110 Block Frames and TIA-606-B

Question

I have a large industrial work site with numerous Switch- and Control-Rooms containing horizontal and vertical patch panels, switches, etc. There has historically been no formal identification or labeling standard for the structured cabling, and as a result every new expansion or installation the cabling vendors who have been contracted have implemented their own standard (sometimes just tick-marks on the Cat5).

There is an opportunity to fix this, and the electricians have asked for some guidance on an appropriate standard, and I'm considering TIA-606-B as it seems to cover most of situations on site. However I'm having difficulty how to identify blocks on 110 frames under TIA-606-B, which have been used around the site (its an old site).

One prominent example is a 110 frame covering the main admin area - it is mounted to a wall in one of the telecommunications space I have notionally called the TLO (Team Leader's Office). It is comprised of 4 verticals, each with 12 numbered rows, each row containing 5 four-pair blocks and 1 five-pair block.

I'm trying to work out how under TIA-606-B you would identify a block on such a 110 frame (or, other similar frames such as a Krone MDF). One way might be to call the Telecommunications Space "TLO", maybe each vertical "A", "B", "C", "D" as the cabinet/rack identifier, the row in each vertical as the location in cabinet/rack, and then the port number on that row as the port number. So the forth port across on row 8 on vertical A might be TLO.A-08:04 (for a Class 2 Administration). Is there a better way or a de facto standard?

Thanks,

Answer 1

TIA-606-B is really a set of guidelines. You are free to add or use whatever makes sense and works for you, but whatever you choose must be applied consistently and uniformly to every area, is flexible enough to withstand change and growth, and it needs to be communicated to any vendors involved.

It establishes guidelines for owners, end users, manufacturers, consultants, contractors, designers, installers, and facilities administrators involved in the administration of the telecommunications infrastructure.

What I do see missing from your proposed labeling is the floor, e.g. "1TLO," or "03TLO."

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Whatever you end up using, make sure that the cable installers use the same format for the cable test reports they present to you. You want to be able to look up, sometimes years later, the insertion loss or PSNEXT of a cable as tested at installation, and you need to to be able to relate the test to the actual cable.

Answer 2

What I've ended up doing is nominating the wall that the 110 frame is located on as a Wall Segment (along with a few other Krone backmount frames and distribution boxes) and - using the recommendations in §5.1.3.2 "Frame- or wall-mounted termination block or patch panel identifiers" - identifying each frame by its top-left Y and X coordinate in centimeters from the bottom-left corner of the wall.

So in my example, the hierarchy from the wall segment down to a sample fibre link...

• +NRM+MILL+TLO.WW Team Leaders Office Telecom Room Western Wall Segment (excludes pillar)
  • +NRM+MILL+TLO.WW+193_026 Office Outlets 110 Frame (4 verticals, ports A01 to D72)
  • +NRM+MILL+TLO.WW+127_014 "PA" Krone 10-Pair Distribution Box (ports A01 to B10)
  • +NRM+MILL+TLO.WW+099_054 "Telephone" Krone Backmount 27-Block IDF (ports 001 to 270)
  • +NRM+MILL+TLO.WW+075_038 "Broadband" Krone Backmount 11-Block IDF (ports 001 to 110)
  • +NRM+MILL+TLO.WW+188_135 "RM-CR2" Fibre Optic Termination Panel
    • +NRM+MILL+TLO.WW+188_135:01_12 Fibre Link to 132kV Substation

(I'd love to show you a photo, but then I'd have to commit harakiri in shame over how much of a tangled mess the frames are.)