Cabling Chronicles
Let’s All Calibrate and Have a Good Time!
Just like those who drive around long after the engine service indicator lights up on the dashboard, there are folks out there who have likely been putting off getting their t
ester calibrated despite the email or LinkWare™ Live notification from Fluke Networks.
April 4, 2018
Too Soon to Say Goodbye? It’s All Relative…
You might remember that just about three years ago, the DTX CableAnalyzer™ was officially retired. Since its discontinuation, Fluke Networks has continued to offer technical support, repair and calibration for this tester that was once touted as the ultimate time saver and brought testing to a whole new level when it was introduced in 2004.
March 28, 2018
101 Series: LEDs vs. VCSELs
Since today’s high-speed fiber networks use 850-nm vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSELs) transceivers, some may be confused about why light emitting diode (LED) light sources are used for testing. Understanding the differences between these two sources will certainly shed some light.
March 21, 2018
101 Series: What is Modal Bandwidth?
Often when we hear the term “bandwidth” we think of how much data can be sent over a fiber link. But when we look at fiber specifications, we typically see a specification for modal bandwidth, or effective modal bandwidth (EMB). This key characteristic of multimode fiber refers to how much data a specific fiber can transmit at a given wavelength, and it is dependent on another characteristic—differential mode delay.
March 7, 2018
OTDR: Your Ultimate Troubleshooter
So you’ve finished your fiber cable installation and are now on to the task of certifying the cable plant using an optical loss test set (OLTS) – it’s the tool you need for Tier 1 certification and the
most accurate for measuring loss to ensure application support.
February 28, 2018
Is Your Fiber End Face Up to Scratch?
While it seems we can never hammer home enough the need to properly clean and inspect fiber end-faces since contamination remains the number one cause of fiber link failures, have you ever thought about what exactly you are cleaning and inspecting?
February 21, 2018
BICSI Wrap Up: Top 3 Questions Asked
It’s always interesting at trade shows to learn what’s on the minds of end users, designers and technicians alike when it comes to testing. And this year’s BICSI Winter Conference was no different.
February 14, 2018
Know Your SYSTIMAX Loss Target Before You Fail!
We’ve covered fiber insertion loss in plenty of past blogs, so by now we hope that you know it’s the amount of signal loss that occurs as the signal travels along a cable link. We also hope you know that insertion loss is directly related to the length of the cable—the longer the cable, the greater the loss—and that any connection point along the way (connectors, splices, splitters, etc.) also adds to the loss.
February 7, 2018
Gain 3 CECs at Our BICSI Pre-Conference Seminar on Testing High Speed Fiber Links
High speed applications are driving the deployment of multifiber MPO/MTP architectures in the data center, and it’s not just cloud and hyperscale data centers that are deploying these solutions.
As the de facto interface for 40 Gig and 100 Gig switch-to-switch backbone data center applications that use parallel optics, MPO/MTP links are rapidly becoming commonplace in today’s enterprise data centers.
January 31, 2018
