't require testing for alien crosstalk. And that's true for those vendors, A, B, C, and D. But just because I and this is the only, it's not a fight, but it's 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 worst case. But sometimes, again, people that don't know better write it into their specifications. Right. So if it's written in the construction specification that you have to do alien crosstalk testing, either in whole or in part.

SPEAKER_02 42:44

You're doing you're doing alien crosstalk testing. Is what you're doing.

SPEAKER_01 42:48

You're stuck doing it. Now, if you want to go ahead 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 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 in work instead of spending money on doing alien crosstalk testing, I'd rather have you invest money in doing coin.

SPEAKER_02 43:16

Because then I know the pride of the ownership's there. So what changed in the cable? Because like I said, I know when Cat 68 first came out, you said um there would, and I remember this too. I mean, there's a lot of manufacturers saying randomize, randomize, randomize. And now most manufacturers, most manufacturers now will say, well, you can cable comb or randomize, whichever you want to do. We're fine with it. So what changed within the cable? It's still cat 68 cable.

SPEAKER_01 43:43

It's it's people did all the testing. So that guidance came out and was a holdover from the TSB, and again, I forget 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, 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. But you and I are old enough to remember when category 5 was a category and then 5e was different. And we came, remember 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? 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 fors. Then the next step was try replacing the jacks, and then if that didn't work, then replace the cable. Which is 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 then 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 uh replace all my patchboards and test it again. Oh my god, that still didn't work. I'm gonna go and replace like you know what I mean? Like when it doesn't pass, you're just gonna replace it. Yep. And so it's absolutely nonsensical. But God love engineers. And again, these guys are way, you know, to your point. Yep, you're gonna be intimidated if you join these things because these people are way smarter than you ever will be. Yep. Um, like the number of PhDs is it outnumbers the number of people in the room for God's sake.

SPEAKER_02 45:38

Yeah, we uh we we we definitely need more field people, more installation people, more project managers, involved standards.

Warranty, Specs, And AXTalk Testing

SPEAKER_01 45:49

And it's not faulting the people with the PhDs that can figure out how to do the twist legs. It's just they've never been in the field, so they never had to worry about it.

SPEAKER_02 45:57

Right, and then and they don't get and then here's the thing, right? I'm I remember this because I you know I took a college class one time. Um, it was statistics. And even though I was an estimate I was good with numbers, uh it was it's one of those one of those college classes 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 I mean it was just it was just going over my head, you know.

SPEAKER_01 46:31

Absolutely. So so this is why that same thing came about. So it's like, hey, if we have category 5e or 6 systems and we want to go beyond a gigabit, what are we gonna do? Right. And then because remember, cat 6a came out, and cat 7 even before that. So don't even talk about it. No, no, it's not the whole talk.

SPEAKER_02 46:53

Let's not talk about cat 7 on this show. Well, that's that's a different subject.

SPEAKER_01 46:56

Yeah, yeah, that's that's a discussion for another day. So that's like uh, you know, Ron has a good uh blog on that. Why put a spoiler on a pinto? Exactly. Exactly. I want to put Mickeys on my Pinto. It's like okay, you can, but why the heck would you want to? Um uh 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 interested, hey, we have all these things that we have to worry about, so if I have to worry about alien crosstalk, I'm gonna worry about alien crosstalk here. Even though the reality is here, just like we talked about with power. And so because the electronics weren't available, people overcompensated. So when they came out with all these guidelines that included change, you know, same things. It's like, you know, undo less twists, change your patch cords, 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 and again, when people were failing, um and not faulting fluke or or or viavi or any of the the testing manufacturers, but if you're testing and you fail, you have to try and find a way to pass. That's that's the reality. And so you're gonna try and go from least offensive to most offensive. So least offensive is if I can just randomize the cables and it works, okay, great. Uh but you know, if alien crosstalks, that's much of a problem. You know, the amount of uh I I've never seen it done on the field. I'd love to see some practical examples where, hey, I just randomized a bit and made the the bundles a little loose and it worked out. It's just a historical thing where all of these guidelines came out before there was even an application. And so it just became Hallowed Antiquity. The old man on the hill said this, and this is the you know, this is why you know you what you're doing here, you know, the the Bixie manuals, the Bixie committees, the TIA committees, the Nika committees, where it's actually people collaborating is important to participate in.

SPEAKER_02 49:31

And like that's what I was saying earlier. That's why we need that's why we need more installers and project managers in there, because that way they can hold the engineers accountable in those conversations. Because that's who 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, I mean, look at the code book. How many people don't read the code book because it's written in legal ease?

Short Channels, 4-Connector Topology Explained

SPEAKER_01 50:07

And the code book, so again, we're talking about we're going a little far far afield, but I agree with everything you're saying. So this is why I 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. You're right, 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 uh and end users and and engineers. And we're trying to do that.

SPEAKER_02 50:48

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

SPEAKER_01 51:23

It's not an alien problem at that point, and again, I'd have to get one of my engineers in there. It's uh a near and far-end issue. So short is an issue, long tends to not be an issue. Because think of it as like you know, you and I are literally thousands of miles apart, but think imagine we're a hundred miles apart. If I'm shouting to you, you know, that's near and that that's the analogy for near-end crosstalk. So all of those people can hear that. But if if I can shut out the people that are going like this, and then I'm listening for chat, 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 could filter it out, and the electronics always get better. So when we come up with the guidelines, we 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 pat pattern of my waggly fingers on these fingers, I know it's these guys. So I I just ignore it. Um 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 the the electronic compensation and cancellation, and this is where I'll 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 uh short, it gets even worse because then you get all those back reflections.

SPEAKER_02 53:24

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

SPEAKER_01 53:35

And so a four-connector channel, and there's a different way, a slightly different way of explaining it for fiber, but slightly different terms, but let's essentially look at it, it's not four connectors, right? It's four connecting connection matings, and you always exclude the equipment end and the equipment end. So if I'm going from server or switch to to device, those connections where I'm plugging into my computer, I'm plugging into my switch aren't included. 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 mated connection. And then assuming I have a cross connect, so I have an active to passive, where that other patch cord happens, that that's your mated connection. So when you have a four-connector topology, don't count up the number of connectors because you actually get more than that. Um, it's where the connectors mate, right? So you have a jack in in the case of uh uh of copper, you have a jack and a plug. So when a jack goes into a plug, that's one mated connection. So you can have four mated connections, excluding the ones on the outside in a channel. Fiber is slightly different because there is no plug and 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 is is this whole tribal thing, right?

SPEAKER_02 55:11

Yes, oh yes.

SPEAKER_01 55:15

Right. You're you're cheering for the bills, or you're wrong, right? For maybe that's not a bills fan. Uh, but I'm close to Buffalo, so I have to cheer for the Bills. Uh and it's the same thing with copper and fiber guys. So you you know, it's getting less story. I was gonna say it's getting less so, but it's it's not. It's always being competitive. So this is why you have fiber people and copper people. Um they're like big brother or little brother, they're always gonna 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. And uh, you know, so the fiber guys make fun of the copper guys and they say, Oh my god, we're so much smarter than you. You're cavemen. Oh my god, copper's so old. They were using that in the 1800s. Oh, you're so right.

SPEAKER_02 56:14

You're so right. They they uh they they um the the people who do fiber tend to look down on copper people. They they absolutely do. Not all fiber people, not all fiber people, but there's a definite.

Copper Vs Fiber Culture And Color Codes

SPEAKER_01 56:25

I'm saying is it is a generalization, but then you got to go to the 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 questions. He goes, I don't know, I'm not a caveman. It's like, oh, but you know what? Maybe you know, as a as an ex 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 E, six, seven, eight, you know, outside plant. We're smart enough to figure it out by reading a label, we don't have to color code it. Exactly. Oh, uh I'm gonna use it. 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 OM1 and OM2 both being orange, and OM3 and OM4 both being aqua, right? You know, a little smart, and it's just sort of hilarious. It's it's that um that ego or the culture of the people that work together. And you know, once we get beyond all these things, it becomes a lot of fun. And another one of the great reasons why to participate in these industry organizations, because the more you know, the the better off you're gonna be in every part of your job.

unknown 57:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 57:34

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

SPEAKER_01 57:58

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

SPEAKER_02 58:23

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

SPEAKER_01 58:38

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 gonna 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 process. Eight pages? Eight pages? Holy cow. Of things why this is important, and it was funny. The more initials people had on their name, the more I found they didn't know what they were talking about. Yeah. So when I had this issue, I had it with R C D's who were also PNGs and had been in the industry for 20 years, and I wanted to have their PNG and RCDD 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 apprentices. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Because they're fresh in it.

SPEAKER_02 59:54

Because they have school of hard knocks built, yeah, built right into them. That's that's one of the common questions I see a lot on social media is how many cat six cables can I get through a one-inch pipe? Um, 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 a 30% fill? How many 90-degree bends are in it? What's the length on it? There's a lot of considerations.