Colleges like U-M have thousands of students, researchers, faculty members and athletes who need reliable wireless connectivity to work on assignments or kick back with Netflix. A Cat 6A Cable for Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7 AP’s San Antonio infrastructure upgrade is essential to keep those devices working at peak performance.
Which network cable is best?
Many campus networks are moving to CAT 6A, the new standard that can handle speeds of up to 10Gbps and offers less cross-talk than older cables. The higher uplink capacity of CAT 6A also helps support power over Ethernet (PoE) for Wi-Fi access points. And the shielded cabling provides better heat dissipation, which helps protect against cable degradation from extended distances.
But a wholesale upgrade isn’t always practical. “There’s a fine line between upgrading a cable network when it hits its technical limit and waiting to do so until a significant amount of equipment needs to be added or replaced,” says Choe, who works with universities to plan their infrastructure upgrades. He notes that a wait-and-see strategy can lead to underutilization of capacity as the technology changes over time. Click the banner below for more exclusive content about upgrading campus Wi-Fi. Siemon’s full offering of Category 6A copper and OM3 multimode fiber cabling is ideal for today’s most demanding applications, with the shielded cabling providing superior support for PoE. The Z-PLUG field-terminated plug enables custom length cables to be terminated on site for direct connections to WAPs, eliminating outlets and equipment cords.