CAT5 vs CAT5e

The CAT5e specification improved upon the CAT5 specification by tightening crosstalk specifications and introducing new crosstalk specifications that were not originally in the CAT5 specification.

The bandwidth capability of CAT5 and CAT5e is the same (100 MHz) Gigabit. The physical cable construction of CAT5 and CAT5e is the same. The reality is that most CAT5 cables meet CAT5e specifications.

CAT5e vs CAT6

The CAT6 specification improves upon the CAT5e specification by improving frequency response, tightening crosstalk specifications, and introducing more comprehensive crosstalk specifications. The improved performance of CAT6 is 250 MHz and supports 10GBASE-T/10-Gigabit Ethernet.

CAT6 cable is a standardized twisted pair cable for Gigabit Ethernet and is backward compatible with the CAT5/CAT5e/CAT3 cable standards. Compared to CAT5 or CAT5e, CAT6 features more stringent specifications for crosstalk and system noise. The CAT6 cable standard provides performance of up to 250 MHz and is suitable up to 10GBASE-T/10-Gigabit Ethernet.

CAT6A

The latest standard from the TIA for enhanced performance standards for twisted pair cable systems was CAT6A, defined in February 2009. CAT6A is defined at frequencies up to 500 MHz, which is twice that of CAT6.

CAT6A performs at improved specifications, in the area of alien crosstalk compared to CAT6 unshielded twisted pair. CAT6 exhibited high alien noise in high frequencies.

CAT6 and CAT6A cables must be properly installed and terminated to meet specifications. The cables must not be kinked or bent too tightly. The bend radius should be at least four times the outer diameter of the cable. The wire pairs must not be untwisted, and the outer jacket must not be stripped back more than 0.5” (12.7mm).

Maximum cable length

CAT5 = 100 Meters

CAT5e = 100 Meters

CAT6 = 55 Meters

CATA = 100Meters

ECS is a Low Voltage Installation company located in Seattle, WA & Portland, OR.

ECS provides local technicians for on-site work installing and servicing a variety of voice/data equipment, ie; Avaya Aura Servers, Gateways, Messaging, Telephones, Firewalls, Ethernet Switches, Low Voltage Cabling, WiFi, CCTV, POS, Paging, etc. 

ECS provides services in the states of Washington & Oregon, primarily in the greater Seattle & Portland areas.

ECS knows how to install and maintain cabling to support voice, data, video, and other emerging technologies. ECS uses high quality, advanced copper and fiber optic cables and connecting hardware from well-known manufacturers.

CAT5e, CAT6, & CAT6A

ECS provides standards-based design and installation services for CAT5e, CAT6, & CAT6A twisted-pair cable solutions based on the EIA/TIA specifications. Our designs include a broad range of products used to terminate, cross-connect, protect, patch, label, test, and administer cabling infrastructure.

Testing & Certification

ECS tests all cable runs to make sure they pass EIA/TIA standards. ECS provides electronic documentation upon request. ECS certifies all cable runs upon request and provides electronic certification documentation.

Fiber Optic

ECS uses high quality, advanced fiber optic cables and connecting hardware to ensure a reliable installation. ECS uses state-of-the-art test equipment to document fiber installations.

It doesn’t matter how sophisticated your hardware and software are, if your voice & data cabling infrastructure isn’t up to the task.

ECS is a Low Voltage Installation company located in Seattle, WA & Portland, OR.

ECS provides local technicians for on-site work installing and servicing a variety of voice/data equipment, ie; Avaya Aura Servers, Gateways, Messaging, Telephones, Firewalls, Ethernet Switches, Low Voltage Cabling, WiFi, CCTV, POS, Paging, etc. 

ECS provides services in the states of Washington & Oregon, primarily in the greater Seattle & Portland areas.

Efficient Communication Solutions can help you get it there using Intermedia, your one-stop shop for cloud IT.   

With 60,000 business customers and 5,000 active partners already in place, Intermedia’s Office in the Cloud offers email, phones, file collaboration tools and 20 other essential IT services.

Intermedia services are secure, mobile and managed from a single control panel.

It’s time to make the move to the Cloud with Efficient Communication Solutions, your authorized agent for Intermedia.

ECS is an authorized agent for Intermedia located in Seattle, WA & Portland, OR.

ECS provides local technicians for on-site work installing and servicing a variety of voice/data equipment, ie; Avaya Aura Servers, Gateways, Messaging, Telephones, Firewalls, Ethernet Switches, Low Voltage Cabling, WiFi, CCTV, POS, Paging, etc. 

ECS provides services in the states of Washington & Oregon, primarily in the greater Seattle & Portland areas.

Copper

CAT5e: This is the most common standard cabling in use today. CAT5e cabling is commonly used for most data runs. This cabling is very competent and operates with no complications at speeds up to 1Gigabit.

CAT6: If you’re looking for higher speeds, CAT6 is the answer, as it has enhanced features, using twisted copper pair. CAT6 cabling provides superior quality of data transmission, making it more efficient than CAT5e cabling. CAT6 can support 10 Gigabit up to approximately 55 meters.

CAT6A: This is an enhanced standard of copper cabling that supports data transmission speeds up to 10 Gigabit up to 100 meters.

Fiber

Fiber Optic cabling is a high quality solution for voice and data. Fiber Optic cabling can be used in distances far surpassing traditional copper CAT5e, CAT6, & CAT6A cabling.

Fiber Optic cabling offers the following advantages to your voice and data network.

• High Bandwidth
• Accommodates increasing bandwidth easily
• Resistance from electromagnetic interference
• Allows quick & efficient cable damage detection
• Easy to install and maintain
• Sends data farther without needing repeaters/enhancers

ECS has extensive experience with all types of Copper and Fiber Optic cabling and will install the cabling solution that will work best for your business now and into the future.

ECS is a Low Voltage Installation company located in Seattle, WA & Portland, OR.

ECS provides local technicians for on-site work installing and servicing a variety of voice/data equipment, ie; Avaya Aura Servers, Gateways, Messaging, Telephones, Firewalls, Ethernet Switches, Low Voltage Cabling, WiFi, CCTV, POS, Paging, etc. 

ECS provides services in the states of Washington & Oregon, primarily in the greater Seattle & Portland areas.

LDAP Synchronization is available on IP Office on both Server Edition and Select as of R10.0

In R9.1, LDAP user synchronization was only available in IP Office Select.

In IP Office R10.0, LDAP user synchronization will be supported in both Server Edition and Select.

Many mid-market and large organizations use enterprise directories such as LDAP and Microsoft Active Directory to store employee basic information like user name, address, department, phone number.

User Synchronization

IP Office R9.1 introduced LDAP user synchronization capability in Web Manager to simplify and reduce time for Day-1 provisioning of users. Fields that could be synchronized in R9.1 included: Name, Full Name, Extension and Email Addresses.

Enhancements being delivered in IP Office R10.0 include:

Connect to Directory Services:

• • Preservation of connection settings when a “test connection “fails, so that the administrator no longer has to re-enter the settings.
• • Better feedback to the user if mandatory field inputs are missing
• • Improved tool tips for User Schema, Search Filter, Base Designated Name and Use SSL

Additional optional fields for User Synchronization:

• • Login Code
• • Voice Mail Code
• • Twinned Mobile Number
• • Group Membership

LDAP jobs:

• • Ability to Modify/Delete LDAP jobs from the “View Scheduled Jobs” page. Modifications can be made to the connection settings and frequency.
• • “View Jobs” shows the results of the last synchronization in terms of users created successfully or failed. If a failure occurs, the cause of the failure is displayed

ECS is an authorized AVAYA Business Partner located in Seattle, WA & Portland, OR.

ECS provides local technicians for on-site work installing and servicing a variety of voice/data equipment, ie; Avaya Aura Servers, Gateways, Messaging, Telephones, Firewalls, Ethernet Switches, Low Voltage Cabling, WiFi, CCTV, POS, Paging, etc. 

ECS provides services in the states of Washington & Oregon, primarily in the greater Seattle & Portland areas.

Improvements to the user experience related to installing, configuring, updating and managing the Unified Communication Module (UCM) are now available in IP Office R10.0.

The release will address the most common reasons for escalations and installation errors, including:

Elimination of manual upgrade steps;

• • This feature reduces manual steps by automatically stopping one-X® Portal, VMPro and Webservices during the upgrade, reducing the time of a full system upgrade. These services will restart after the upgrade is finished and the system is rebooted.

Improved installation/upgrade progress indication;

• • This feature provides a 5% completion indication after 3.5 minutes. This improvement reassures the user that the upgrade/install is progressing correctly. Prior to this, the indication did not show progress until 10% complete, which could cause the operator to view the install as stalled.

USB creation tool allows the selection of required locales, thus reducing installation time;

• • For fresh installation or upgrade of VoiceMail Pro, the locales may be selected. By streamlining the selection process, rather than downloading all locales, the installation time is reduced.

USB install and upgrade remote control and monitoring with SSA;

• • Enables a business partner to prepare a USB device for the installation or upgrade of a UCM card, ship the device to the customer and then control the upgrade/install remotely. The facility to initiate an alternate (USB) boot from SSA will be provided. The customer will simply insert the USB device into the running UCM, while the business partner will control and monitor the upgrade process remotely using SSA. The install/upgrade process may be monitored; boot from the USB port initiated, or UCM shut down. Confirmation that the process is completed and the card rebooted to the new release may be received.

Provide installation and upgrade status indications in SSA and SysMon;

• • When a UCM is installed or upgraded, a progress indication bar is shown in SSA.
• In addition, this feature will send progress indication traces to SysMon, whenever an update is received from the UCM card.

Alarm for mismatched IP Office and UCM firmware;

• • IP Office will raise an alarm in SSA when a valid installed UCM is running a firmware version that is not aligned with the current IP Office system firmware. Misalignment is defined as different major release numbers or same major release but different minor release number. Service pack/Feature pack will not trigger the alarm.

Ensure sufficient SSD space available for upgrades;

• • The Web Manager upgrade needs about 8GB free on the SSD space. After the upgrade, the rpm repository and cache are not deleted. This feature will let the user decide if the old repository should be removed before continuing with the upgrade.

ECS is an authorized Dell SonicWall reseller located in Seattle, WA & Portland, OR.

ECS provides local technicians for on-site work installing and servicing a variety of voice/data equipment, ie; Avaya Aura Servers, Gateways, Messaging, Telephones, Firewalls, Ethernet Switches, Low Voltage Cabling, WiFi, CCTV, POS, Paging, etc. 

ECS provides services in the states of Washington & Oregon, primarily in the greater Seattle & Portland areas.

IP Office Manager SIP Trunk configuration has been simplified to reduce the number of interdependencies between items on multiple tabs and to provide feature flexibility without compromising administrative clarity.

This simplification is also carried forward to Web Manager, which in IP Office R10.0 supports the configuration of SIP trunks.

A summary of changes:

• • Forwarding and Twinning fields are moved from the SIP Line tab to the SIP URI definition.

• The SIP URI summary table will automatically use all of the available width of the tab window and will resize automatically.

• • The SIP URI summary table will contain abbreviations of all settings (rather than being blank) which will provide easy viewing of all existing settings.
• •Wildcard ‘*’ is redefined as ‘Auto’ which more accurately describes the systems behavior for items.
• •When creating a new URI, the default setting for ‘Local URI, Contact and Display Name, will be Auto rather than the by-default invalid ‘Use Credentials User Name’.

ECS is an authorized AVAYA Business Partner located in Seattle, WA & Portland, OR.

ECS provides local technicians for on-site work installing and servicing a variety of voice/data equipment, ie; Avaya Aura Servers, Gateways, Messaging, Telephones, Firewalls, Ethernet Switches, Low Voltage Cabling, WiFi, CCTV, POS, Paging, etc. 

ECS provides services in the states of Washington & Oregon, primarily in the greater Seattle & Portland areas.

Indicate Call on Hold: IP Office will now indicate Hold by sending in-dialog INVITE with a=sendonly in the SDP message. This can be configured by trunk using a new configuration item “Indicate Hold” on the SIP Trunk / SIP Advanced Tab.

Behavior When Held: IP Office will now support the ability to maintain the incoming media stream path, containing the Service Provider’s music on hold and outgoing RTCP. This behavior can be configured per SIP trunk using a new configuration item “Local Hold Music” on the SIP Trunk / VoIP tab.

P-Preferred Identity: Developed to address requests to provide Calling Party Identity in the P-Preferred Identity (PPI) field, R10.0 expands the fields in which identity information can be supplied. Identify information can be supplied for normal calls and/or forwarded and twinned calls. For flexibility, it provides the capability to configure this behavior on a per SIP URI basis.

Diversion Header: Supports the ability to handle, unscreened Automatic Number Identification (ANI), in the network. One can now configure the system for Diversion Header INVITE behavior on a per SIP URI basis.

Diversion Counter: Supports the diversion-counter parameter in accordance with RFC 5806 when Diversion Header is added. If selected, IP Office will include parameter diversion-counter=n in the outgoing INVITE where n=1 unless:

• In the case of trunk to trunk calls where the incoming call contains Diversion header: IP Office will pass the original diversion header and the associated counter.
• In case IP Office performs a diversion as well (e.g. forwarding, twinning): IP Office will add its own Diversion header with n = the received diversion counter + 1.

This functionality can be disabled via SLIC configuration, should it not be desired.

Local Domain Name: IP Office R10.0 will permit an administrator to configure on a per Trunk basis, a Domain or IP Address, as required by the Service Provider. If both the Domain Name and Local Domain name are configured, then local Domain Name will take precedence. The Local Domain Name will not be used in the Remote Party ID header.

ECS is an authorized AVAYA Business Partner located in Seattle, WA & Portland, OR.

ECS provides local technicians for on-site work installing and servicing a variety of voice/data equipment, ie; Avaya Aura Servers, Gateways, Messaging, Telephones, Firewalls, Ethernet Switches, Low Voltage Cabling, WiFi, CCTV, POS, Paging, etc. 

ECS provides services in the states of Washington & Oregon, primarily in the greater Seattle & Portland areas.

IP Office R10.0 includes multiple enhancements to improve troubleshooting and servicing.

Display voltage, impedance and echo reduction statistics in SSA: A new tab “Line Test Summary” has been added to the analog trunk view in SSA for trunks on an ATMv2. It will display voltage, impedance, echo return loss (ERL), ERL value (after applying echo reduction) and ERL value (after applying echo canceller) from the latest line test results.

SSA status icons for SSL/VPN remote connectivity: To improve reporting of the SSL/VPN service status, an icon has been added that will assist users in identifying connectivity issues without the need to inspect and interpret other field values. A new column was inserted next to the SSL/VPN table to indicate the connectivity states of each item.

Green: The tunnel is connected and there has been no message loss.

Amber: The tunnel is connected but heartbeat or keep alive messages have been lost.

Red: The tunnel is disconnected.

Gray: The tunnel is administratively in fallback state.

The application will select the appropriate icon to display based upon a combination of Service Status, IP Address, Missed Heartbeat and Missed Keep alive field values. The icon will be updated automatically if and when any of these field values change in such a way as to require a new color to be displayed.

Snapshot and log files viewed offline will also display the icons.

Line display for troubleshooting: To aid in troubleshooting, Line ID is provided for an external call with problems in order to facilitate easier access to the relevant logs. This will help to determine which trunk line is actually being used. The Log Stamp function now includes specific line information for the connected call in Alarm Log and System Monitor. It appears just after the extension number and is applicable to any call made over a trunk line (analog, digital or IP).

ECS is an authorized AVAYA Business Partner located in Seattle, WA & Portland, OR.

ECS provides local technicians for on-site work installing and servicing a variety of voice/data equipment, ie; Avaya Aura Servers, Gateways, Messaging, Telephones, Firewalls, Ethernet Switches, Low Voltage Cabling, WiFi, CCTV, POS, Paging, etc. 

ECS provides services in the states of Washington & Oregon, primarily in the greater Seattle & Portland areas.

Platform and features supported on the platform will be modified with the IP Office R10.0 release.

Supported platforms are:

• • IP500 V2 Control unit
• • IP Office for Linux (Server Edition, Virtualize Server Edition, Select)

IP Office software supports Server Edition hardware platforms; the Dell PowerEdge R630 server and the Dell PowerEdge R220 server are the most current servers available.

Customers may migrate to IP Office R10.0 by purchasing an upgrade or by acquiring an upgrade as part of their entitlement per the terms of their valid IP Office Support Services support contract, as applicable.

Customers migrating to IP Office R10.0 will be required to have an IP500 V2 control unit or supported servers with Server Edition.

IP500 base cards, trunk cards and expansion modules are supported with IP500 V2 control unit and may migrate to the V2 control unit.

All other Release 10.0 features are supported on all platforms. IP Office R10.0 Select features are supported with Select material codes.

IP400 Trunk and Station Modules supported in IP Office R10.0:

• • Analog trunk 16
• • Digital Station V2: 16 and 30 port variants
• •Phone V2: 16 and 30 port variants

ECS is an authorized AVAYA Business Partner located in Seattle, WA & Portland, OR.

ECS provides local technicians for on-site work installing and servicing a variety of voice/data equipment, ie; Avaya Aura Servers, Gateways, Messaging, Telephones, Firewalls, Ethernet Switches, Low Voltage Cabling, WiFi, CCTV, POS, Paging, etc. 

ECS provides services in the states of Washington & Oregon, primarily in the greater Seattle & Portland areas.