Areas of focus (but not limited to) would be Patient Services, Surgery/Procedure/Operating Rooms, Emergency, Ambulatory Care, Women’s Health, Diagnostic and Treatment, Caregiver, Service/Support, Facilities, Operations, and Critical Care.

The working group has recommended that “work areas” for heathcare systems are expanded (as opposed to non-heathcare infrastructure standards) and that the required permanent links for each necessary cabling established.

The standard will also support biomedical systems (RFID, BAS, nurse call, security, access control, pharmaceutical inventory, etc.) that use, or have the potential to use, IP based infrastructure systems.

This standard is developed by the TR.42 Premises Telecommunications Cabling TR-42.1 Commercial Building Cabling Subcommittee.

The quantity currently in circulation is unknown and is distributed by Ke Jie Electronic Appliance Store, Booth G241, Zone B, Pacific Computer Market, Tianhe District, Guangzhou B G241 CHINA.

We can’t stress enough the importance of using cables that conform to particular category specifications. The criticality of using counterfeit cables within Industrial environments is a definite show stopper. It could result in catastrophic occurrences as the cables may not withstand or perform within its category specifications.

Systimax® is the flagship brand of Commscope.

(Image Source: http://www.ul.com)

The standards doc. TIA-568-C.0 and C.1 will be combined with the TIA-568-C.3 Fiber Optic Cabling Components Standards (published mid ‘08) and TIA-568-C.2, Balanced Twisted-Pair Telecommunications Cabling and Components Standard (release date: TBA) to form the “TIA-568-C suite of standards”.

What does TIA-568-C standards give you over the older TIA 568-B?

The new standard will be more of a generic structured cable document emphasizing on efficiency and effectiveness. It aims to put all common cabling information within a single source; allowing cable usage in different types of facilities and premises within a multi product/ multi vendor environment. The TIA-568-C.0 standards document will cover cabling requirements, structure, topologies, distances, installation, performance and testing.

TIA-568-C suite of standards breakdown:

TIA-568-C.0 Generic Telecommunications Cabling for Customer Premises
TIA-568-C.1 Commercial Building Telecommunication Cabling Standards – Part 1 General Requirements
TIA-568-C.2 Balanced Twisted-Pair Telecommunications Cabling and Components Standard (release date: TBA)
TIA-568-C.3 Optical Fiber Cabling Components Standard

Here is a podcast from TIA’s Henry Cuschieri and TR-42 Telecommunications Cabling Systems Engineering Committee Chair Herb Congdon, Manager of Standards and Technology for AMP NETCONNECT Systems at Tyco Electronics, discussing the recent updates to TR-42 cabling infrastructure standards, the recent updates to TR-42 cabling infrastructure standards, the work underway in the committee’s Green Issues Task Force, including the revision of the Building Automation Standard (BAS) TIA-568-C series.

Press Release

TIA Online

Purchase TIA-568-C.0, TIA-568-C.1, TIA-568-C.3 here.

[Info. and diagram courtesy of zen22142.zen.co.uk]

To wire it properly, the wire being inserted should have the pinout numbered in sequence from 1 to 8 (left to right) with the modular plug’s gold contact side on the top, directly facing you (see top view of plug on the right). You will know you have positioned it the right way when the plug clip is on the bottom, facing away from you on the opposite side.

EIA/TIA 568B is used for Cat 5e/ Cat 6 network wiring and should be wired as such at both ends. Cat 6 cables are derived from the manufacturer’s cable specification (although the pinouts are the same).

To make a crossover cable, use the EIA/TIA 568A pinout at one end and the EIA/TIA 568B pinout at the other.

It is important to uniformly use the same standard throughout your network. If not, you may end up with some of the cable pairs crossed, causing data communication problems.

8P8C means that the connector has eight positions with eight contacts. True RJ45 plugs use 4 pairs and 2 contacts (8P2C keyed with a resistor). They are different.

To clear this up further, the term RJ (or Registered Jack) is used in the telecommunications business to specify the wiring scheme of a FCC registered piece of equipment connected to a PSTN public network. It has nothing to do with the type of jack, or brand of it.

So when one mentions RJ45, he actually means that he needs a 4 pair modular plug for a telecom system (that is rarely used commercially nowadays). 8P8C plugs also do not fit in RJ45 sockets as they are of different sizes.

The terms are often used interchangeably as being one and the same, presumably due to the 8 pin layout and outward resemblance of the two plugs (i.e. the 8P8C and the true RJ45). You will also commonly see it in many catalogs with the wrong term usage. One may argue its abundant usage everywhere (within books, certifications and catalogs etc.) but two wrongs don’t make a right. It’s all about the proper use of terminology.

In summary, RJ45 is a wrong technically term for the plugs we use for crimping an ethernet network cable. The term should be used separately and not together. RJ specifies the mechanical interface only but not the schematic. RJ plugs do not use the same wiring scheme of EIA/TIA 568A/568B (the standard wiring scheme for standard ethernet cable connections).

The Industrial Cabling Sub-committee received approval to publish ANSI/TIA 1005, Telecommunications Infrastructure Standard for Industrial Premises, at the October TIA TR-42 TR-42.9 meeting held in Vancouver, BC. TIA-1005 was created to address new structured cabling concepts for industrial installations. Specifically, it addresses the potential exposure of cable to hostile environments, and special cabling system requirements. (Source: Superior Essex)

The standard would be a huge step towards gaining further traction for the use of Ethernet in factory production and manufacturing environments. It will address several areas like the installation and requirements of cables within harsh environments, helping enable the installation of telecommunications infrastructure on the plant floor and between manufacturing/ industrial buildings.

TIA-1005 will introduce a 2 pair cabling installation allowance, a huge difference from the current TIA-568-B 8 pair standard. Also expect the inclusion of cabling concepts for automating outlets, Cat 6 allowance in automation islands; and the definition of the factory floor, work area and automating island using the MICE model/ table.

Using the MICE model, there will be a designation of four environmental areas of which the cable will be subjected to:

The industrial areas and mixed environments are then classified based on the limits of MICE to form the following levels: Mice 1 (commercial/ office environments), Mice 2 (Light industrial/ work areas), and Mice 3 (the automation island/ heavy industrial). The work area would typically be where the control level hardware resides and the automation island would be where the plant floor machines reside. Automation islands are where the harshest environments reside. Duly note that these classifications are concepts and not mandatory requirements.

The TIA-1005 is based on existing cabling standards of ANSI/TIA/EIA 568-B, 606-A; TIA-5690B; ANSI-J-STD-607-A and ISO/IEC11801.