What makes up the local office network?

It is necessary to first define the network for the purposes of this discussion.  For our purposes, we will be referring to the wiring infrastructure, often called the “wiring plant”, and the electronic devices that make up your office's Local Area Network (LAN).  Your office LAN is the “local” part of the network that connects all office PC’s, printers, video conferencing devices etc. together before it is collectively connected to the T1 which, in turn, connects your office to the larger Wide Area Network (WAN) and the Internet. 

For this discussion the LAN consists of two basic components.  The wiring and electronic switches (sometimes referred to as hubs).   The wiring plant makes the physical connections between your equipment and the switches provide the electrical signal over which your equipment communicates.  The wiring plant and the hub/switches vary greatly from building to building. 

What might my local office network look like?

Some wiring plants consist of wiring that is neatly placed in conduit and/or behind walls and eventually all terminate at a wall jack to which we connect our computing devices.  At the other end the individual wires all run back to a central wire closet where they are neatly terminated on special connectors made for that purpose call patch panels.   Short jumper wires are then used to “jump" from an individual wire circuit into a particular jack on the electronics.  This is an ideal situation.

At other locations, the wiring plant consists of devices connected to individual wires, running along baseboards, up the walls or over false ceilings where the other end is connected directly to a jack on the electronics.

What are the factors that that make up an aging vs. a modern network wiring infrastructure?

Aside from the fact the first description is obviously neater and does a better job of protecting the physical wire plant from human traffic, rodents, sweepers and other enemies of a network wire, both of these wiring configurations function just fine from a technical point of view.  What is more important than how the wire is run is the type, or “category”, of the wire that makes up your wiring plant.  The category (Cat) of the wire essentially defines how fast data can be moved across the wire.  The higher the category, the more twists per foot the wire pairs have, and the faster data can travel over the wire before signal interference occurs.

The rate at which data can flow over the wire is often referred to as bandwidth capacity.  In the early days of networking, the typical network could run at a maximum theoretical bandwidth of 10 megabits per second (10 Mb/s).  A 10 Mb/s network required a wire plant that deployed a minimum category 3 (Cat 3) wiring.  This was the category of wire used by telephones.  Many of our offices networks were created using Cat 3 wiring which is adequate for 10 Mb/s networks.

Today’s computers ship with network cards that can operate at 100 or 1000 Mb/s.  These networks have minimum wire category requirements of Cat 5 and Cat 6 respectively.  As can be surmised, users in offices that have old Cat 3 wiring plants can be limited to up to 1/100^th of their computers capacity to move data across the LAN.

Why should I be concerned?

AgIT has seen and increasing number of failures of old 10Mb/s hubs.  These hubs can be replaced with either 10/100Mb/s, or 100/1000Mb/s switches.  Ideally, we would like to invest in new equipment that provides the longest-term benefit and enables devices connected to the network to run at their fullest possible capacity.  The office running on Cat 3 wiring will be forever by limited to10Mb/s bandwidth until the wiring plant is upgraded.

All failed older hubs will need to be replaced with, at least, 10/100Mb/s switches.  The 10/100Mb/s switches, when connected to a 10/100Mbps NIC card in a computing device, automatically "sense" the maximum capacity and thereby attempt to run at 100Mb/s.  This has caused us severe problems on wire plants composed of CAT 3 wiring due to line noise resulting in re-transmits and producing very poor data rates.  We can purchase managed switches that enable us to "force" the network to run at the lower 10Mb/s but these switches are approximately 10 times the cost of unmanaged switches.  We can also temporarily correct this problem by logging into the affected PC and forcing the NIC card (where possible) to run 10Mb/s only.  The switch sees this, and configures itself to 10Mb/s also.  This restores normal data flow at 10Mb/s, but should only be considered a temporary solution, until CAT 5e or CAT 6 is installed.   CAT 3 wiring not only restricts data speeds to 10Mb/s, but it also causes problems with modern data comm equipment that wants to run at 100Mb/s.  Until old CAT 3 wiring plants are upgraded, we will continue to have problems.

What are the costs associated with upgrading the wiring plant?

In the simplest terms, the upgrade of the wiring plant requires the replacement of the current category of wire with Cat 6 which amounts to a few cents per foot plus the cost of labor for doing the work.  We then replace the number of hubs in the office with modern switches costing less than $100 dollars each and the upgrade is complete.

However, there are often many other factors that influence the cost of upgrading the wiring plant.   For example, decision makers would need to consider if replacing current wiring, which might have been grandfathered into to existing building codes, would be required to meet current standards.  New codes could include requirements for conduit infrastructure and other considerations.

Even if code doesn’t require changes, there is also the question of reliability.  As we depend more heavily on our technology to work day to day, it may not make sense to run wiring along floors where it can be easily damaged or accessed by ill-meaning individuals.  Security and protection of sensitive data is an ever increasing area of concern, especially where youth are involved.  In most cases, the new wire plant would need to be professionally installed by local contractors.  The office personal or volunteers could do the work themselves, but would need to certify that it was being done to professional standards.

Why can’t we just use wireless technology?

Wireless technology is still developing and is currently very insecure.  Signal bleeding through floors and walls of buildings can easily be hijacked from remote locations where any level of hacking can be quietly and anonymously conducted.

Additionally, wireless technology is significantly behind the curve in terms of bandwidth capacity when capered to wire and/or fiber.  The fastest wireless solution has a maximum theoretical bandwidth of 64Mb/s.  This is probably inadequate when the average computer ships with 1000Mb/s capacity.

What’s the bottom line?

Though the county could to spend considerably more for managed switches that enable to force the data rate to 10Mb/s, in the end, we can still replace old 10Mb/s hubs with 10/100Mb/s switches and use existing Cat 3 wiring.  However, there will come a time that we can’t purchase 10Mb/s equipment, though we anticipate that that time is still several years away.  But it doesn't likely make  sense to spend money on 10Mb/s only equipment that is nearly obsolete as we speak, nor to spend considerably more money on managed switches to force the network to 10Mb/s.  These are temporary kludges that uses resources that could be better spent on modern wiring.

We are hopeful that discussions started today will lead to the development of future plans to upgrade LAN infrastructures.  AgIT stands ready to assist you in analyzing the current state of your LAN and consult in any way with you or your county officials.