Krone Launches CopperTen Cabling

MINNEAPOLIS -- KRONE, recently acquired by ADC, has launched CopperTen™ the UTP augmented Category 6 structured cabling system capable of carrying 10 Gigabit/s Ethernet over a full 100 metres.

KRONE was the first company in the world to demonstrate – at the IEEE standards conference, November 2003 Albuquerque USA, – a technological breakthrough that would for the first time permit such a high data speed to be transmitted over an unshielded twisted pair (UTP) cable based on trusted Category 6 technology. CopperTen complies with all the Category 6 standards, yet has 10 times the data capacity.

Leading independent consultant Steve Banks, recently specified and completed the installation of some 70km and 2,000 patch panel ports of KRONE CopperTen for a major international bank’s London data centre.

Said Banks, “Other possibilities for 10Gigabit/s data transmission, such as shielded augmented Category 6 and Category 7, have not achieved significant acceptance outside parts of central Europe and Scandinavia. KRONE has recognised that the majority of the world’s design and installation skills are based around UTP cabling and Category 6 installation practices. CopperTen will enable users to install a system today that works with existing 10/100/1000 Mbit/s equipment and yet has the capacity for 10Gigabit/s when the electronics are introduced in 2005.”

KRONE’s patent-pending technological breakthrough is the development of the CopperTen cable. Based on existing Category 6 technology it solves the thorny problem of alien crosstalk (interference from adjacent cables), which has until now required shielded cables to be used. The cable is elliptical rather than circular and uses several novel techniques to ensure that however the cables are installed there will always be sufficient separation to achieve the necessary performance.

So confident is KRONE in this solution that it is warranting 18 Gigabit/s ”Shannon capacity.” In addition to this significant increase in throughput, all KRONE CopperTen cables, connectors, patch panels, and patch cords exceed the TIA/EIA and ISO standards for Category 6. As a result, they can be used as a direct replacement for existing Cat 6 systems ensuring full backward compatibility.

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