The FOA Reference For Fiber Optics – Networks

The world communicates on fiber optics. Fiber has become the communications medium of choice for telephones, cell phones, CATV, LAN backbones, security cameras, industrial networks, just about everything. Hundreds of submarine cables connect the world for data, voice and video. This reference guide talks about why we use fiber and the types of networks where they are deployed.

Figuring Out the Municipal Internet of Things

To realize the potential of Smart Cities, we’re going to have to figure out the Municipal Internet-of-Things (IoT). We know “smart communities” will utilize an assortment of devices, networks, data and analytics – what we’ll call Municipal IoT. And we know these technologies collectively have the potential to improve many aspects of public service delivery. The best way for the public sector to start making the smart city movement a reality is also the most obvious. Public sector agencies should build and deploy their own IoT networks and identify, test, scale, and share use-cases and applications that are designed specifically to solve their challenges.

Learn more about ANSI/BICSI 004-2018 for Healthcare Institutions and Facilities

While smart hospitals, the fusion intelligent building, IoT, and big data are still few and far between, today’s health care facility is increasingly digitized, from health records, diagnostic and monitoring equipment, environmental controls far beyond the thermostat – even the routing office visit may be a remote interaction spanning thousands of miles. As more systems connect to the network, ICT infrastructure is required to meet both today’s needs and those of tomorrow with minimal to no effect on the overall health care mission.To address this need, ANSI/BICSI 004-2018 has been revised and expanded.

White Paper: The Role of PoE in the Modern Connected Enterprise

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.

Bandwidth and Data Rates

The terms bandwidth and data rates are often used interchangeably, but they are in fact very different if you work in the cabling world. Your internet provider may advertise a bandwidth of 500 megabits per second (Mbps). In that case, they actually mean data rate. In the cabling world, bandwidth is a property of the cable – its ability to transmit a signal that’s intelligible at the far end. Any signal put on a copper or fiber link will degrade as it gets to the far end. This is a result of simple loss, but also more complex factors such as return loss (reflections), and in the case of copper, crosstalk. Vendors design their copper and fiber cabling to be able to deliver these raw signals (bandwidth) at higher rates.

Ethernet Alliance wrapping up latest High-Speed Networking Interop Plugfest

18 companies participated testing optical transceiver, #Ethernet switching equipment, and T&M (physical layer and protocol analysis) products at the Ethernet Alliance’s latest High Speed Networking (HSN) Plugfest  at the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL). This was the fourth event to provide participants with the ability to test the interoperability of their products for applications from 25 Gigabit Ethernet to 400 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE). The HSN Plugfest drew a greater number of companies than the previous iteration, including some who joined the Ethernet Alliance just so that they could participate.
 

Ammon, Idaho, has the best fiber-optic network in America

Which American city has the most sophisticated fiber network? San Francisco? Nope. New York? Nah.It’s Ammon, Idaho, population 16,500, which offers residents performance, pricing, and options that inhabitants of a metropolis dominated by one or two internet service providers can only dream of. Ammon is a true local network, where residents own the fiber and providers compete to serve them.