Author Archives

Liz Goldsmith

Fiber everywhere requires PON components to handle everything

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Over the next five years, an unprecedented era of building fiber networks will take place around the world, with passive optical networks (PON) making up a large portion of that construction. As networks are deployed in more places, and in more diverse and sometimes difficult-to-reach environments, the need to make sure the highest-quality optical components are within that network only increases. As operators look to lower operational costs to deploy, manage, and maintain network builds, PON components will be pushed out further into the fiber network.

Inching toward a greener, future-proof cabling infrastructure

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This year saw noteworthy milestones in the development of cabling infrastructure standards for smart buildings. In March, the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) released the ANSI/TIA-568.5 Single Pair Ethernet (SPE) cabling standard. Four months later, TIA released the ANSI/TIA-862-C Intelligent Building standard with technical updates and topologies that facilitate connecting and powering IoT devices, including the addition of SPE standards (in alignment with 568.5). Recently, the National Fire Protection Association Standards Council voted to issue the 2023 National Electrical Code (NEC) with Class 4 fault-managed power that will expand the use of energy-saving direct current (DC) power over low-voltage cabling, which is incentivized by the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED version 4 pilot credit Direct Current Power Systems.
These milestones encourage cabling infrastructure design and implementation practices that improve connectivity and sustainability in smart buildings—but the market remains in its infancy. The lack of actual products available on the commercial market complicates new-project design. But technology providers can adopt strategies today to help future-proof infrastructure for tomorrow.

What’s the deal with Industry 4.0 (and how do we deal with it)?

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Whereas the third Industrial Revolution was defined by widespread digitalization (the rise of computers, process logic controllers, etc.), the fourth Industrial Revolution is all about fusing digital, physical and virtual resources to create intelligent processes that think, do and respond faster and more accurately than humans alone can. The fourth Industrial Revolution is a way of describing the blurring of boundaries between the physical, digital, and biological worlds. It’s a fusion of advances in artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, IoT, 3D printing, genetic engineering, quantum computing, and other technologies.

TIA hosts U.S. Dept. of Commerce senior exec for BEAD Success Summit keynote

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The Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) today announced it has confirmed Kevin Gallagher, Senior Advisor to the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Commerce, as a featured keynote speaker at the BEAD Success Summit, being held April 19 -20, in Arlington, Virginia.
The summit will bring together all of the key stakeholders in the $42 billion program to discuss the Broadband, Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) Notice of Funding Opportunity (NoFo) and technology alternatives in plenary sessions, panel discussions and technical breakouts.

OFS joins Terabit BiDi MSA group

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OFS announced that it has joined the Terabit BiDi Multi-Source Agreement (MSA) group.
OFS is a global designer, manufacturer, and supplier of fiber-optic network products. The Terabit BiDi MSA specification addresses short-reach applications including the critical high-volume interconnects between switches in modern data centers.
The MSA’s specifications utilize the widely adopted dual wavelength bidirectional (BiDi) transmission technology. This provides an upgrade path to the large-scale deployed parallel MMF cabling infrastructure.
The Terabit BiDi MSA specifications are built upon the 100 Gb/s Ethernet MMF specifications. Terabit BiDi MSA participants are responding to an industry need for lower cost and lower power consumption solutions in the 800 Gb/s and 1.6 Tb/s form factors that bidirectional MMF technology can provide

Ethernet Alliance gears up for 50th anniversary plus 10G-800G demo at OFC 2023

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The Ethernet Alliance this week revealed details of its upcoming multivendor technology demonstration at the 2023 Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exhibition (OFC 2023), among the world’s premier telecom and data center optics events, to be held March 7-9, 2023, at the San Diego Convention Center, San Diego, California.
Ethernet Alliance said this year’s multivendor interoperability display uniquely captures Ethernet technology’s 50-year track record of success, while illustrating the need for a “living lab” of next-generation technologies, and setting the stage for its next evolutionary phase.
Peter Jones, chairman of the Ethernet Alliance, remarked: “We’re now at the half-century mark, and Ethernet’s star continues to rise. As a profoundly resilient technology that’s getting progressively faster, it is an innovation engine that drives market diversification and fuels business growth. As the volume and variety of applications expand, bridging between legacy systems and emerging technologies is increasingly critical. The Ethernet Alliance OFC 2023 demo underscores the importance of interoperability and perfectly frames Ethernet’s ability to operate seamlessly across disparate industries and environments.”
Featuring 18 different participating member companies, the Ethernet Alliance interoperability demo in its OFC booth #5417 will span diverse Ethernet technologies, ranging from 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) to 800GbE.
This year’s interoperability display will feature a live network between the Ethernet Alliance and the Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF), EXFO Inc., Spirent Communications, and Viavi Solutions Inc. booths.
The network will leverage single-mode optical fibers with high-speed traffic originating from an array of switches, routers, interconnects, including copper and optical cables.
It will also showcase various interconnects using multiple pluggable form factors such as OSFP, QSFP-DD, QSFP, and SFP, and multiple interface types including OIF 400ZR, OpenZR+ MSA 400ZR+, and 800G-ETC-CR8.
Finally, there will be live demonstrations from BERT and AN/LT test equipment.