APC AP5615, AP5616, AP5610 manual Appendix B UTP Cabling, UTP copper cabling, Wiring standards

107

Appendix B: UTP Cabling

The performance of a switching system depends on high quality connections. Poor quality or poorly installed or maintained cabling can diminish system performance. Consult with the local code officials orAPC technical support prior to any installation.

UTP copper cabling

Switching systems utilize unshielded twisted pair (UTP) cabling. The KVM switch supports three types of UTP cabling:

•CAT5 UTP (4-pair) high performance cable consists of twisted pair conductors, used primarily for data transmission. The twisting of the pairs gives this cable some immunity from the infiltration of unwanted interference. CAT5 cable is generally used for networks running at 100 or 1000 Mbps.

•CAT5E (enhanced) cable has the same characteristics as CAT5 cable but is manufactured to higher standards.

•CAT6 cable is manufactured to higher standards than CAT5E cable. CAT6 has higher measured frequency ranges and significantly better performance requirements than CAT5E cable at the KVM server module frequencies.

Wiring standards

There are two supported wiring standards for 8-conductor (4-pair) RJ-45 terminated UTP cable: EIA/TIA 568A and EA/TIA 568B. These standards apply to installations utilizing CAT5, CAT5E, and CAT6 cable specifications. The switching system supports either of these wiring standards. See Table B.1 for details.

Table B.1: UTP wiring standards

Pin	EIA/TIA 568A	EIA/TIA 568B
1	white/green	white/orange
2	green	orange
3	white/orange	white/green
4	blue	blue
5	white/blue	white/blue
6	orange	green
7	white/brown	white/brown
8	brown	brown