Things All Academic, 4 (1) 2003. Our Turn Editors Note: Technology upgrades may pose temporary hardships on members of our academic community. Following is an exchange of e-mails that addresses the concern of an instructor at the University but the concern has broad implications and is being published in the interest of informing our larger academic community. As always, the permission to publish the following notes was sought and received.
Network Upgrades at The University of Arkansas
Bob Smith Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Don Pederson Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administration University of Arkansas To: Dean Don Bobbitt, Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences Dear Don, I am passing along an analysis of the cabling upgrade question raised by an instructor in the Fulbright College. I support Don Pederson's conclusions and ask that you share this memo with your administrative team. Because this matter has broad implications, I am sharing this note
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with our Deans Council colleagues and will publish it in the Our Turn section of the next issue of All Things Academic. I will appreciate your attention to this matter. Kindly, Bob. _____________________________________________________________ Date: Fri, 24 Jan 2003 09:55:34 -0600 From: Don Pederson <[e-mail]> Subject: Fwd: Category 6 Network Cabling To: "Robert V. Smith" <[e-mail]> Cc: [e-mail], [e-mail] An instructor in the Fulbright College has objected to using the Cat6 standard and has asserted they cannot afford the 50% cost increase over Cat5. His objections appear to be seriously overstated. Furthermore, avoiding some current cost (a 10% or even a 20% premium) now at the expense of even more future costs is not in the best interest of the University and should not be allowed. more to upgrade later. UA has had to do some rewiring on campus with significant duplicated costs when quality standards were ignored. The worst cases that have been described to me are the new Chemistry Research Building that downgraded from the specs that were provided with the building specs (by the architect and the building executive) and the Cat3 cable that was used in residence halls for sometime because it was cheaper than using the then standard of Cat5. Both of those situations were remedied at significant cost at a later date. The campus has had previous experience in units avoiding current standards and then having to pay even
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I believe Craig Brown's analysis [see below] of the use of Cat6 wiring answers the questions [the Fulbright instructor] asks below. I am sending the response to you to forward to Dean Bobbitt and [the instructor] in order to be clear about what we are trying to do on campus. The kind of questions [the instructor] is asking is more widespread than just Fulbright College. One of my objectives is to avoid spending money twice to solve problems. We simply cannot afford to do so regardless of whose money it is. While no one can guarantee that we will not have to upgrade again and in all likelihood we will, we should not downgrade knowing that the trend in computing is continually for increased bandwidth. If we can spend a bit more now and put off the upgrade for the longest possible time, we are spending far more wisely. Please let me know if you or Fulbright College has any more questions. - dop. ____________________________________________________________ Date: Thu, 23 Jan 2003 18:34:09 -0600 From: Craig Brown <[e-mail]> Subject: Category 6 Network Cabling To: Donald Pederson <[e-mail]> Cc: Robert Zimmerman <[e-mail]>, Leo Yanda <[e-mail]>, Ron Edwards <[e-mail]>, Frank Graham <[e-mail]> Don - Bob (Zimmerman) and I have discussed the concerns being expressed regarding using category 6 cabling specifications instead of an older standard, especially when the newer standard costs more. Bob asked me to provide you with the information discussed I with him. It illustrates
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that a claim of the newer cabling being more than twice the cost of the newer cabling does not reflect the whole picture and is misleading. For the past several years, our campus has been adhering to network cabling specifications as defined and endorsed by a standards body formed of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA), and the Electronics Industries Association (EIA). Last June, this body finalized and published the category 6 specification to supersede the previous category 5e specification. They have put together a very good FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) regarding the newer specification if you would care to look it over <http://www.tiaonline.org/standards/category6/index.cfm>. I've summarized a few of the more relevant points regarding our issues below: The general difference between category 5e and category 6 is that the newer specification provides better reliability, better immunity from external electrical noise, and higher data rates. Current applications can benefit from the higher reliability, and we'll have room to grow with the same wiring infrastructure for future applications. People claim that they don't have any applications nor anticipate any in the near term that require the addition bandwidth capabilities of category 6. According to TIA, the "trends of the past and the predictions for the future indicate that data rates have been doubling every 18 months. Current applications running at 1 Gb/s are really pushing the limits of category 5e cabling. As streaming media applications such as video and multi-media become commonplace, the demands for faster data rates will increase and spawn new applications that will benefit from the higher bandwidth offered by category 6. This is exactly what happened in the early 90's when the higher bandwidth of category 5 cabling compared to category 3". This is
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one of the reasons we moved from category 3 on our campus to category 5 when it became available and was adopted by ANSI/TIA/EIA as the new standard. People objected then as well. TIA also states that "analyst predictions and independent polls indicate that 80 to 90 percent of all new installations will be cabled with category 6". Regarding when one should consider installing category 6 instead of category 5e, TIA recommen...