Certification percentage for Cat6A

[arosenTCA]

Hello all -

We are wiring up our new building, and if I get my way, we're going to have an excessive number of drops per office (our company has a habit of splitting offices later, or moving around furniture). I may even get cat6A equipment in there, although definitely at least cat6.

My question is what to specify for a certification rate of the drops from the cabling contractor. Do people usually do 100% certification rate? This is my first time dealing with a project like this, and unfortunately I have levels of management between me and the potential installer so I can't talk to them directly about price. We are probably talking around 400 drops or so, with only about 40-50% utilization initially. I just don't know what typical standards for this kind of install are, especially since so many of our drops won't be used so I can't rely on switches reporting errors on the lines.

Thanks

Adam

 

[jknichols]

I don't care how many of the runs you are initially using, all must certify 100% - if a run won't certify, rip it out and re-do it!

How would you like to need one of the "spares" in 6 months to 2 years from now, only to find out that it has "issues" and wouldn't certify when put in.

Actually if the installer has trouble certifying 99%, then they are doing something wrong, and I would be suspicious of the longevity of those that do pass.

 

[ironhorse17]

All the drops need to be certified and a record kept by both parties, if the guarantee is for 20 years the company will use these records to determine if the cable was relocated or damaged.

 

[arosenTCA]

Thanks for the feedback. I wanted 100% certification, but didn't know if I was naive in expecting that, or if there was an industry standard percentage to test. Especially given the number of unused drops initially, 100% was important to me. I'll have that be part of the contract.

Thanks!

Adam

 

[arosenTCA]

As another note, any thoughts on using this for our certification guidelines?

http://myaccount.flukenetworks.com/fnet/en-us/findit.asp?Document=9821880

 

[MasterRacker]

Agree with everyone else. Until it's certified it's just a piece of wire, not a "run".

As a side note, 40-50% utilization seems high to me. We just finished a remodel and every room got at least 8 drops (2 per wall). Even with that many, I guarantee we'll still end up with plenty of instances where nothing is located conveniently for where the furniture ends up.

Jeff
[small][purple]It's never too early to begin preparing for [/purple]International Talk Like a Pirate Day
"The software I buy sucks, The software I write sucks. It's time to give up and have a beer..." - Me[/small]

 

[alamtnman]

also when you get the copies of the test result that certify the cable's performance spend a few minutes going thru them and reviewing look for abnormal amount of same lengnth and results. I have seen more than one instance where a contractor ran the cable tester on the same cable over 100 times instead of testing/cerifying each cable. We now require the contractor to test random drops with us present to confirm accuracy of the report before signing off on completion.

T.R.
RCDD

there may not be any stupid questions
but their is a bunch of inquizative idiots
(myself included at times)

 

[arosenTCA]

Oooh, good tip TR. Thanks