Telephone cables (pre 1945). A fanned-out view of a six-coaxial cable, that also included many regular telephone wires to provide additional long distance circuits. Source: Bell Telephone and National Museum of American History.

Cabling and network connections

Get connected

Connection to the Medical Center wired network requires an active "cable drop" -- that is, a wall jack into which you can plug an Ethernet cable (Category 5E or greater).  In some cases new wiring may be required.  If so, here are the steps to follow:

  • Departments at the University of Miami should contact the Department of Telecommunications at 305-284-6565.
  • Departments at Jackson Memorial Hospital should contact the JMH Help Desk at 305-585-6789 for information about cabling requests.

Do you still need cables?

The wireless network reaches the vast majority of spaces at the Medical Center and remote sites.  You might wonder if you still need to rely on wired connections.  We encourage the use of wireless networking wherever your business can be enhanced by introducing mobility into your normal workflow.  However, it isn't always suitable for every application you may use, such as those with high bandwidth (communications speed) requirements.

If your computer or networked device requires high bandwidth, you may need a dedicated wired connection.  Wireless networks are still a shared network resource and currently limited to speeds up to 54 Mbps (with some network applications, the limit is 11 Mbps).  Wired connections can deliver up to 1000 Mbps throughput to desktop computing devices.  In some areas of the campus, the network supports speeds up to 20,000 Mbps (20Gbps) for aggregated throughput to datacenter computing facilities.