Structured cabling skills are crucial for any networking professional. Structured cabling creates a physical topology where telecommunications cabling is organized into hierarchical termination and interconnection structures according to standards. The word telecommunications is used to express the necessity of dealing with electrical power wires, telephone wires, and cable television coaxial cable in addition to copper and optical networking media.

Structured cabling is an OSI Layer 1 issue. Without Layer 1 connectivity, the Layer 2 switching and Layer 3 routing process that makes data transfer across large networks possible cannot occur. Especially for people new to the networking workforce, many of the day-to-day jobs deal with structured cabling.

Many different standards are used to define the rules of structured cabling. These standards vary around the world. Three standards of central importance in structured cabling are ANSI TIA/EIA-T568-B, ISO/IEC 11801, and IEEE 802.x.

The instructor will provide the materials for a structured cabling case study and installation project appropriate to your region of the world. It is recommended to complete a structured cabling case study on paper, and a hands-on structured cabling installation project. Understanding structured cabling is essential for network administrators, network technicians, and network engineers.

The following links provide additional structured cabling resources:

• http://www.ieee.org
• http://www.tiaonline.org
• http://www.iso.org
• http://www.linktionary.com/linktionary.html
• http://www.siemon.com/standards/
• http://www.netday.org

Resources Structured Cabling Supplement Curriculum and lab exercises in seven areas: Structured Cabling Systems Structured Cabling Standards and Codes Safety Tools of the Trade Installation Process Finish Phase The Cabling Business