The Ethernet Alliance has named Peter Jones of Cisco Systems, as their new Chairman. The former chair of the NBASE-T Alliance, which merged with the Ethernet Alliance in 2019, and an active member of multiple Ethernet Alliance committees, Jones assumed his new role in late 2019.
In a case involving an on-the-job injury, a lower court ruled that installing cable is not construction work. An appeals court overturned that ruling, saying that installing new cable is an alteration, not routine maintenance.
Corning Optical Communications has released it’s updated Bill-of-Materials Tool. The Excel-based LANscape Solutions Bill-of-Materials Tool serves as a fast and easy resource for identifying the fiber-optic products needed for any given local area network or data center project.
The bidding war between WESCO and Clayton, Dubilier & Rice LLC (CD&R) to acquire Anixter International Inc. has reached a $100-per-share offer by WESCO. That offer comprises $70 per share in cash, 0.2397 shares of WESCO common stock, and $15.89 per share in face amount of WESCO perpetual preferred stock. In an announcement on January 9, Anixter said its board of directors determined this $100-per-share offer by WESCO is a “superior company proposal”—a term previously defined in the course of the bidding competition.
As cities get smarter, they are becoming more livable and more responsive—and today we are seeing only a preview of what technology could eventually do in the urban environment. Now technology is being injected more directly into the lives of residents. Smartphones have become the keys to the city, putting instant information about transit, traffic, health services, safety alerts, and community news into millions of hands.
It’s hard to believe but 10Mb/s Ethernet is becoming a very hot topic in the industry again. I get asked “Why are we going back to the 1980s?” There is a simple answer, and to those of us in the industry at that time, it’s very familiar. In that era before Ethernet became ubiquitous, networking truly was the wild west. Everyone had their own protocols, physical layers, connectors etc. However, since then IT has converged a core set of technologies, with Ethernet leading the way, that provides seamless connectivity to billions of people.
For the second consecutive year, Cabling Installation & Maintenance is teaming up with Fluke Networks to administer a salary and compensation survey for professionals in the information and communications technology (ICT) industry in the United States. The survey will stay open through the end of 2019 and into the first couple weeks of January 2020. All individual data collected in the survey will remain anonymous. You can take the survey here.
Fluke Networks demonstrated a prototype single pair Ethernet (SPE) adapter for its DSX-8000 at the Rockwell Automation Show. SPE is making waves in the industrial-automation world as a potential replacement for fieldbus architectures. The adapter is being made in very limited quantities and is currently only available to industrial automation and cabling manufacturers for their use in labs but has been released with the expectation that SPE will become widely adopted.
A recent technical application guide composed by Cisco, Panduit and Rockwell Automation describes how “Converged Plantwide Ethernet (CPwE) is the underlying architecture that provides standard network services for control and information disciplines, devices, and equipment found in modern industrial automation and control system (IACS) applications.”
New devices based on the 802.3bt standard will supply up to 90 watts over four twisted pairs, supporting a new generation of PoE-supported devices. This webinar will give you the background you need to specify, install and troubleshoot these devices, including: How it Works, Cable Bundling Considerations, Field Termination Considerations, Cabling Performance, and Installing and Troubleshooting.
