The Importance of Reliable Date Cabling

It is hard to imagine a world without the internet as it is so important in the modern business environment. We cannot stress enough the importance of reliable networking cabling. Some recent studies vindicated our evangelical approach to data cabling:

Data cabling typically account for less than 10 percent of the total cost of the network infrastructure.

The life span of the typical cabling system is upward of 16 years. Cabling is likely the second most long-lived asset or have. The first is the shell of the building.

Nearly 70 percent of all network-related problems are due to poor cabling techniques and cable-component problems.

Note: If you have installed the proper category or grade of cable, the majority of cabling problems will usually be related to patch cables, connectors, and termination techniques. The permanent portion of the cable such as the part of the wall will not likely be a problem unless it was damaged during installation.

Of course, these were facts that we already knew from our own experience. We have spent countless hours troubleshooting cabling systems that were nonstandard, badly designed, poor documented, and shoddily installed. We have seen much money wasted on the installation of additional cabling and cabling infrastructure support that should have been part of the original installation. No mater how you will think about it, cabling is the foundation of the network and it must be reliable!

The best way to ensure that your networking needs are met is by checking that the person installing the data cabling is registered with a cable registrar such as ACRS or one of the other five registrars in Australia. You should also make sure that they have the appropriate experience and qualifications in their background, possibly determining this via recommendations or terminations.

Another good thing to do is make sure you get two or three quotes in order to create an accurate idea of pricing, as some installed quote ridiculously high-but others quote too low indicating that they are using inferior quality products. Because the installation has been quoted cheaply, does not mean it’s a good idea. Properly priced instances are more likely to have the quality installation products from good fibre optic cable manufacturers.

Besides, installation can often have a warranty, usually between five and twenty years. The better the products, the longer the warranty period as a rule.

Costs that result from poorly planned and poorly implemented cabling systems can be staggering. One company that had recently moved into a new office space used the existing cabling, which was supposed to be Cat 5 cables. Almost immediately, 100Mbps Ethernet network users reported intermittent problems. These problems include exceptionally slow access time when reading e-mail, saving documents, and using the sales database. Other users reported that applications running under Windows 98 and Windows NT were locking up, which often caused them to have to reboot their PC.

After many months of networking annoyances, the company finally had the cable runs tested. Many cables did not even meet the minimum requirements of a Category 5 installations, and other cabling runs were installed and terminated poorly.

Contrary to most peoples thinking, faulty cabling cause the type of intermittent problems that the aforementioned company experienced. In additional to being vulnerable to outside interference from eletric-motors, fluorescent lighting, elevators, cellular phones, copies, and microwave ovens, faulty cabling can cause intermittent problems because of other reasons such as substandard components (patch panel, connectors, and cable) and poor installation techniques. LSZH cables are needed some safety advocates such as the plenum space.

Robert Metcalfe helped coin the term drop-rate magnification. Drop-rate magnification describes the high degree of network problems caused by dropping a few packets. Medicare estimates that a 1 percent drop in Ethernet packets can correlate to an 80 percent drop in throughput. Modern network protocols that send multiple packets and expect only a single acknowledgement are especially susceptible to drop rate magnification, as a single dropped packet may cause an entire stream of packets to be retransmitted.

Click to know fiber optic cable price per foot

Understanding Fiber Optic Based Light Source

Each piece of active electronics will have a variety of light sources used to transmit over the various types of fiber. The distance and bandwidth will vary with light source and quality of fiber. In most networks, fiber is used for uplink/backbone operations and connecting various buildings together on a campus. The speed and distance are a function of the core, modal bandwidth, grade of fiber and the light source, all discussed previously. Light sources of the fiber light source are offered in a variety of types. Basically there are two types of semiconductor light sources available for fiber optic communication – The LED sources and the laser sources.

Using single mode fiber for short distances can cause the receiver to be overwhelmed and an inline attenuator may be needed to introduce attenuation into the channel. With Gigabit to the desktop becoming commonplace, 10Gb/s backbones have also become more common. The SR interfaces are also becoming common in data center applications and even some desktop applications. As you can see, the higher quality fiber (or laser optimized fiber) provides for greater flexibility for a fiber plant installation. Although some variations ( 10GBase-LRM SFP+ and 10GBASE-LX4) support older grades of fiber to distances 220m or greater, the equipment is more costly. In many cases, it is less expensive to upgrade fiber than to purchase the more costly components that also carry increased maintenance costs over time.

Light sources of the fiber light source are offered in a variety of types. Basically there are two types of semiconductor light sources available for fiber optic communication – The LED sources and the laser sources.

In fiber-optics-based solution design, a bright light source such as a laser sends light through an optical fiber, called laser light source . Along the length of the fiber is an ultraviolet-light-treated region called a “fiber grating.” The grating deflects the light so that it exits perpendicularly to the length of the fiber as a long, expanding rectangle of light. This optical rectangle is then collimated by a cylindrical lens, such that the rectangle illuminates objects of interest at various distances from the source. The bright rectangle allows line scan cameras to sort products at higher speeds with improved accuracy.

The laser fiber-based light source combines all the ideal features necessary for accurate and efficient scanning: uniform, intense illumination over a rectangular region; a directional beam that avoids wasting unused light by only illuminating the rectangle; and a “cool” source that does not heat up the objects to be imaged. Currently employed light sources such as tungsten halogen lamps or arrays of light-emitting diodes lack at least one of these features.

Photonic Integrated And High-speed Optical Interconnection Technology

Currently, in the field of active optical devices, high-speed optical communication (40G/100G), broadband access FTTH, 3G and LTE wireless communication, high-speed optical interconnection, chips applied in intelligent Fiber Optic Network, device and module technologies are competing to become the hot spots of development. And the photonic integrated, high-speed optical signal modulation technique, high-speed optical device packaging technology, as the representative of the optical device platform technology are also increasingly being valued by the majority of OC manufacturers.

The Technology Development And Breakthrough Of Active Optical Devices

To meet the growing demand for bandwidth, while continuing to reduce the capital, operation and maintenance expenses, will continue to be the two main driving force to promote the development of optical communication technology. In order to meet the evolving needs of the system, the development of active optical communication device involves many technologies, however, in recent years there are several technologies deserve special attention, including 40G/100G high speed transmission device and module technology, the next generation fiber access technology, ROF (Radio Over Fiber) components and module technology, optical integration technology, high-speed interconnect optoelectronic components and modules, etc.

Optical Integration Technology Is Worth Looking Forward

Optical integrated devices due to its low cost, small, easy to large-scale assembly, high work rate, stable performance and other advantages, as early as the 1970s, it caused the world’s attention and research. In the ensuing three decades, with the rapid development of optical waveguide production technology and a variety of fine processing technology, optical integrated devices are heavily into the business, particularly some optical passive components based on Planar Lightwave Circuit (PLC), such as Planar Lightwave Circuit Splitter, arrayed waveguide grating (AWG) and so on, have become hot products in optical communication on the market. In the field of optical active devices, the active integration products are still far from large-scale commercial, but with the successful development of some advanced technologies such as Dispersion Bridge Grating, active devices based on PLC recently made great progress.

The develop direction of optical integration technology can be divided into two categories: monolithic and hybrid integration. Monolithic integration refers to the semiconductor or optical crystal substrate, over the same production process, integrating all the components together, such as: PIC and OEIC technology; the hybrid integration refers to through different production processes, making part of the components, then assembled in the semiconductor or optical crystal substrate.

Previously, the actual production process of Si-based hybrid integration has been quite complex, but recently, a number of research institutions had improved the traditional hybrid integration technology based on flip, and made great progress. Among them, the most remarkable achievements include two items: The first is the University of California at Santa Barbara, in cooperation with Intel company researched hybrid integrated device based on Wafer level; second is the Ghent University based chip and the wafer hybrid integrated devices.

In recent years, the development of optical integration technology, making it quickly became a very worth looking forward platform technology in optic communication, is expected to be widely applied.

High-speed Optical Interconnection Technology Beyond Imagination

High speed optical interconnection technology is realized by parallel Fiber Transceiver and Ribbon Cable or fiber optic cable. Parallel optical module is based on VCSEL array and PIN array,wavelength of 850nm, suitable for 50/125 μm and 62.5/125 μm multimode fiber. Its electrical interface uses standard MegArray connectors in package, optical interface uses standard MTP/MPO ribbon cable. At present more common parallel optical transceiver module has 4 channels and 12 channels. In the current market, the more common high-speed parallel optical modules include: 4 × 3.125Gb/s (12.5Gb/s) parallel optical module, applications such as high-end computer systems, blade servers short distance interconnection; 12 × 2.725Gb/s (32.7Gb/s) parallel optical module, used in high-end switching equipment as well as backplane connection. Parallel optical module applications are gradually becoming more mature.

At present, the rise of applications such as super computer, cloud computing, short-distance high-speed data communication, directly promoting the rapid development of high-pspeed optical interconnection technology, its size of the market and technology development will beyond people’s imagination.