The mission of the Division of Communications is to provide efficient, economical and reliable telecommunications services to our clients.

By now most of you have received notification of the new organizational structure of DAS-Division of Communications. Since the announcement, we have received calls asking for specific information about the services we provide and the appropriate contact. Please be assured that you can contact any Division employee at any time and they will make sure that you are directed to the appropriate person.

We would encourage you to continue to use the IMService HelpDesk as your first contact for services and trouble reporting. That telephone number is 402-471-4636. Additionally, the Division has a help line of 402-471-2047 that is answered during our normal business hours (8-5 Central Time, Monday through Friday).

Over the next few months, we will be coming to our clients and partners asking for information to improve the way we do business. We anticipate that we will be holding focus groups and using survey documents to assess the services we offer, examine services we should be offering, and assuring that our clients have a mechanism to offer input into the types of services that we continue to support. Our mission is to provide efficient, economical and reliable services to our clients. We want to be sure that we are offering you the types of service that you need to carry out your goals and missions. Until we have that opportunity, we have attached to this newsletter a list of the services that we currently provide, as well as the primary contact for each of these services. We would appreciate the opportunity to visit with you about your needs. If any of the individuals on the attached list can assist you with one of these services, please contact them. Jayne Scofield (jaynes@doc.state.ne.us), the Deputy Director of the Division (402-471-3454) and I (402-471-3717) are also available to visit with you about any of these services.

Brenda L. Decker (bdecker@doc.state.ne.us)
Director
Division of Communications

The Division of Communications has put together instructions outlining the steps for completion of an OT document via the NIS system. The OT document is required to receive telecommunications equipment for your agency once your agency has gone live for “procurement of goods”. If you would like a copy of these step by step instructions via fax or email, or if you have questions about this process, please contact Norma at nwhite@doc.state.ne.us or 402-471-3562.

The 2004 City of Lincoln/Lancaster County Telephone Directories have been distributed to all State agencies that have requested copies. At this time, we are unable to obtain extra copies of this directory to distribute. However, you may purchase these directories from the City of Lincoln/Citizen Information Center for $5.00. Call Connie Guilliaume at 402-441-7375 or email her at cguilliaume@lincoln.ne.gov to order more copies. If you have questions on this, please call Vicki at 402-471-2761.

Taking the mystery out of modular connectors.

In Patch Cords Part I, we discussed what an RJ-45 connector is. This article is intended to provide meaning to several terms common to patch cords.

: A wire is a single conductor, usually made of copper or tin-covered copper, and has an insulation covering, such as plastic. A cable is two or more wires housed inside a common jacket. As an example: a typical telephone cable is made up of 8 wires, each color coded for easy identification. To make a typical telephone cable, a blue wire is twisted with a white wire to form one pair. This processes is repeated with an orange, green, and brown wire. These four pairs are then twisted together and covered with a single plastic jacket, often beige in color.

: These are the individual wires that make up a cable. A conductor may be either stranded (like the wire used on a house lamp) or it may be solid (like the wire used to connect electrical outlets to a fuse box). You can usually tell if a wire is solid or stranded by bending it. A solid wire will hold the shape formed by the bend, while a stranded wire will not. A word of caution: bending a high-performance cable too tightly can cause permanent performance damage.

: These are the cables installed from the wiring closet to the floor/wall outlet. These are made of solid wires, typically having 8 conductors (4 pair) with color codes to identify the pairs. Station cabling is a term used to describe both voice and data media.

: These are the cords used to attach telephones, modems, and fax machines to the wall/floor outlet. They are usually flat in shape and silver-satin in color. These are almost always made of stranded wire.

: These are the cords used to attach devices from the wall/floor outlet to PCs, printers, and other data devices. They are also used in the wiring closet to attach the switch/hub to the station cabling when these cables are terminated on patch panels. They are typically made using stranded wire, as the cable is more flexible and lays around furniture better. However, many older patch cords were made using solid conductor cable.

These are the cords used in the wiring closet to attach the switch/hub to the station cabling when terminated on wiring blocks. (An example being the white blocks that you would see the telephone company use for voice service.) These jumpers have a connector on one end only. The cable is terminated to the wiring block in a similar manner as the station cabling. These cables must be made of solid conductors to insure proper termination to the wiring block.

: This describes the electrical performance level of twisted pair cable. In essence, the higher the number, the better the performance. Most voice applications require a minimum of Cat 3 cable, while data networks may require a Cat 5e or Cat 6 cable to meet the high-speed data rates of modern data switches and hubs.

: Generic name for the 8-pin modular connectors used on many voice and data devices. (See July 2004 Lines of Communication article titled “An RJ What?” for more information.)

: These are documents written by a committee formed from electronic and telephone industry professionals. The State of Nebraska has adopted the telecommunications standards for low-voltage applications in the same way the State has adopted the National Electrical Code for electrical work. These standards cover the manufacturing, installation, termination, and testing of station cabling, but also the pair-to-contact (color code) assignments of terminated connectors, like those used in data RJ-45 patch and jumper cables.

: Universal Service Order Code. Developed by Bell Labs, these codes created a standard for the telephone industry to allow interoperation between manufacturers of equipment and the services to be delivered to users. For our discussion, this pertains to the pair-to-contact (color code) assignments of line cords and telephone connectors used for telephones, fax machines, and modems. The State of Nebraska adopted the use of these color codes many years ago, and are still in use today.

The above descriptions are just a sampling of the many terms our technicians must understand when making, installing, and troubleshooting station cabling, patch cords, and jumpers. In our next article, we’ll take a look at what it takes to make a patch cord and what pit-falls to avoid.