Now available on demand. This one hour webinar covers multifiber connectivity with a specific focus on data center networks. Jennifer Cline (US Conec) will address VSS Multi-Fiber Connectivity; Ken Hall (CommScope) will present on Designing a Dynamic Data Center Fiber-optic Network; and Jim Davis (Fluke Networks) will discuss Testing Tools & Techniques for Multi-Fiber Cabling Systems.
We currently find ourselves in a period of unprecedented demand for network infrastructure. The rapid adoption of digital technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), predictive analytics and the internet of things (IoT), have further heightened this trend. As the digitization and virtualization of business and society continues, more and more demands are placed on the data center because of the immense amount of potential it holds. For data center companies to realize this potential, they must operate more efficiently. To operate more efficiently, the industry must undergo a transformation—a digital transformation, that is.
No longer is funding the main constraint to deploying digital infrastructure. A constrained labor market, challenges in the supply chain, lack of real-time visibility into project execution, difficulty in auditing daily project results, lack of data integrity and more are all roadblocks to digitizing a network as each results in network inefficiencies and costs.
The pandemic’s massive, unplanned experiment proved that only those with high-speed internet could really participate in our society as it works today. It’s as critical as electricity.
The 80% of Americans who don’t have access to fiber broadband got left behind. It’s not OK to let that digital divide persist, to accept having a “less than” population.
A data center may look like, well, nothing from the outside – big, boxy, gray, inconspicuous. But inside, it’s a hub for ALL our information. Deposit a check on your banking app? It’s stored in a data center. Send a pic of your grandma to the cloud? It’s in the data center. Tweet? Yep, same place. As miraculous as that is, data centers have a problem: they need to meet booming bandwidth demand.
Deploying and maintaining an edge data center requires specific focus on both communications infrastructure as well as the equipment that houses and protects that infrastructure. Add to the mix that the term “edge” can be defined in a number of ways, and meeting customer expectations requires significant planning and project management during an edge deployment. This On Topic Report, focused on Edge Networking, acknowledges the reality that edge can mean different things to different users. In that vein, it provides practical information about the edge’s place in the larger network landscape, and delivers useful information about deploying the right solution for users’ needs.
In today’s hyperconnected world, companies need a way to scale and analyze data faster, cheaper and better. The only way to do that is to move out of the cloud and on to the edge of the network, where most of the future data will be generated, analyzed and processed.
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
Social media demand can become enormous overnight, and the metaverse is a prime social-media phenomena, with a big potential problem. All those humans buzzing about in the virtual world of the metaverse would create some awkward moments unless all the avatars were controlled in real time with minimal delay. The problem is #latency.
Significant loss of synchrony with the real world is an ugly problem for metaversing, and we can expect Meta and others to work to correct it by controlling latency. If that happens, there’s hope for those #enterprise #edge and #IoT applications. Metaverse latency control is more than just edge computing, it’s also edge connectivity, meaning consumer broadband. Faster broadband offers lower latency, but there’s more to latency control than just speed. You need to minimize the handling, the number of hops or devices between the user who’s pushing an avatar around a metaverse, and the software that understands what that means to what the user “sees” and what others see as well. Think fiber and cable TV, and a fast path between the user and the nearest edge, which is likely to be in a nearby major metro area. And think “everywhere” because, while the metaverse may be nowhere in a strict reality sense, it’s everywhere that social-media humans are, which is everywhere.
“Twenty-two times a year, we build a data center right down at the edge,” said Ed Green, head of commercial technology at McLaren Racing, a British motor racing team based in Surrey, England.
For McLaren, the edge is wherever in the world the company’s Formula 1 racing team is competing. An IT setup at each racing site links the entire team, including mechanics, engineers, crew members, and the drivers of McLaren’s two Formula 1 racecars.
NTT-Advanced Technology Research cites that 80% of network problems are due to dirty connectors, and the No. 1 cause of network failure is contaminated connectors. For MPOs, inspection and cleaning become even more critical. Given that a single dirty or damaged connector can impact 24 fibers—or more—with MPO connectors, taking critical communications lines out of service for troubleshooting will cause service interruptions for numerous customers.
How can the performance of MPO links be ensured? It all starts with testing. There are the five essential things you need to do: connector inspection, proper cleaning, polarity-type validation, continuity confirmation, and choosing the right referencing method.
