Learning how to deal with, and navigate within the various standards may increase your effectiveness at work, avoid you having to dig any deeper than necessary, and could save you a lot of wasted time, energy and money.
General rule of thumb for data cabling standards
Typically, every standard will have two clauses at the beginning of the document: "Scope" and "Introduction". Albeit short, the "Scope" is the most important part to understand as it explains what information you will find in the document, who needs to read it, and how it should be used. "Introduction" provides additional detail, background and explanation.
Next, it's important to keep in mind that no single document will cover everything. Standards writing relies on referencing other standards, sometimes including those from other organizations. This keeps documents shorter, easier to read and keep up to date, but it does mean that you may need to look at other documents as well.
Every standard contains a bibliography at the end, which provides background information for those what want to dive deeper into a topic.
The ISO/IEC 11801 series of standards and technical reports provides standards for installed cabling such as permanent links, channels and other topologies like Modular Plug Terminated Links (MPTL), end to end links (E2E) and direct attach cabling (DAC). The base document ISO/IEC 11801-1 covers the main technical requirements for transmission parameter performance, and is a core reference for other parts in the series, which are specific requirements to certain kinds of premise cabling. The premise-specific documents discuss greater detail on topology, routing, labelling, specific details of required component types and all the other detail needed for that type of premise. These are ISO/IEC 11801-2 for office premises, ISO/IEC 11801-3 for industrial premises, ISO/IEC 11801-4 for residential, ISO/IEC 11801-5 for data centers and ISO/IEC 11801-6 for distributed building networks. So, an installation that is entirely focused on data centers may have no need to refer to other parts of the series, other than where guided by ISO/IEC 11801-5.
All these premise documents lead to the planning and installation standard ISO/IEC 14763-2, which acts as core point of reference for any ISO/IEC generic cabling premise. In addition, anyone looking at remote powering may also want to look at ISO/IEC TS 29125, which discusses heating rise and building concerns when using data cabling for applications such as Power over Ethernet (PoE).
TIA originated standards are similar in format, however, they provide much more detail about components and testing without referring to other documents. The main installation and planning documents are ANSI/TIA-568.0-E and ANSI/TIA-568.1-E, and the base document for technical transmission specifications is ANSI/TIA-568.2-D. TIA is in the final stages of publishing the next edition of its main industrial standard, ANSI/TIA 1005-B, which will include E2E links.
The main standard describing applications used today is Ethernet, which is specified by IEEE. The latest revision of the Ethernet document IEEE 802.3 was published in 2022.
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