Cabling Chronicles
An Industry of Innovators
Last week at the 2018 BICSI Fall Conference in San Antonio, TX, two of Fluke Networks’ solutions were chosen by a panel of top-tier cabling and communications systems specifiers, designers, integrators and managers for making groundbreaking contributions to the structured cabling industry.
September 19, 2018
Plenty to Learn (and CECs too) at Next Week’s BICSI Fall Conference & Exhibition
At the upcoming BICSI Fall Conference & Exhibition on September 9 – 13 at the Henry B. Gonzáles Convention Center, San Antonio, TX, there are plenty of opportunities to learn about the latest technologies, and Fluke Networks is excited to bring you the latest on testing everything from advanced four-pair PoE to passive optical networks (PONs).
September 8, 2018
Wire Map Testing: It’s Not All About Color
Virtually every Ethernet cable tester can perform a wire map test - likely the most basic test for copper network cabling. Despite being a basic test, it is actually one of the most critical. And while the pair colors of blue, orange, green and brown might help you pass wire map testing, the test itself really doesn’t care about color at all.
Let’s take a closer look.
September 6, 2018
August 29, 2018
August 22, 2018
The Road to 200 & 400 Gig is Already Paved (and Traveled)
The increasing demand for higher bandwidth to support Big Data has driven the need for ever-increasing Ethernet speeds, starting with 10 Gig in 2004 to the introduction in 2010 of 40 Gig with 4 fibers transmitting and 4 fibers receiving at 10 Gbps (40GBASE-SR4) and 100 Gig with 10 fibers transmitting and 10 fibers receiving at 10 Gbps (100GBASE-SR10).
August 15, 2018
101 Series: To Splice or Not to Splice
Fiber splicing is a method of connecting two fibers, whereby two fibers are precisely cleaved and then aligned and fused using a fusion splicing machine. The fusion of two fibers is achieved by an electric arc that essentially welds the fibers together. A mass fusion splicer welds 12-fiber together at once and is performed using 12-fiber ribbon cable.
August 8, 2018
Troubleshooting Installed Cable with DSX-5000 CableAnalyzer
It felt like a Monday morning when the call, actually an e-mail, came in. “I think my DSX is broken!” As you know, they are really tough machines and, when it looks like the Fluke is wrong, usually it isn’t.
“What makes you think it is broken?” I asked, “How does this failure manifest itself?”
“The tester is failing links that used to pass.”
August 2, 2018
Why do I get “positive loss” when verifying a test cord?
Verification of test reference cords is easy, right? Yes, usually…but not always. After the power meter is set to 0 dB via the reference procedure, the loss of a mated connector pair is expected to be less than 0.20 dB for single-mode (e.g., -0.20 dB). Let’s examine one scenario where a loss is not negative (e.g., +0.15 dB).
The typical process for validating the loss of a connector, to verify if it is “reference grade” for example, is as follows:
August 1, 2018
Testing in the Data Center Spaces
Depending in which functional area of the data center you are testing, there are different applications, cabling and connectivity that you will encounter. Understanding the functional areas of the data center and what you will likely need to test in each can help prepare you for data center testing.
July 25, 2018