IT network for office buildings
Cat. 6A cabling with a 90 m reach (NF EN 50173-2) remains the only infrastructure that pays off over a 9-year tertiary lease: fibre rolled out to every workstation costs 2 to 3 times more with no gain below 10 Gb/s. Kytom designs and deploys complete tertiary IT networks: category 6A copper cabling, OM4/OS2 fibre, 24U to 42U VDI cabinets, Wi-Fi 6/6E. Standards applied: NF EN 50173-2, ISO/IEC 11801, Labour Code R4214-1. Average lead time of 12 weeks for an 850 m² floor plate. Acceptance through Fluke certification on 100% of copper links and Wi-Fi coverage checks targeting an RSSI above -65 dBm across work areas. 25-year manufacturer warranty on structured cabling.
8 areas of expertise under "IT network for office buildings"
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Enterprise VoIP telephony: SIP, UC integration, fleet
VoIP is not a telecom project, it is an IT department project: budget overruns most often stem from undersized VDI cabling, not from SIP (RFC 3261). The category 6A cabling and NF…
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Office IT network cabling: the VDI infrastructure that secures your business
Since 2006, Kytom has been deploying Cat6a and OM4 fibre VDI infrastructures in French and Spanish office buildings. Across 850 m² accommodating 60 workstations, structured…
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Multi-site network architecture
On a multi-site office project, the majority of traffic now heads to the cloud: continuing to size a pure MPLS star topology means funding a 2010 architecture for 2025 usage. A…
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Tertiary Fiber Optics: Single-Mode, Multimode, Capacities
80% of R+5 to R+10 tertiary buildings are over-specified with OS2 single-mode: OM4 is sufficient up to 100 Gb/s over 100 m (ISO/IEC 11801-1:2017), for a transceiver CAPEX 3 to 5…
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Tertiary enterprise Wi-Fi
Enterprise Wi-Fi is no longer an infrastructure topic: it is a GDPR asset and an OPEX line item at 18-35 EUR/m². Over 850 m² of office space, sizing typically results in 6 to 8…
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VDI cabinet & network patching
A well-sized tertiary VDI cabinet provides a reasonable reserve of ports and U space, without oversizing. The ISO/IEC 11801 and EN 50173 standards set no provisioning margin:…
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RJ45 sockets & workstations
2.4 RJ45 sockets per workstation in category 6A is the 2024 standard for an office that will last 15 years, not 8: ISO/IEC 11801 class EA handles 10 Gbit/s, whereas the legacy…
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Tertiary copper & fiber cabling
10 GbE over copper category 6a is a false problem: 80% of tertiary floors operate at less than 2 Gb/s per workstation. The real CIO issue is not theoretical throughput but PoE++…
The texts governing tertiary cabling
Three texts structure network design in French tertiary offices. The NF EN 50173-2 standard sets the generic cabling rules for office premises, with a maximum reach of 90 m on the copper permanent link. The ISO/IEC 11801 standard specifies transmission classes (Class EA for category 6A, Class FA for category 7A). The Labour Code (articles R4214-1 and following) requires technical pathways that are accessible for maintenance and separated from power currents.
Link certification and contractual liability
For the CIO: what the Fluke audit changes concretely. Certifying each permanent link transfers responsibility for the pulling to the cabler for 25 years. An uncertified network leaves the CIO exposed to intermittent failures (degraded NEXT, ACR-F) with no contractual recourse: this is the most common blind spot in the lease takeovers we audit.
Outlet density, access points and pathways
The ratios we apply on our recent projects, adjusted to each floor-plate typology:
- 1 double RJ45 outlet per 10 m², i.e. 85 outlets on an 850 m² floor plate
- 1 Wi-Fi 6 access point every 80 to 120 m² in a standard office area
- 1 access point every 50 to 70 m² in a dense open space or meeting room
- 3 separate pathway levels (power, VDI, smoke extraction) required by R4214-1
Carbon footprint and choice of active equipment
ADEME, in its report Évaluation de l’impact environnemental du numérique en France (2022), estimates the share of digital technology in the French carbon footprint at around 2.5%, which prompts real estate departments to favour Energy Star-labelled active equipment and passively cooled cabinets for volumes below 12U.
Why favour cat. 6A copper over fibre to the workstation on a tertiary floor plate?
Fibre rolled out to every workstation costs 2 to 3 times more than cat. 6A copper with no measurable gain below 10 Gb/s. The 90 m threshold set by NF EN 50173-2 covers nearly all floor plates below 1,500 m², and 10 Gb/s over cat. 6A absorbs office work, ToIP and 4K video conferencing over a 9-year lease. OM4/OS2 fibre remains relevant for inter-floor backbones, with a 25-year manufacturer warranty on structured cabling.
