Cable standards question

Mon Nov 14 22:07:17 UTC 2011

First off, thanks to everyone who has replied, both on and off list, I've gotten some very good information on this, raising things I hadn't considered, particularly involving testing and warranties.

Daniel Seagraves wrote:
<Is it appropriate to just say "When installing fiber-optic cable the vendor will ensure the resulting installation does not suck."?>

Getting an installation that doesn't suck is indeed the core of the matter. However, "doesn't suck" is a rather vague concept as a point of law in case you have to sue your vendor for having installed something that sucks. That's why I was looking for a set of standards that I can point to and say (as an example)  "your installation sucks, and it sucks because you didn't follow X standard, and ran unshielded fiber at a 90 degree angle over a knife edge."

< Maybe there should be a legal definition of the concept of suck, so that suckage could be contractually minimized.>

Unfortunately vendors install suckage all the time. Our own particular horror story was one of our schools where half the school was experiencing intermittent issues of crosstalk, lag, unexplained packet loss, etc. Some days it was fine, others it wasn't and it took us some time to find out that the cabling vendor had connected the two network closets via plain old cat 5 cable, a run that was considerably longer than 300 feet. You wouldn't normally expect to have to specify to telecommunications vendors that you don't exceed the maximum cable length, but there it was. We replaced that link with multimode, and the problems immediately vanished. I'm sure others have similar stories. 

A number of people have asked for more details on the project and I deliberately didn't put those in because I was looking more for a standard that, if followed, produces acceptable link no matter what the project details are. For the curious, it's a simple point-to-point link involving an existing building and new construction that are about a mile apart . It will be singlemode, we will provide the racks on both ends, and we're specifying SC terminations. Whether we own or lease the fiber, lit or dark, depends on the economics of the quotes that come back to us. It's not a complicated project, but I shouldn't have to re-write a cabling spec as part of the RFP just to keep the vendors honest. A number of good references have been sent to me so I think I'm all set. Thanks, NANOG! :)

---Sam 

-----Original Message-----
From: Daniel Seagraves [mailto:dseagrav at humancapitaldev.com] 
Sent: Monday, November 14, 2011 9:58 AM
To: nanog at nanog.org
Subject: Re: Cable standards question

On Nov 14, 2011, at 8:42 AM, Sam (Walter) Gailey wrote:

> "The vendor will provide fiber connectivity between (building A) and (building B). Vendor will be responsible for all building penetrations and terminations. When  installing the fiber-optic cable the vendor will follow the appropriate TIA/EIA 568 standards for fiber-optic cabling."
> 
> Any suggestions or examples of language would be very appreciated. Offlist contact is probably best.

Is it appropriate to just say "When installing fiber-optic cable the vendor will ensure the resulting installation does not suck."?
That would seem to me to be the most direct solution to the problem. I mean, standards are all well and good, but what if the standard sucks?
Then you'd be up a creek.

Maybe there should be a legal definition of the concept of suck, so that suckage could be contractually minimized.