The Fiber Connection

Fiber Growth Evident on BICSI Exhibit Hall Floor - Thursday, March 01, 2012

Betsy Conroy, guest blogger

At the recent BICSI Winter Conference & Exhibition in Orlando, I spent three nights maneuvering up and down 10 rows, determined to visit the more than 160 exhibitor booths that featured virtually everything related to estimating, bidding, designing, installing and testing network infrastructures. The range of products was overwhelming and the crowds were promising—an overall attitude of optimism seemed to reign throughout the 86,000 BICSIlogo

square foot space. While copper-based infrastructure solutions were still represented, there seemed to be a lot more flaunting of fiber from cabling and connectivity manufacturers than ever before.

Of course Corning focused solely on fiber in their two exhibit booths—one devoted entirely to their bend-insensitive multimode fiber (BIMMF). Here you could sit and relax in a comfy living room setting and learn all about how their ClearCurve fiber supposedly withstands bends and delivers up to 10 times better macrobending performance than standards multimode fiber. This was no great surprise to me since they’ve been talking BIMMF for well over a year now.

Belden’s exhibit booth was a bit more surprising. Well known for their copper cabling solutions, most of Belden’s booth focused on their new FiberExpress Brilliance Field Connector and pre-terminated fiber solutions for the data center. Here, I was amazed as the ease of fiber field termination and watched as a prepared fiber was terminated in about 5 seconds. I enjoyed an informative discussion on pre-terminated fiber vs. field termination, and learned that despite the hype surrounding preterminated solutions, field termination remains the preferred method of choice. The general thought is that preterminated solutions will become more popular as data centers move towards 40 and 100 gigabit speeds, since those applications will require the MPO connectors currently used in preterminated solutions.

Belden wasn’t the only copper manufacturer focusing on fiber. At the Berk-tek booth, visitors got to check out the new OneReach POE extender system that combines fiber and copper to poe

deliver PoE beyond 100 meters. Other manufacturers were promoting passive optical network (PON), or passive optical LAN (POL), solutions. These point-to-multipoint fiber networks use a single strand of singlemode fiber that runs from a passive, unpowered optical splitter to an optical network terminal that serves multiple users. While this approach aims to reduce the amount of physical cable and active equipment, other exhibitors were not so keen on the idea, pointing out that POL technology does not support 10 gigabit transmission speeds and is not standards based. Considering the wide range of opinions being tossed around the exhibit hall floor, the debate surrounding POL technology seems likely to continue for quite some time.

Of course we can’t forget fiber testing. There was a bit of chatter surrounding a new OTDR being introduced by Fluke Networks, and one of their competitors went as far as asking me what I knew about it and if I had seen it. While it appears that Fluke did not introduce the new product at the BICSI conference, supposedly this redesigned OTDR is aimed directly towards enterprise data center fiber testing. We’ll find out more when it hits the streets in the coming weeks. Dirty fiber endface

While the latest fiber cabling, connectivity and testing solutions seemed to dominate much of the exhibit booth displays, there was one issue surrounding fiber that remained a top concern—fiber cleaning. It was pointed out to me time and time again, that improper cleaning of fiber in the field is still the number one cause of failures (example of dirty endface shown on the right). Yet, consensus was that the only resolution continues to be education.

While my feet ached from all the walking, and my brain swelled with the overload of information, one fact rang loud and clear at the BICSI Winter Conference & Exhibition—fiber is continuing to gain traction on copper in enterprise networks.

BICSI, fiber trends, BIMMF, Fiberoptics, PoE

Two Technologies Team Up to Go the Distance - Tuesday, September 13, 2011

There’s no doubt that Power over Ethernet (PoE) is a very useful technology that offers tremendous benefits to designers, installers and end users. The ability to power devices and equipment over twisted-pair copper cabling eliminates the cost associated with delivering AC power to every device—especially in locations where providing access to AC power is complicated. That’s precisely why we’re seeing wireless access points, phones, clocks, surveillance cameras and other devices powered by DC power over the same copper cabling that transmits data packets across the network. Now the IEEE 802.3at-2009 PoE Plus standard delivers even more power—up to 24.5 Watts. This has opened the door for a wider range of PoE-enabled devices with higher power requirements, including laptops, pan-tilt-zoom cameras, routers, videophones and a variety of industrial controllers.

But PoE has one major problem. As an Ethernet protocol, twisted-pair cable from the patch panel in the telecommunications room to the device is limited to a 100-meter distance—just 28 feet longer than a football field. That’s just fine for the office phones, most of the wireless access points and a few other devices, but what do I do about that security camera located out in the parking lot, or the wireless access point in the warehouse? And what about that critical access card reader at the main gate or the phone in the security booth? With the global need for increased security and cameras located throughout large public spaces like airports, arenas and campuses, the 100-meter distance limitation is just that—a limitation.

When it comes to connecting devices located farther than 100 meters to the network for data transmission, there is another popular technology—optical fiber cabling. And if you know anything about fiber, you know that it is dielectric and carries data as light pulses. That means it can’t deliver PoE. It does however offer several other benefits like high bandwidth, small size and weight, low loss and signal security. Rather than giving up on PoE for devices located farther than 100 meters from the closet, what better way to power these remote devices than by combining two great technologies—PoE and fiber.

The combination of a media converter and PoE extender in one device is making this all possible. Media converters have been around for decades and are used to convert various types of cabling media—the most common being fiber to copper and vice versa. By combining media converters and PoE extenders in a single device, a hybrid cable can be installed from the telecommunications room (with fiber for data and copper for power) and connect to the remote media converter/PoE device. At the device, the optical signal is converted back to an IEEE 802.3 PoE- or PoE plus-compliant copper data outlet, from which unshielded, twisted-pair data cable can extend the 100 meters to the actual IP device. When all is said and done, this solution allows a PoE device to be located up to 1,100 meters from the closet—or about 13 football fields away.

Power over Ethernet, PoE, media converters, fiber optics, IP devices, security networks

Welcome to The Fiber Connection - Thursday, September 01, 2011

Welcome to ‘The Fiber Connection’. Along with a new corporate website, we are launching a new blog where we intend to post information about fiber optic technologies and trends, industry happenings and anything else that might be of interest. You will see posts from people here at Fiber Connections and several guest posts as well.

Within ‘The Fiber Connection’ we will look at the markets and applications that we know best – power over Ethernet (PoE), security applications, fiber to the desk, data communications, telecommunications, Fiber to the Home and more. We encourage you to contact us if you have a relevant topic and would like to write a guest post – we certainly welcome your ideas and contributions.

So, please check back soon. We look forward to providing useful posts and adding to the fiber optic industry discussion.

The Fiber Connection, Welcome, Power over Ethernet,PoE