Overview of ANSI/TIA/EIA 569

ANSI/TIA/EIA 569 is the Commercial Building Standard for Telecommunications Pathways and Spaces. The purpose of 569 is to standardize design and construction practices within and between buildings that support telecommunications equipment and transmission media. The standards are outlined for rooms, areas, and pathways into and through which telecommunications transmission media and equipment are installed. The standard is limited to the telecommunications aspect of building construction and design and does not cover safety aspects.

The specifications of 569 cover the following building elements:

• Entrance facilities

• Equipment room

• Backbone pathways

• Telecommunications closet

• Horizontal pathways

• Workstation

The entrance facility, equipment room, telecommunications closet, and workstation areas were described briefly in the preceding section on 568. The backbone and horizontal pathways are used for the corresponding cabling described above. Backbone pathways consist of intra- and inter-building pathways. Intrabuilding pathways consist of conduits, sleeves, and trays. They provide the means for routing cables from the entrance facility to telecommunications closets and from equipment rooms to the entrance facility or the telecommunications closet. Interbuilding pathways interconnect separate buildings and consist of underground, buried, aerial, and tunnel pathways. Horizontal pathways are facilities for the installation of the telecommunications transmission media from the telecommunications closet to the telecommunications outlet at the workstation area.

The 569 specifications require a minimum of one telecommunications closet per floor, and that additional closets should be added if the floor area to be served exceeds 1,000 square meters or the horizontal distance to the work area is greater than 300 feet. At least one telecommunications outlet per workstation area is specified.

A very important area covered by 569 is labeling and color-coding specifications designed to simplify installation and maintenance of the cabling infrastructure.

Labels are divided into three categories: adhesive, insert, and other. Adhesive labels must meet UL requirements for adhesion, defacement, legibility, and exposure. Insert labels must meet UL requirements for defacement, legibility, and exposure. Other labels include special-purpose labels, such as tie-on labels.

The 569 color coding rules are:

• Termination labels at the two ends of the cable should have the same color

• Crossconnections between termination fields generally should have two different colors

• The color orange is used for the demarcation point

• Green identifies network connections on the customer side of the demarcation point

• Purple identifies the termination of cables originating from common equipment

• White indicates the first level of the backbone media

• Gray indicates the second level of the backbone media

• Blue identifies the termination of station telecommunications media

• Brown identifies interbuilding backbone cable terminations

• Yellow identifies the termination of auxiliary circuits, alarms, security, and other miscellaneous circuits

• Red identifies the termination of KTSs

• White may be used to identify second-level backbone terminations in remote “non-hub” buildings