As traffic within and between data centers continues to grow, operators need to constrain the resulting increase in power consumption to minimize operational costs. This is driving the need to manage footprint and power at the system design level. Photonic integration and co-packaging are related approaches to addressing area and power challenges for networking applications. These component-level design options will enable future footprint-optimized solutions for data centers.
Data centers are the control hubs of businesses and organizations. Complex architectures and operating workflows, as well as a range of different applications, all pose a challenge for the network infrastructure. The quality requirements that are placed on structured, application-neutral cabling are correspondingly high. Individualized planning and a high level of automatic cable management play an important role. Transmission paths and attenuation budgets must be considered right from the start in the design of a modern data center. This is because efficient cabling forms the basis for the trouble-free operation of all the processes and this factor must therefore be taken into account during the data center planning phase.
Let’s take a look at the #9 Dumb Thing that smart people do when testing network cabling systems—relying on a duplex tester for certifying MPO trunks. Field testing is the only way to ensure that MPO links meet the application performance requirements. Despite the fact that pre-terminated MPO fiber cables are manufactured and tested by vendors to comply with ANSI/TIA and international standards, there are many factors that can potentially impact performance. First of all, MPO connectors are harder to clean than duplex connectors. The 12-fiber MPO interface features an array with a much larger surface area, which unfortunately makes it easier to move contaminants from one fiber to another within the same array during the cleaning process. 40 and 100 Gbps MPO fiber applications also have much lower loss budgets so it’s important to ensure the highest testing accuracy as possible.
Fluke’s CableIQ Qualification Tester helps you determine whether the cable you’re using will work properly and provide the bandwidth needed for your application, troubleshooting and qualifying Ethernet cabling speed (10/100/1000 VoIP).
The TIA has introduced a certification program to ensure that data center facilities conform with the specifications in its ANSI/TIA-942 standard series. TIA will work with Certac to provide verifications of conformance to standards by independent conformity assessment bodies (CABs) that can verify data center conformity with the standards.
A new report from the Dell’Oro Group says demand for 100-Gbps Ethernet switch ports will peak next year. While demand for such ports will continue to be strong, composing more than 30% of the market over the next five years, the same timeframe will see the rise of 400-Gbps ports. Shipments of 400G switch ports will exceed 15 million, the market research firm predicts in its most recent “Ethernet Switch – Data Center Five Year Forecast Report.”
Smartoptics’ new line of optical transceivers and open line system for use in 32G Fibre Channel storage area networks complement the company’s existing line of 8G and 16G Fibre Channel products.The 32G Fibre Channel optical transceivers are available in the SFP28 form factor for use in the platforms of a variety of switch vendors. The optical modules can be used with passive filters as well as Smartoptics’ active open line systems to support reaches up to 80 km between data centers.
IoT is finally entering its rightful place as a fully fledged enterprise technology that is revolutionizing many different industries and business functions. Just Google the terms “IoT” and “revolutionizing” and you’ll pull up a myriad of examples of just how widespread this impact is. Research predicts that global spending on IoT will reach almost $750 billion this year, an uptick of 15 percent from 2018 levels. Another report predicts that by 2025 businesses and consumers will have deployed more than 41 billion IoT connected devices at a growth rate of nearly 30 percent between now and then.
As the size of our networks grew during the last decade, we saw a shift from classical 3-tier network architectures to a flatter and wider Spine-and-Leaf architecture. With its fully meshed connectivity approach, Spine-and-Leaf architecture provided us with the predictable high-speed network performance we were craving and reliability in our network switch fabric.
The August newsletter from the Fiber Optics Association is now available.
