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Structured
cabling.

The physical layer everything else depends on. Designed, installed, tested and certified to standard.
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Contents

What we'll cover.

    Why it matters

    The longest-lived thing in the hall.

    Servers refresh every three to five years, and switching turns over almost as fast. The cabling plant underneath them typically outlives four or five generations of everything above it. Get it wrong and you pay for it at every refresh.

    Drag the year
    3server refreshes
    2switch refreshes
    0recables

    Installed once

    Installed properly, it stays in place through refresh after refresh. Installed badly, it slows every change for years.

    Speed-ready

    Designed for the 400G and 800G roadmap, not just today's switch order, so upgrades are a patch-lead change.

    Documented

    Labelled, tested, certified and recorded, so the plant can still be changed safely in year five.

    Illustrative, with servers on a four-year refresh and switching on a five-year one.

    What's in a cabling plant

    Anatomy of the plant.

    Street Meet-me room MDA Data hall Raised floor Fibre Copper Power Carrier duct Carriers ODF IDA

    Media and reach

    The right media for the distance.

    Distance Drag the distance
    In-rack and adjacent Horizontal, to 90 m In-row and backbone, to 400 m Campus and long backbone 90 m 400 m
    10G
    40/100G
    400G+

    Cat6A and OM4 are the workhorses of most enterprise halls. Distances shown are typical use, not absolute limits, and the higher speeds on multimode run shorter than the media itself does. We design the mix per row and per distance, not one media everywhere.

    Where the network is heading

    10G to 1.6T. One physical layer.

    800G is shipping in hyperscale today, and 1.6T is on the roadmap. OM4 and OS2 fibre with MPO trunking carries you up the curve. Recabling a live hall to catch up later costs many times the difference.

    Changes at each step: the switches and the patch leads Stays in place: the trunks, the containment and the labelling

    Typical optic lane count and trunk connector at each step. Multimode stays in row where the distances are short, and the top steps and every long run go on singlemode.

    Good vs liability

    The same rack. Two futures.

    Every moves-and-changes visit either maintains the standard or erodes it. We install to a standard that's easy to keep.

    1 Copper and fibre apartSeparate routes and colours, from the tray down. 2 Labelled at both endsEvery port and every lead carries the scheme. 3 Leads cut to lengthDressed into the managers, clear of the kit. 4 Blanking panels fittedAirflow kept front to back through the rack. 1 No labelsEvery trace starts with a guess. 2 Leads looped over the kitOver-length cords hang across the equipment. 3 Copper and fibre mixedOne bundle, one manager, no separation. 4 Blanking panels missingHot air finds its way back through the gaps.
    Drag to compare InheritedOptronix
    How we deliver

    Survey to handover, one team.

    One team from the first walk of the space to the handover pack. No hand-offs between a designer, an installer and a tester.

    Hover to pause, click a stage

    Covers
    You get

    Standards

    The standards we build to.

    A cabling plant outlives the people who install it. Three things are what make it safe to work on in year five, and all three are written into the design before anyone pulls a cable.

    01

    TIA-942 and ISO/IEC 11801

    Designed and installed to the standards your auditors ask about, not loosely inspired by them.

    02

    Tested and certified

    Every link certified, with results recorded per link. Copper and fibre, no sampling.

    03

    Labelled and documented

    A labelling scheme and as-builts that make year-five changes as safe as day-one ones.

    Labelling

    Read the label, find the other end.

    DH1-B07-U42-P24toMDA-A03-U10-P24
    Example labelWrap-around flag, fixed at both ends of the link
    Every link labelled

    Both ends of every cable, to one scheme that survives years of change and matches the as-builts.

    DH1Data hall

    Which hall on the site, so the label still reads on a campus.

    B07Row and cabinet

    Row B, cabinet 07, matching the grid on the floor plan.

    U42Panel position

    The rack unit the patch panel sits in, counted from the bottom.

    P24Port

    The port on that panel, numbered left to right, top row first.

    MDA-A03-U10-P24Far end

    The same rule at both ends: room, row and cabinet, unit, then port.

    Example scheme. Yours is agreed during design and carried into the as-builts and patching schedules.

    Test and certify

    Built to standard. Proven on paper.

    Example result
    DH1-B07-U42-P24
    Limit: TIA-568 Cat 6A permanent linkCertified on Fluke DSX
    PASS
    MDA-A03-U12-P01 to DH1-B07-U40-P01
    OS2 singlemode, OTDR at 1310 nmLaunch and receive cables fitted
    PASS
    How we test
    Copper

    Channel and permanent link testing to TIA-568 and ISO/IEC 11801, certified on Fluke DSX.

    Fibre

    OTDR testing and certification, with launch and receive cables fitted on every link.

    Every link

    Results recorded link by link and handed over in full. Copper and fibre, no sampling.

    Defects

    Test reports produced, defects remediated and the link retested before it is signed off.

    Scale it

    Effort, by link count.

    Cabling links
    Each lit port stands for 100 links
    engineer-days to install and dress
    days of testing and certification
    100%of links certified before handover, always

    Indicative planning figures for a typical hall. Every project is surveyed and scoped properly before we commit a programme.

    Real projects

    Our installs, not stock photos.

    High-density copper, dressed into the tray
    01High-density copper, dressed into the tray
    Backbone trunking into the MDA
    02Backbone trunking into the MDA
    Patch fields, mid-deployment
    03Patch fields, mid-deployment
    Server patching, every lead labelled
    04Server patching, every lead labelled
    Proof, redacted

    Campus-scale, first pass.

    Hyperscale campusEMEAMulti-hall

    For a hyperscale operator in EMEA, our engineers delivered the structured cabling for multiple halls back to back, with one design language, one labelling scheme and one standard.

    90k+terminations across the campus
    4data halls delivered back to back
    1labelling and test scheme, the same in every hall

    Client identifiers withheld. Figures rounded.

    Hall 1Illustration, not the client's site plan.
    Our people

    Where our engineers have worked.

    USAUKEuropeMiddle EastAustralia
    Why Optronix

    Hyperscale pedigree, any scale.

    Our engineers have designed and delivered structured cabling
    for some of the largest data centre campuses in Europe.

    In environments like that, one bad termination in ninety thousand gets found, because everything is tested. That discipline doesn't scale down badly. Whether it's a campus or a single row, the method is the same.

    01

    Design for the roadmap

    Media, topology and containment sized for the speeds you'll run in five years, not just today.

    02

    Install to standard

    Pulled, dressed and terminated to method statements, with bend radius, separation and loading respected.

    03

    Certify everything

    Copper and fibre, with results recorded per link. No sampling.

    04

    Document all of it

    As-builts, patching schedules and labelling records, ready for your DCIM.

    Related decks

    More detail, deck by deck.

    WirelessWiFi Survey & DesignEkahau survey, design, install and validation.Open deck → RacksRack, Stack & PatchKit installed, cabled and patched cleanly, to standard and documented.Open deck → Data hallsData Centre Design & BuildFrom first sketch to final handover, designed in our Whitespace Builder.Open deck → OfficesWorkplace TechnologyEvery piece of technology in an office, from the duct in the street to the laptop on the desk.Open deck → ProofCase StudiesFive projects, with the results and what the clients said.Open deck →
    Next step

    Tell us about the hall.
    We'll scope the cabling.

    A floor plan, the rack layout and a rough link count are enough to start. We will come back with a survey plan, the design approach for media and containment, and an outline programme.

    Anthony Hobley
    Technical Director
    +44 (0) 7450 337795
    anthony.hobley@optronix.co.uk     Email Anthony →     Matt Stockill
    Sales Manager
    +44 (0) 7768 360149
    matt.stockill@optronix.co.uk     Email Matt →
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