Wired for success: discovering the potential of category 5 cable.

Many school districts throughout the U.S. have installed category 5 cabling to move voice, video and data that can enhance the way they teach and operate. However, many district administrators are not aware of its potential for new and emerging applications, including school safety and learning opportunities.

Sometimes referred to as twisted pair wiring because it's composed of four pairs of twisted wires encased in a plastic covering, category 5 cable carries data up to 13 megabytes per second. (Video data, which can hog bandwidth, requires only a 600-kilobyte-per-second cable.)

Ronald S. Libengood, president of security at TranSystems[SecuraComm (www.transystems.org), a transportation consulting services firm in Pittsburgh, believes that advantageous use of category 5 cabling is slowly growing. He says vendors are now selling category 5-compatible products to school maintenance and operations department personnel that they didn't have five years ago.

"You can use the same cable for Internet connections and later add on security devices," he says. "You don't need to add more cable." Depending on the size of the school, using category 5 can save thousands of dollars because it's a multiple use cable.

Category 5 cable can simultaneously handle student Internet use and administrator downloads, monitor heating and cooling systems, and keep school campuses safer.

Even though schools are equipped with some version of category 5, many aren't taking full advantage of its capabilities. Some small districts simply lack the technical staff or expertise to recognize its strengths or versatility.

Libengood has worked with many districts on security issues and says it's only been a few years since security cameras were built to work with category 5. Likewise, up until last year, there were limited choices of pan, zoom, and tilt security cameras-which allow for wide rotation angles--that could operate over category 5 cable.

District Examples

The cable is helping some districts protect critical data from natural disasters. Lee County Public Schools in Ft. Myers, Fla., for instance, which serves 80,000 K12 students and 11,000 employees, counts hurricanes among their biggest headaches.

The district is planning to build a 3,000-square-foot data center with a remote monitoring system running on category 6 wiring, a higher standard version of category 5. During hurricanes, school officials will be able to remotely monitor servers, network electronics such as routers and switches, and backup power systems. They will also ensure district data are secure, explains Derek Carnwath, the district's IT project manager.

Blue Valley Schools in Overland Park, Kan., which has 20,000 students, began installing category 5 wiring in 1997. Ten years later, they're using it in ways they never imagined possible.

"When we build new buildings, we run the HVAC [heating and air conditioning] on category 5 wiring instead of creating a separate system with separate wiring," says Joe Yoakum, district director of network services.

Category 5 cabling helps control the amount of water that is sprinkled on the district's athletic fields every day. And two years ago, it added yet another system: remote monitoring of the water quality in swimming pools at each of its four high schools.

Yoakum says the employee responsible for monitoring the water's temperature and quality can do so from home. The district uses the Chemtrot PC 3000 system to monitor the water in each pool via electronic probes and sensors that are installed in its circulation piping. Since category 5 wiring helps connect the system to the district's network, the employee can log on to the network from a home PC to access the software. It saves a lot of driving to four schools on weekends, says Yoakum.

But the district hasn't maxed out its uses for category 5 cabling. There may be more applications that haven't even been considered yet, he adds.

"If you have [category 5] installed, it's a good base," Yoakum says. "Our capabilities have definitely expanded, but it seems like there's always something new coming around the corner."