Last month, Molex Premise Networks distributed its global positioning statement on the latest generation of Cat6 Augmented (Cat6a) cabling solutions, which are currently being touted by its competitors as the future of 10GbE structured cabling systems.

In this statement, the company expresses its concern about the immediate viability of any such solution, and points at that, as the standard for this cable is still over a year from being ratified, any current solution is inherently proprietary, and cannot claim to meet the requirements of the final specification.

Therefore, issues such as compatibility cannot be guaranteed, and customers investing in this solution for future-proofing reasons should be made aware that the system might not meet the compatibility standards of products based on the final standards.

However, Molex Business Development Manager and BICSI Registered Communications Distribution Designer (RCDD) at Datanet Infrastructure Group, Iain Ure, says that he has uncovered an even more dangerous aspect of the 10GbE over unshielded copper cable equation. During the course of this research project, Ure discovered that, in many circles, the active equipment required to transmit data at such high frequencies down the copper solution will almost certainly suffer from massive heat dissipation problems, due purely to the power requirements of transmitting the data signal.

Explains Ure: "The assumptions based on 100Base or 1000Base TX do not apply at all to 10GBase-T. The problem arises when sending a signal at full speed over distances exceeding the 15m already ratified in the CX4 standard. The active equipment racks at either end need too much power to transmit, and, since the move to 10Gb has necessitated the use of analogue rather than signal-massaging DSP-based circuitry, the equipment will generate far too much heat, making even a system with enhanced dissipation capabilities a potential problem."

"Power consumption is also an issue when you consider the modules being employed in the active equipment. Conventional modules do not support the high power requirements of long-haul 10Gb signalling over copper. And, coupled with increased heat, which, in turn, degrades attenuation, and will ultimately fry the CMOS, 10GbE active equipment (long haul, 100m) appears to be a number of years from entering the market," he adds.

These worrying hurdles ahead are revealed in a 10GbE over Copper white paper published by Vativ Technologies of San Diego, which recognizes the fact that the networking industry is at an inflection point, with GbE port sales overtaking 10/100 and, therefore, the increasing need to upgrade backbones to 10GbE. It undertook this study to discover if these uplinks could be more cost-effectively handled by the cheaper copper cabling currently being deployed, without finalized standard, for precisely this purpose.

Ure also expresses further concerns about the size of the Cat6a solutions now available, and points out that the increased size and weight of these proprietary solutions could result in the customer incurring additional costs in purchasing stronger cable trays, and altering the trunking of the building to house the larger diameter cables.

Concludes Ure: "Currently no one is certain that the active equipment to support 10GbE over UTP (copper) at longer distances will ever be ready, and it is estimated that, at the earliest, the technology will only become available by the end of this decade, by which time cabling specifications will likely have evolved dramatically, rendering Cat6a solutions useless. 10Gb transmission speeds can be achieved over short distances using the CX4 standard, Cat 7 or even shielded Cat 6, while the long haul will remain solely the preserve of fiber."

Ure undertook this investigation after identifying that Cat6a solutions ultimately target the desktop market. He believes that, even in the data center, only cabling based on ratified short distance standards should be considered when building with investment protection in mind, while the desktop arena is likely to be limited to GbE over Cat5e or Cat6 for the foreseeable future.