Category: FOTC

Senko’s SN Uniboot connector takes home Platinum ‘Cabling Innovators’ honors

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Senko Advanced Components, Inc. announced that its SN Uniboot connector was awarded Platinum Cabling Innovators honors, as presented by Cabling Installation & Maintenance at the at the recent BICSI Fall Conference 2022 (Sep. 25-29) in Las Vegas.
The SN Uniboot is a connector with a revolutionary design that allows four SN duplex connectors to be patched simultaneously in one operation. As noted by Senko, unlike 8-fiber MPO connectors comprising single polymer ferrules, the SN Uniboot’s design utilizes eight ceramic 1.25 mm ferrules that deliver carrier-grade performance and reliability.
Originally designed for use in multi-channel 400G data center transceivers within spine/leaf architectures, Senko reports that “the SN is proving to be much more than just a high data-rate equipment connection. The industry is fast discovering that when deployed as a backbone trunk solution, the SN Uniboot has significant benefits compared with existing legacy solutions,” adds a company statement.

Meeting MPO test and polarity challenges

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EXFO’s Vincent Racine discusses the fundamental role that MPO connectivity plays in network densification. The rise in popularity of MPO connectivity has brought to light certain challenges in the field, including some related to testing and polarity. Racine describes the practicalities of meeting these challenges in the field using test equipment.

The Importance of Testing Fiber Optics in Submarine Networks

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Subsea or submarine cables are fiber optic cables that connect countries across the world via cables laid on the ocean floor. These cables – often thousands of miles in length – are able to transmit huge amounts of data rapidly from one point to another. According to a 2019 report by StableSeas, commercial undersea cables transmit 97% of this internet and telecommunications data. With such heavy reliance on the technology, there’s no denying that submarine cabling is supporting the global economy, and an outage could have catastrophic consequences, which makes proper testing of submarine networks critical.

Everything You Need to Know: TIA Standard adds MPO Test Requirements and Procedures

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In their latest revision (September 2022), the Telecom Industry Association (TIA) added MPO test requirements and procedures to their optical fiber cabling component standard, ANSI/TIA-568.3-E.
The revision adds MPO-specific requirements referencing TIA-526-28. TIA-526-28 is an adoption of IEC 61280-4-5 and deals with attenuation measurement of MPO-terminated fiber optic cabling plant using test equipment with MPO interfaces.

Managing Data Center Fiber Becoming Harder…and Easier

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Managing the growing density of fibers and cables throughout data centers is becoming a full-time job. If not done well, the ramifications can be severe. Beyond the eyesore of cabling spilling into the aisle, poor fiber management can create a variety of more costly issues. Overfilling cable trays, for example, can restrict air flow between the cables, increasing thermal loading and causing the cooling system to work harder than usually needed. The inability to identify, access and manage individual fibers, compromises meantime-to-resolution, turn-up speed, moves/adds/changes and more. All of this emphasizes the need for a carefully considered cable management strategy.

TIA White Paper: Resilience at the Edge

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When planning an Edge Data Center (EDC) deployment, the need to address availability of planned workloads to ensure resiliency is a top priority. The key characteristics of an EDC can be significantly different than those that top the list for larger enterprise or multi-tenant data centers. To help balance the costs and operational aspects of any EDC strategy, this paper outlines a number of critical questions that should be addressed to ensure resiliency at the edge.

The growing importance of fiber management in the data center – DCD

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In hyperscale data centers and 5G networks, current fiber counts can be as high as 6,912 and even higher-count fibers are being manufactured. As more facilities embrace fiber-rich mesh architectures, the amount of fiber is only going to increase.
Managing the growing density of fibers and cables throughout data centers is becoming a full-time job. If not done well, the ramifications can be severe.

TIA Issues Edge Data Center Addendum to ANSI/TIA-942-B Data Center Infrastructure Standard.

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TIA has released the Edge Data Center Addendum to the ANSI/TIA-942-B data center infrastructure standard which defines requirements for newer “edge” or “micro” data centers, which often come in prefabricated enclosures that are significantly smaller than the more traditional sprawling warehouses. The TIA-942-B-1 addendum is a significant step for the globally deployed standard because, as 5G services expand, new applications are emerging and the exponential growth of connected IoT devices are requiring more of the “intelligence” to be closer to the application end user and their devices. The more local processing of data helps applications to meet their latency and performance requirements as well as reduce the volume of raw data uploaded into the cloud.