Chapter 6: Installing a Physical Network Flashcards
Structured Cabling
The set of cabling standards
Telecommunications Room
The central location to which all cabling from individual PCs runs.
Horizontal Cabling
All cables run horizontally (for the most part) from the telecommunications room to the PCs
Work Area
Where the cables go to from the telecommunications room
Run
A single piece of cable that runs from a work area to a telecommunications room
Solid Core Cable
- A cable that uses a single solid wire to transmit signals
- A better conductor than stranded core, but more fragile
Stranded Core Cable
- A cable that uses a bundle of tiny wire strands to transmit signals.
- Not as good of a conductor as solid core, but less fragile
Should horizontal cabling be stranded or solid core?
Solid Core
Intermediate Distribution Frame (IDF)
The more technical name for the telecommunications room
Width of an equipment rack
19 inches
Size of a unit (U)
1.75 inches
Patch Panel
A box with a row of female ports in the front and permanent connections in the back to which you connect the horizontal cables.
110 block
The most common type of patch panel connector
Punchdown tool
A tool used to connect UTP to a 110 block
TIA/EIA 606
Defines an official naming convention for labeling cables
Patch Cables
Short, straight-through UTP cables that use stranded cable.
Demarc
Where connections from the outside world come into the building.
Network Interface Unit (NIU)
Another term for demarc
Smart Jack
A type of NIU that enables ISPs or telephone companies to test for faults in a network, such as disconnections or loopbacks.
Customer Premises Equipment
The primary distribution box and customer-owned/managed equipment that exists on the customer side of the demarc.
Demarc Extension
Any cabling that runs from the NIU to whatever box is used by the customer as a demarc.
Vertical Cross-Connect
The main patch panel in a telecommunications room.
Main Distribution Frame (MDF)
The room in a building that stores the demarc, telephone cross-connects, and LAN cross-connects.
Cable Drop
Location where the cable comes out of the wall at the workstation location
Split Pair
A condition that occurs when signals on a pair of wires within a UTP cable interfere with the signals on another wire pair within that same cable.
Short
Allows electricity to pass between two conductive elements that weren’t designed to interact together.
Time Domain Reflectometer (TDR)
An advanced cable tester that tests the length of cables and their continuity or discontinuity, and identifies the location of any discontinuity due to a bend, break, unwanted crimp, and so on.
Crosstalk
Electrical signal interference between two cables that in close proximity to each other.
Far-End Crosstalk
Crosstalk on the opposite end of a cable from the signal’s source.
Near-End Crosstalk
Crosstalk at the same end of a cable from which the signal is being generated.
Attenuation
The degradation of signal over distance for a networking cable.
What unit is signal loss measured in?
decibels (dB)
Cable Certifier
A powerful cable testing device used by professional installers to test the electrical characteristics of a cable and then generate a certification report, proving that cable runs pass TIA/EIA standards
Optical Time Domain Reflectometers (OTDR)
Tester for fiber optic cable that determines continuity and reports the location of cable breaks.
Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI)
The expansion slot which you insert a NIC into.
Bonding
Two or more NICs in a system working together to act as a single NIC to increase performance.
Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP)
Specification of certain features and options to automate the negotiation, management, load balancing, and failure modes of aggregated ports.
Activity Light
An LED on a NIC, hub, or switch that blinks rapidly to show data transfers over the network.
Collision Light
A light on some older NICs that flickers when a network collision is detected.
Loopback test
Sends data out of the NIC and checks to see if it comes back.
Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS)
A device that supplies continuous clean power to a computer system the whole time the computer is on.
Online UPS
- Continually charges a battery that powers the computer components.
- If the telco room loses power, the computer stays powered up
Standby UPS
-Doesn’t power the computer unless the power goes out
Tone Generator
Connects to a cable and sends an electrical signal along the wire at a certain frequency
Tone Probe
Emits a sound when it is placed near a cable connected to the tone generator.
