Systimax ships standard cable
Firm's new offering adheres to latest IEEE standard
Cabling giant Systimax has produced fully compliant unshielded twisted pair (UTP) cabling for 10Gb Ethernet that adheres to the latest version of the IEEE 802.3an standard.
John McCarthy, northern Europe managing director of Systimax, said: "We're not expecting this to ship in volume to begin with, but I am pleasantly surprised by the level of interest. It will be freely available in March."
The vendor said in May that it would provide the technology by the third quarter but was slowed by a change to the standard.
John Crowe, co-owner of reseller Stoneleigh, said: "You might wonder why people would want [10GBase-T copper UTP]. But we can see people wanting to use it in computer rooms, or areas where comms rooms are close together. People like copper better than fibre."
Crowe added that firms such as Orange and financial firms tend to use a lot of switches. "Copper's popular with end-users," he said. "It's much more robust, and it makes it easier to find faults."