White Paper: Shortlinks Structured Cabling - Data Center - R&M

3. The advantage of additional headroom
Basically, it makes sense to lay permanent links that are exactly as long as is needed. However, that would
mean that the links would often be shorter than the minimum length of 15 m. When components are used
that only meet the standard requirements, the permanent links must be artificially extended with loops to 15
m to make sure that the limit values are reached. This not only entails additional costs but these cable loops
also take up space in the cable conduits and interfere with the ventilation, which results in an increase in
infrastructure costs and energy consumption.
Thanks to the large headroom with standard lengths, the use of R&M's Cat. 6A module allows a shortening of
the minimum length as far as down to 2 m. This is sufficient to cover the customarily used lengths in data
centers (Figure 2).
On average, the cables between individual server cabinets and the network cabinet need to be 4 to 5 meters
of length, if they are routed from above over a cable guidance system, or 7 to 8 meters if they are routed
from below, through the raised floor. The loops to extend the cables to 15 m are not required when the Class
EA / Cat. 6A solution developed by R&M is used.
White Paper | Short Links in Structured Cabling | v1.0 | ENG | Peter Fischer, Bruno Ritter 5