What does the TIA/EIA-568-B Standard Cover?

The TIA/EIA-568–B standard is a “Commercial Building Telecommunication Cabling Standard”.

The standard specifies a physical star topology. It also covers the cable specification, performance and installation requirements.

TIA/EIA-568–B structured cabling system consists of six cabling subsystems:

1. Work Area
2. Horizontal Cabling
3. Telecommunication Closet
4. Backbone Cabling
5. Equipment Room
6. Building Entrance

Work Area: Work area covers from the telecommunication outlet to the station equipment. The design  purpose of work area wiring is to be simple to shift, add or and change cables.

Components in a Work Area:

• Station equipment such as computers, data terminals, telephones, etc.
• Patch cables such as modular patch cords, pc adapter cables, fiber optic patch cords, etc.
• Adapters such as baluns. The adpaters must be external to telecommunication outlet.

Horizontal Cabling: Horizontal cabling covers from the work area telecommunicatioin outlet to the telecommunication closet. It consists of:

• Horizontal cables
• The telecommunication outlet, connector
• Mechanical terminations in the telecommunication closet
• Patch cords or jumpers in the telecommunication closet

Recognized media in horizontal cabling:

• 4–pair 100 ohm unshield twisted pair (UTP)
• 2–pair 150 ohm shielded twisted pair (STP-A)
• 2–fiber 62.5/125um multimode fiber

The maximum cable length from telecommunication closet to work area outlet is 295 feet, or 90 meters.

T568A and T568B 8–position modular jack pair pin assignments for UTP.

Telecommunication Closet: Telecommunication closet is the area in a building which houses the telecommunication cabling system equipment. It includes the mechanical terminations and cross connect for the horizontal and backbone cabling system. TIA/EIA-569 covers telcommunication closet design specifications.

Backbone Cabling: Backbone cabling are the interconnections between telecommunication closets, equipment rooms and entrance facilities.

Components in backbone cabling:

• Backbone cables
• Mechanical terminations in the intermediate and main cross-connections
• Patch cords used for backbone-to-bone cross connections
• Mechanical terminations used to terminate backbone cabling in the horizontal cross-connections
• Cabling between  buildings

Recognized media in backbone cabling:

• 100 ohm unshielded twisted pair (UTP)
• 150 ohm shielded twisted pair (STP-A)
• 62.5/125um multimode fiber
• Single mode fiber

Euipment Room: Equipment rooms house the equipment of higher complexity than telecommunication closets. TIA/EIA-569 covers the design specifications of equipment rooms.

Building Entrance: Building entrance facilities is the point where outside cabling interfaces with internal building backbone cabling. TIA/EIA-569 covers the physical design requirements of this network interface. ANSI/TIA/EIA-607 covers the grounding and bonding requirement for building entrance.