Power over Ethernet has become the new power grid in buildings. With new standards that allow up to 99W to be delivered, PoE has grown up and is ready to power connected devices throughout the office building, school, and hospital. Panduit’s latest ebook, The Role of PoE in the Modern Connected Enterprise, explores infrastructure considerations and emerging solutions for extending the distance of PoE delivery.
Huber+Suhner introduced its LISA Double Access solution at ECOC 2019, as part of the company’s extensive Fiber Connectivity portfolio. The high-density and modular cross-connect fiber management system provides a maximum of 3600 ports per rack, making it crucial to the support of high-density data center applications, and critical to future-proofing the industry, contends the company.
Several industry leaders, including Broadcom, Cisco, Finisar, Intel, Juniper Networks, Marvell, Molex and Samtec, have announced a new QSFP-DD800 MSA Group to advance the development of high-speed, double-density quad small form factor pluggable (QSFP-DD800) modules to support 800 Gbps connectivity. This MSA will enable QSFP-DD800’s eight electrical lanes to operate at 100 Gigabit per second (Gbps) each, by providing technical solutions for 800 Gbps module and connector systems. It will also define a module, connector, stacked connector and a hybrid connector that is a BiPass/Flyover variant which can eliminate the signal losses on a traditional PCB.
The Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) has a new program designed to stimulate IIoT adoption across industry, the better to help IT and OT users solve real problems they face in their businesses. The IIC Accelerator Program encompasses several initiatives to appeal to end users of IoT technology who want to discuss challenges with their peers, get advice from IIC experts, or seek guidance to solve complex technical problems.
The Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) established the Single Pair Ethernet Consortium (SPEC) to accelerate the adoption of next-generation operational technology (OT) and Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity. Founding members of SPEC include Belden, CommScope, Panduit and the Siemon Company. SPEC will provide vendor-neutral representation for technology leaders and users across the building automation technology ecosystem.
As organizations increase the amount of data processing they do each day, some are starting to require hyperscale data centers. With the use of fiber optics and growing Ethernet standards, admins can make 100G data centers a reality. Leaf-spine topologies, Ethernet and optics research are driving the next generation of data center networking infrastructure. Stay ahead of the curve with these technologies.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is at the beginning of its golden age. Forecasts note that the number of connected devices could exceed the 20-billion mark by next year and could reach 50 billion by 2022. For all this, we are basically using just one network protocol. The still-dominant IPv4 standard uses 32-bit addresses, only making around 232, or 4.3 billion different addresses possible. Luckily, a new 128-bit format has existed in principle since 1998. This IPv6 standard offers an address space of 2128, or around 340 sextillions, eliminating any concerns
5G enabled devices in the IoT will allow huge numbers of sensors and devices to gather incredible amounts of data and transmit the data at remarkable speeds over wide distances. We are going to see a new wave of information enabled in government and industry. Instead of your phone or laptop acting as the processor, it will sit inside the edge of the 5G infrastructure. This will allow things like driverless vehicles and telemedicine.5G will provide the digital infrastructure that will shape the quality of life of most of the earth’s population. Yes, it will load web pages and play videos on your phone 10 to 20 times faster than 4G. Mobile devices will spend less time processing data, which will consume less power, which will result in extended battery life. But these are little advances compared to what is possible.
Let’s say you’re in charge of a data center and your boss reminds you that streaming video and IoT devices are all the rage and if you don’t keep up with bandwidth demand, you’re toast. You have 10G links that use 10G SFP+ SR transceivers at the aggregation layer. You upgrade your switches or linecards to ones that have 40G QSFP ports like the Nexus series switches.You now have a couple of choices for the QSFP ports: You could use QSFP SR4 transceivers, which requires ribbon fiber. That means you’d have to install more trunk fiber and modify patch panels to handle the MPO (Multi-Fiber Push On) connectors. Or you could use the QSFP BiDi transceiver, which, by the way, costs less than the SR4 transceiver. All you have to do is unplug the dual fiber MMF (Multi-Mode Fiber) cable that you already have in place, and plug it right into the BiDi. No hassle. Boss happy. Seems obvious, doesn’t it?
The 400GE BiDi MSA Group founded in July focuses on promoting interoperable 400GE optical specifications that utilize multi-mode fiber (MMF) for applications up to 100m link distances. The MSA leverages BiDi technology that has been widely deployed by Cisco and others for 40GE and 100GE applications over duplex MMF. With the arrival of 400GE applications, customers will finally have no choice but to start using MMF transceivers that require more than duplex fiber. 400GE ports can be used to aggregate traffic from 100GE ports, still leveraging the duplex MMF from 100GE BiDi modules to 400GE modules in a breakout configuration as shown in the diagram below.
