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Introduction
With the ratification of the IEEE 802.3an 10GBASE-T copper standard, end users now have more media options for deploying 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10-GbE) solutions in their network. The standard describes the line-encoding scheme and digital signal processing (DSP) technology required at the silicon level to achieve 10 Gigabits per second (Gb/s), and follows that with electrical requirements for achieving 10 Gb/s data rates over 100m of balanced twisted-pair copper cabling at frequencies up to 500 MHz.

Through these new media, network managers and other IT professionals are finding the implementation of 10 Gb/s more feasible and attractive than ever. One of the key questions surrounding any innovative technology is how to verify its performance under field conditions. With 10GBASE-T technologies, users specifically are wondering how to determine whether their structured cabling system is reliably achieving the advertised 10 Gb/s performance.

Any discussion of performance testing over this new standard must address the measurement of alien crosstalk (AXT), which is the measure of signal coupling between adjacent channels. This effect is observed over twisted copper pairs only at very high data rates, and is at the centre of the IEEE 10GBASE-T standard for signaling performance across copper twisted-pair cabling installations. DSP technologies built into physical layer transceivers and switches are used to manage other forms of electrical interference across the network; unfortunately, they have a limited ability to suppress alien crosstalk because the noise is external to the cabling link.

This white paper reviews the methods and strategies that can be used to certify 10 Gb/s performance over both Category 6 and 6A structured cabling systems. It describes the two-stage process of testing for both internal channel and between-channel (i.e., "alien crosstalk") parameters at swept frequencies up to 500 MHz for both systems.

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