(858) 222-7547
Request a site survey
(858) 222-7547
Request a site survey

Cabling

Cable run length checker

TIA/EIA permits a 100 metre channel for copper. The part that catches people is what the 100 metres includes: the patch cords at both ends, not only the cable in the wall. This checks a proposed run against that, and against the roughly 90 metres it leaves for the permanent link.

 

TIA/EIA 100 M CHANNEL

·    CSLB #976737 C-7 LOW VOLTAGE

·    ANSI/TIA-606 LABELLING

·    RUNS IN YOUR BROWSER

·  COMMERCIAL ONLY

Cable planning tool

Cable Run Length Checker

Add the permanent-link length, patch cords and service slack to check the total copper channel length.

Units
m

The cable in the wall, measured along the route it will actually be pulled — up the riser, around the beam, back down — not straight across the drawing.

m
m
m

Slack coiled at either end so the cable can be re-terminated later. It is part of the permanent link and counts against the limit.

Run check

Your result will appear here.

Every assumption this tool makes

  • 100 m channel for copper, per TIA/EIA — and that figure includes the patch cords at both ends, which is the part usually left out of a plan.
  • 90 m permanent link as the practical limit for the in-wall cable, which is what the 100 m channel leaves once typical patch cords are allowed for.
  • 1 foot = 0.3048 m. A unit definition, not a claim about cable.
  • Nothing else is asserted. No attenuation model, no derating for temperature or bundling, no category-specific behaviour, no PoE figures.
  • Length is one constraint among several. Termination, bend radius and interference decide whether a run certifies, and none are modelled here.

The figure buyers miss

100 metres is the whole channel, patch cords included

This single detail is why runs that measured fine on a drawing fail after installation.

TIA/EIA permits a 100 metre channel for copper, roughly 328 feet. The number is widely known. What is far less widely understood is what it covers: the channel is the complete path from equipment to device, and it includes the patch cords at both ends, not only the cable in the wall.

That is why the practical permanent-link limit is about 90 metres. Two three-metre patch cords are six metres of your hundred before any cable enters a wall, and generous cords at both ends can take considerably more. Add slack coiled above a ceiling tile and the margin most people think they have is already spent.

Then there is the route. A camera position 70 metres away across a floor plan is frequently much further once the cable has gone up to a tray, along it, around an obstruction, and back down to the device. Runs near the limit are the commonest cause of a link failing certification later, and the failure arrives after the ceiling is closed.

Choosing the cable

Per run, against what that run has to carry

Cable selection is not a building-wide policy decided once. It is a decision per run, made against what that particular run has to do.

Cat6a supports 10 Gigabit to the full 100 metre channel. Its construction also handles the heat generated by higher-power loads in a bundle, which is a real consideration: cable in a commercial building does not sit alone, it sits packed in a tray with a lot of other cable, and a bundle carrying power warms up.

Cat6 remains appropriate for general workstation and voice work. Specifying the most capable cable everywhere is not diligence, it is spending pathway budget on runs that will never use it.

Fibre is for backbone, for inter-building runs, and anywhere the path crosses separately grounded structures. That last case is a genuine electrical consideration, not a bandwidth one.

Labelling is a standard too. ANSI/TIA-606 is the labelling and administration standard, and it is the difference between a system somebody can maintain in five years and one where every fault starts with tracing a cable.

Where a position genuinely sits beyond the limit, the answer is a change of design, not a change of cable: an intermediate location, or fibre. There is no cable that makes 120 metres of copper into a compliant channel, and anyone offering one is describing something that will not certify.

 

Why we will not say "pass"

Length is necessary. Certification is a test

A run inside 90 metres is a run that has cleared the first hurdle. It is not a run that will certify. Certification is a measurement taken on the installed link with a certifier, and it fails for reasons length never predicts: a marginal termination, a kinked or over-tensioned pull, a cord that is not what it claims to be, interference along the route, or water in an external junction.

This is the same reason we require test results per link instead of a general assurance when we specify a job, and it is a clause worth putting in your own tender — our RFP and specification template carries it.

The power side of the same cable has its own calculator, the PoE power budget checker, and its own write-up in the PoE power budget. The discipline behind a full cabling job — survey, design, install, certify, document — is under structured cabling, and the camera design that sits on top of it is under commercial camera installation.

Two boundaries, as on every page here. We work on commercial premises only and not on private residences. And we do not hold a C-10 or a C-16, so we do not work on fire alarm systems; that is coordinated with your own licensed fire alarm contractor.