IT Infrastructure and Structured Cabling in Dubai

Cabling is quoted per data point, and the figure is driven by cable category, the average run length, how difficult the route is, whether containment already exists and how much of the work has to happen outside business hours. A straight run through an accessible ceiling void in an empty shell costs a fraction of the same point chased through blockwork in an occupied office at night. Quantity matters too — the per-point rate falls sharply above about fifty points because the mobilisation cost is spread. Beware any quotation that gives a single per-point price without stating category, testing and labelling: those three omissions are exactly where a cheap number comes from.

Cat 6 is defined at 250 MHz and carries 10 Gigabit Ethernet to about 55 metres. Cat 6A is defined at 500 MHz and carries 10 Gigabit to the full 100 metres, with better resistance to interference from neighbouring cables in a bundle and better heat behaviour under high-wattage PoE. Cat 6e is not a standard at all — ANSI/TIA-568 defines Category 6 and Category 6A with nothing in between, and no test equipment can certify a link as "Cat 6e" because there is no specification to certify against. It is a manufacturer marketing term, usually applied to Cat 6 cable with some extra headroom. If a quotation offers Cat 6e, ask whether you are being charged Cat 6A money for Cat 6 cable.

A useful working rule for an office fit-out is two points per desk, plus points for each printer or multifunction device, each access point, each camera, each access-controlled door, each meeting-room display and each wall clock or signage screen — then add roughly twenty per cent spare capacity, terminated and patched, for the changes that arrive within the first year. Spare points are the cheapest thing in the entire project on the day the cabling team is already on site, and among the most expensive afterwards. Send us your floor plan and we will mark up a point count at no charge.

Yes, and most of our cabling work is exactly that rather than empty-shell fit-outs. Work is phased zone by zone, routed through ceiling voids, existing containment and floor boxes wherever possible, and noisy or disruptive activity is scheduled for evenings or weekends. Rack changes and switch cutovers are done out of hours so nobody arrives to a dead network. We will tell you at survey stage which parts genuinely cannot be done around your staff — usually core drilling and any chasing of walls.

The standards allow a 90 metre permanent link from the patch panel to the outlet, plus patch leads at each end, for a 100 metre total channel. That limit applies to every copper category — a longer Cat 6A run does not become valid because the cable is better. Past that distance the correct answer is a fiber link to a local switch or an intermediate comms point, not a longer cable, a repeater or a cheap extender. If your building has runs that cannot be reached inside 90 metres, we design in a second distribution point at survey stage rather than discovering the problem at testing.

Almost always because a single consumer router is trying to cover solid blockwork and concrete slabs, with plug-in extenders making it worse — each repeater hop roughly halves throughput and adds another network name for devices to cling to. The fix is cabled access points, one per floor zone plus outdoor units for garden, pool and gate, all on a single network name with proper roaming. In most UAE villas the cabling can be routed through ceiling voids, service ducts and existing conduit without chasing walls; we confirm that at the walk-through and tell you honestly if your villa is one of the ones where it cannot.

We design and deploy on HPE Aruba, Fortinet FortiAP managed directly from a FortiGate firewall, Huawei eKit, and Ubiquiti UniFi, choosing by site rather than by preference. A thirty-user office with an existing FortiGate is usually best served by FortiAPs on the same console; a multi-floor corporate estate suits Aruba; a villa or small retail unit rarely justifies more than UniFi. Controllers can be hardware, on-premise software or cloud-managed — what matters is that every access point shares one configuration and one place to look when something breaks, rather than eight units configured individually by whoever installed them.

Security systems in Dubai fall under the remit of the Security Industry Regulatory Agency (SIRA), and depending on your premises, your building's requirements and the scope of works, design approval and a SIRA-licensed contractor may be required — particularly where access control sits alongside CCTV or covers a building's main security perimeter. Nifty IT does not claim SIRA licensing: we scope and deliver the IT infrastructure, cabling and network integration, and work alongside a SIRA-licensed security contractor where your scope requires one. Confirm your specific obligation with SIRA or your building management before ordering hardware, because retrofitting an approval is considerably more painful than planning for it.

Yes. Attendance terminals are configured around your real shift patterns, grace periods, break rules and overtime policy, and the resulting data is either exported in a format your payroll accepts or integrated directly with your HR system — including Odoo HR, which we develop on. The integration is the part that determines whether the system is trusted: an attendance device whose output somebody retypes into a spreadsheet at month end will be abandoned within a year. Tell us what runs your payroll at survey stage so the terminals are specified to suit it.

Yes, and it is how most of our fiber calls begin — a contractor's core drill through a riser, a duct caught during landscaping, or a patch lead crushed behind a rack. We locate the break, fusion splice the affected cores, re-terminate into the LIU where needed and loss-test the repaired link before handing it back, rather than re-pulling an entire run. Where the same route has been damaged more than once, we will say so and recommend re-routing or additional protection instead of splicing the same duct a third time.

Every copper link we install is certified and every fiber core is loss-tested, and the results are handed to you as a document along with the port schedule, labelling scheme and as-built drawing. Workmanship is warranted for the period stated in your contract, and where a project is built entirely on a single manufacturer's certified component set, an extended manufacturer system warranty can be arranged — that route has to be specified before installation begins, not requested afterwards, so raise it at quotation stage if you want it. Ask any cabling contractor for sample test results before you appoint them; the ones who do not test will change the subject.

Yes, and it is the main reason clients use us for infrastructure rather than three separate contractors. Access-point drops, camera drops, door readers and attendance terminals all sit on the same structured cabling, share the same containment and terminate in the same rack, so doing them together removes duplicate mobilisation, duplicate ceiling access and the finger-pointing that starts when a door reader will not talk to a network somebody else installed. You get one survey, one itemised quotation, one handover pack and one number to call afterwards. There is no obligation to take a support contract with the installation.