BUILDING SPACES

Introduction

This chapter defines guidelines for the following telecommunications spaces

• Telecommunications enclosure (TE)
• Telecommunications room (TR)
• Equipment room (ER)
• Entrance facility (EF)
• *** note TE , TR, and ER are all called distributor rooms in the new standards***
Entrance Facility

• The entrance facility (building entrance) as defined by ANSI/TIA-568-D.1 specifies

the point in the building where cabling interfaces with the outside world.
• All external cabling (campus, backbone, interbuilding, antennae pathways, and
telecommunications provider) should enter the building and terminate in a single
point.
• Telecommunications carriers are usually required to terminate within 50´ of a
building entrance. The physical requirements of the interface equipment are
defined in TIA-569-D, the Commercial Building Standard for Telecommunications
Pathways and Spaces. The specification covers telecommunications room design
and cable pathways.
• Description
• 1. Wireless service entrance pathway
• 2. Entrance room
• 3. Common building
• 4. Access provider space, service
provider space
• 5. Entrance room
• 6. Service entrance pathway
• 7. Diversity of entrance routes
• 8. Common distributor room
Entrance facility cont..
• The entrance room or space shall be located in a dry area not subject to flooding
and should be as close as practicable to the building entrance point and next to
the space containing the main distribution panel (MDP) in order to reduce the
length of bonding conductor to the electrical grounding system.
• The wireless transmission or reception entrance room shall be located as close as
practicable to the wireless transmission or reception devices.
Key Term  demarcation point
• The demarcation point (also called the demarc, pronounced dee-mark) is the point
within a facility, property, or campus where a circuit provided by an outside
vendor, such as the phone company, terminates. Past this point, the customer
provides the equipment and cabling. Maintenance and operation of equipment
past the demarc is the customer’s responsibility.
Equipment Room
• An ER is an environmentally controlled centralized space for telecommunications
equipment that usually houses a main or intermediate cross-connect. Note the
newer standards refer to this as a distributer room.
• Equipment rooms are considered to be distinct from telecommunications rooms
(TRs) and telecommunications enclosures (TEs) because of the nature or
complexity of the equipment they contain. An ER may alternatively provide any or
all of the functions of a TR or TE
• The main cross-connect (MC, Distributor C) of a commercial building is located in
an ER. Intermediate cross-connects (ICs, Distributor B), horizontal cross-connects
(HCs, Distributor A), or both, of a commercial building may also be located in an
ER.
Multi-Tenant Buildings
• Whenever possible, each tenant in a multi-tenant building should have a
dedicated ER.
• When multiple tenants share ERs, the building owner or agent shall control access.
Access control guidelines will need to be discussed with all tenants who share the
space to mitigate security concerns.
• The size of shared ERs depends on whether each tenant's equipment will be
located in the shared facility or in the tenant's own space.
• Above finished floor
• EDP = Electrical
distribution panel
• HVAC = Heating,
ventilation, and
air~conditioning
• TMGB =
Telecommunications
main grounding busbar
• TR =
Telecommunications
room
• UPS = Uninterruptible
power supply
• UPS DP = UPS
distribution panel
Backup Power
• Because of the mission critical nature of the ER, it is strongly recommended that
backup power be provided in the event of a power failure.
• If standby power ( e.g., a UPS or generator) is available in the building, the ITS
distribution designer should consider connecting it to the electrical circuits that
feed the ER.
• Electrical infrastructure for telecommunications rooms should not be connected
to a backup generator that is dedicated to emergency or legally required loads
unless otherwise required or allowed by applicable codes.
• A qualified professional should be consulted prior to connecting loads to an
existing generator system. If batteries are required for backup systems, observe
the manufacturer's requirements for ventilation, explosion, containment,
maintenance, and other safety concerns
• See UPS handout
Heating, Ventilation, and Air-Conditioning
(HVAC) Environmental Control
• Telecommunications equipment can be sensitive to environmental conditions
and typically has strict requirements for its operating environment.
• Therefore, an ER shall have either dedicated HVAC equipment or access to
the main building HVAC delivery system.
• If environmental control is provided by the main building delivery system, the
ER should have separate controls from other rooms in the building
• In addition to temperature control, the environmental requirements for
telecommunications equipment may include:
• Humidity control.
• Dust and contaminant control.
Equipment room Auxiliary devices
• Physical Security
• Appropriate physical security measures should be considered when selecting or designing telecommunications
spaces.
• This can include basic door locks and card access to advanced multi tiered access
• Camera Systems

• Fire Suppression
• The primary fire protection systems used within equipment rooms typically include: wet pipe
sprinklers, pre-action sprinklers, and special suppression (i.e., clean agent, inert gas, or mist). 
• Suppression systems need to consider higher challenge areas such as automated information storage
systems units and tape libraries
• Flood Prevention
• Telecommunications spaces should be located above any threat of flooding. When locating
telecommunications spaces where a threat of flooding is unavoidable, design rack elevations so that
active equipment and telecommunications components are as high off the floor as possible.
• Locations that are below or adjacent to areas of potential water hazard ( e.g., restrooms, kitchens)
should be avoided. Liquid carrying pipes (e.g., water, waste, steam) shall not be routed through, above,
or in the walls encompassing the telecommunications space.
Telecommunications Rooms and Telecommunications
Enclosures
• TRs and TEs differ from ERs in that they are generally considered to be
floor-serving or tenant-serving (e.g., as opposed to building- or campus-
serving) spaces that provide a connection point between backbone and
horizontal infrastructures
• There should be a minimum of one distributor room per
• TRs and TEs provide an environmentally suitable and secure area for
installing:
• Cables, Cross-connects, Connecting hardware, Telecommunications
equipment
• The telecommunications enclosure (TE) is intended to serve a smaller floor
area than a TR and may be used in addition to the “minimum one DR per
floor” rule.
Research
Have students research types of :
• Data center flood detection
• Physical Access Control System (access control wiki is good site)