Cabling Chronicles

NRZ vs. PAM4: How the signaling evolution impacts fiber connectivity, inspection, and testing

As data center networks reach transmission speeds of 800 Gig and beyond, the evolution from NRZ (Non-Return-to-Zero) to PAM4 (Pulse Amplitude Modulation with 4 Levels) is reshaping fiber infrastructure requirements. Let’s examine how these signaling advancements affect the number of lanes and fibers in today’s applications and their implications for inspection and testing.

Tier 1 fiber testing best practices for duplex VSFF connectors

To support higher cable density in data centers, very small form factor (VSFF) duplex fiber connectors are gaining ground. Some test devices support these newer interfaces; those that don’t present some challenges for Tier 1 testing and a shift from the recommended 1-jumper reference method. Let’s take a closer look at these connectors and the best practices for testing them.

Setting the reference for MPO testing: The wizard's way

Accurate MPO fiber testing requires accounting for the loss of Test Reference Cords (TRCs), so they don't skew your results. This process, known as "setting the reference," is a vital step — get it wrong and every measurement will be incorrect.

Understanding the data center landscape: Types, tiers, and certifications

The many different names used to describe data centers, based on their characteristics and function or industry ratings and certifications, can overlap and cause confusion. Understanding the distinctions is key to grasping the broader data center landscape.

Is your data center ready for 800G and beyond?

Was it just yesterday that 400 Gigabit (G) applications arrived? Now data centers are rapidly migrating to 800G and 1.6 Terabit (T) switch speeds to support their high-performance workloads. Big players (Amazon, Google, Meta, et al.) are already eyeing 3.2T.

Why the 1-jumper reference is recommended for accurate fiber optic testing

During Tier 1 fiber testing, you must calibrate your tester to 0 dB to reference out the loss of any Test Reference Cords (TRCs). This is like placing a bowl on a scale and zeroing it to ensure the accurate weight of its contents. Let's examine TRCs and why industry standards recommend the 1-jumper reference method for this crucial step.

Is Your Fiber Tester Ready for 800G and Beyond?

Data centers are rapidly migrating to 800G and 1.6 Terabit (T) network speeds to support high-performance AI workloads, with hyperscalers already gearing up for 3.2T. These advanced applications leverage multi-fiber connectivity, including...

Getting 12- and 8-Fiber MPO Polarity Right

Fiber optic polarity ensures that a fiber link’s transmit (Tx) signal matches its corresponding receiver (Rx) at the other end. Maintaining this correspondence is a common point of confusion — especially with 12-fiber multi-fiber MPO links. Let’s...

MPOs in the Data Center and How to Test Them

Multi-fiber push-on connectors (MPOs) are essential in data centers, especially as applications evolve to support faster speeds. The industry is adopting MPOs with higher fiber counts, new form factors, and angled end faces — all of which impact how...

Fiber Polarity Basics for Duplex Applications

Fiber polarity is the direction that light signals travel from one end of a fiber optic cable (link) to the other. A link’s transmit signal (Tx) must match its corresponding receiver (Rx) at the other end. Although it may seem obvious, fiber optic...

Short-Reach Single-Mode Data Center Applications Put Reflectance on the Radar

Most of us understand that insertion loss is a critical parameter for fiber applications, especially in multimode applications with stringent loss budgets. While insertion loss has historically been less of a concern in long-reach single-mode...

Navigating Ultra-High-Density 400 and 800 Gig Networks in AI Data Center Environments

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming the data center. From training large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT to delivering personalized content and predictive analysis, hyperscalers, cloud providers, and large enterprises are...

Fiber Certification Testing: All You Really Need Is Loss, Length, Polarity (and Sometimes Reflectance)

As data rates increase to 400 Gig and beyond, and new fiber applications emerge, it’s easy to be confused about which fiber testing parameters are enough to guarantee support for high-speed applications. Other than for short-reach single-mode...

5 Reasons Every IT Pro Should Have a LinkIQ™ Tester in Their Toolkit

In a recent IT Trends 2024 Industry Report, 2,000+ IT pros say monitoring, troubleshooting, and Wi-Fi management are their top three network activities; 44% of them juggle ten or more network-related tools as they work. Let’s streamline those...

New Solutions for VSFF Applications

New very small form-factor (VSFF) connectors — MDC, CS, and SN duplex connectors and MMC multi-fiber connectors — are increasingly popular in high-density fiber applications like data centers. They must be properly tested, inspected, and cleaned to...

OTDR: Your Ultimate Troubleshooter

You're ready to use an optical loss test set (OLTS) for Tier 1 fiber certification. If some critical fiber links exceed the application’s loss budget, however, you’ll need to troubleshoot. An OLTS ensures the most accurate insertion loss...

What Is PoE Negotiation?

First introduced in 2003, Power over Ethernet (PoE) has evolved to deliver up to 90 watts (W) of direct current (DC) power to a wide range of IP-based network devices, from clocks and phones to surveillance cameras, wireless access points,...

Top 10 Cable Testing Mistakes to Avoid

The smart individuals who install, test, and certify network cabling plants understand the importance of meeting standards-based performance parameters and ensuring application support; yet even the best can make mistakes that can adversely impact...

The Ultimate Guide to Network and Cable Testing

In today's digitally-driven world, ensuring the integrity and efficiency of network infrastructures — especially in high-density environments like data centers — is paramount, whether you're running a small business or responsible for a large-scale...

What You Should Know About VSFF Connectors

Fiber density is exploding as data centers pack in more servers, switches, and storage to handle massive data and emerging high-performance computing (HPC) applications like AI, with clusters that can encompass hundreds or even thousands of...

DC Resistance Unbalance: What You Need to Know

ANSI/TIA-568.2 Balanced Twisted pair Telecommunications Cabling and Components Standard cabling standards have now caught up and specify DC resistance unbalance for Category 5e, Category 6, and Category 6A cabling channels. While DC resistance...

Easier Fiber End Face Inspections: Key Changes to IEC 61300-3-35

It's crucial to inspect, clean, and reinspect fiber end faces before mating connectors — whether on patch cords and trunks within the network or on the test reference cord you connect to your tester. Contaminated fiber end faces can cause signal...

How to Simplify Wi-Fi Analysis with LinkIQ™ Duo

Understanding your Wi-Fi environment is the key to delivering a seamless wireless experience for users. Whether you’re determining the best location and configuration for a new wireless access point (AP), fine-tuning existing APs as the environment...

An Interview with BICSI Board President Dave Richards, the Visionary Behind the BICSI Cabling Skills Challenge

In 2007, the BICSI Board of Directors formed the NextGen Working Group to develop creative initiatives that would attract the next generation of ICT professionals. As a member of that group, David Richards, RCDD, NTS, OSP, TECH, proposed an annual...

LinkIQ Duo: Cable, PoE, Wi-Fi, and Network Testing All in One Device

In a 2023 Network IT Management Report that surveyed more than 4,500 IT professionals, nearly 50 percent of them said they spend at least half their time on reactive network tasks like troubleshooting, mapping, and configuration — not to mention...

Make Sure Your Cabling Plant Is Ready for Wi-Fi 6

If you’re ready to upgrade your enterprise wireless to Wi-Fi 6, here’s how to make sure your cabling plant is ready, too. (Our earlier article covered Wi-Fi 6 standards and performance benefits — read it here .)

So You Want to Upgrade to Wi-Fi 6?

In 2019, the Wi-Fi Alliance launched its Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 certification program for Wi-Fi devices. The IEEE 802.11ax High Efficiency Wireless (HEW) LAN standard was ratified later that year. And Wi-Fi 6 devices of all kinds came into the...

Troubleshooting Common Issues with Enterprise Wi-Fi Performance

Certification testing of a new cable plant is essential to verify its compliance with industry cabling standards and to secure the manufacturer’s warranty. When your installed network equipment goes active, proper configuration is crucial for...

Wi-Fi 7 vs. Wi-Fi 6: What’s New and What It Means for Your Network

As the primary means of connectivity in private and public spaces, Wi-Fi technology keeps evolving to offer more, faster. Wi-Fi 7 is the latest generation that promises higher speeds, lower latency, and improved capacity — yet with the migration...

Versiv™ Release 6.12 Saves Time, Increases Accuracy, and Reduces Retesting

Operator error in testing fiber loss is a costly problem for installers. When we launched the Versiv™ family of cable certifiers, we included several features, such as the Set Reference Wizard, which greatly reduced the number of such errors. In the...

Third-Party Network Cable Certification: What You Need to Know

Reputable manufacturers promote and label cable, patch cords, and connecting hardware as “third-party certified,” “verified,” or “listed.” It means that a manufacturer has independently determined that their products comply with industry standards....

Insertion Loss vs. Return Loss

Insertion loss and return loss are two of the most critical performance parameters for twisted pair copper and fiber optic cabling links. They represent distinct aspects of signal transmission and differ for both media types. Here we explain the key...

Network Labeling Gets an Upgrade: A Guide to LinkWare Live and Silver Fox Integration

Precision and efficiency aren’t just goals when you work in network installation and maintenance; they're necessities. As the industry evolves, so does the demand for more sophisticated, streamlined operations. Enter Silver Fox ® Labeling and Fluke...

Warranty and Certification Testing Go Hand in Hand for ROI

One could argue that certification testing of an installed structured cabling plant is optional and time consuming. But if an end user wants a system warranty, “optional” is the last word to describe this crucial step. As Panduit’s product line...

What Is Fiber Optics? A Guide

Streaming a movie, making a phone call, or getting an endoscopy may seem like disparate experiences, but they share a common thread: They’re connected by an invisible network of optical fibers. In this guide, we’ll take you through the ins and outs...

Stranded vs. Solid Wire Cable: How to Choose

Both shielded and unshielded twisted-pair copper cable comes in either stranded or solid wire versions. There are plenty of considerations when it comes to choosing one or the other, including standards, environment, application, and cost. Let’s...

How to Extend the Value of Your Versiv™ Investment

We know that customers use our cable certification solutions for years, even decades. We took that into account when we designed the Versiv™ cable certifier. Now that forward-looking strategy is protecting long-term Versiv users.

What Is the Right Way to Test an MPTL?

You have just received a job specification that includes Modular Plug Terminated Links (MPTLs), with the requirement that all links, including the MPTL, be certified to TIA or ISO standards. This means the customer or manufacturer will look for test...

Contractors Say Skipping Certification Isn’t Worth the Risk

Network cable certification may be required by the job specification or for a long-term warranty from a cable supplier. If it’s not required, have you ever skipped this critical step?

CableIQ™ Qualification Tester vs. LinkIQ™ Cable+Network Tester

In 2007, Fluke Networks created the cable qualification market with the introduction of the CableIQ™ Qualification Tester. Certification is essential for building owners who need to ensure that their contractors have installed a cabling system that...

The Power of Certification Testing: Experts and FLW Files

While certifying a cable plant, an installer repeatedly experiences complex near-end crosstalk (NEXT) failures on multiple links. Overwhelmed by issues with the cabling plant and the customer demanding answers, she needs expert help to troubleshoot...

What Is Return Loss?

Return loss is the ratio of signal power injected from a source compared to the amount that is returned or reflected back toward the source. It is a critical performance parameter in both copper twisted pair and fiber optic cabling systems, because...

Three Reasons Cabling Certification Is More Important Than Ever

Every time you complete the installation of a structured cabling system, you can choose whether to certify it. All links in the system should be tested in some way to make sure that they’re connected properly, but is it necessary to measure and...

Is cabling technician training (CCTT) certification worth it?

Staying on top of the critical technological developments in network cabling infrastructure helps you — and your company — stay current and competitive. One way to do that is to participate in an accredited training and certification program, like...

Why FiberLert Is a Game Changer in Fiber Optics

As the leading provider of instructor-led training for fiber optic technicians, Light Brigade was an obvious choice to give us feedback during the development of the FiberLert™ Live Fiber Detector. Recently, Sean Kelly, RCDD, CFHP, and Technical...

Best cable tracing and tracking methods

Although contractors spend a great deal of time and care designing and labeling cable installations, everyone who works on cabling runs into instances where they’re not sure where a cable goes. Perhaps the cable wasn’t labeled correctly when it was...

Beat the Heat with Versiv™ Cool Features

It seems no matter where you live – the plains, the east coast, the UK or even our typically-cool Pacific northwest – the news is all about record-setting heat. Worse, a lot of our favorite coping methods are unavailable – gas makes it too costly to...

Faster Networks Demand More Accurate Measurements

Today’s high-tech data centers form the digital heart of communication and commerce in our world. But every industry has its “remember when” stories, and there's no better time than now to tell them.

What’s Happening with Single-Pair Ethernet?

It’s been a few years since the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) introduced the IEEE 802.3cg-2019 single-pair Ethernet (SPE) 10 Mb/s standards . There’s been a lot of industry activity and collaboration surrounding the...

5 Vital Safety Rules for Working with Fiber Optic Cables

There are plenty of hazards to watch for when working on commercial and industrial networks. Fiber optic cable can seem safe; it doesn’t carry an electrical charge, and it’s not a heat source. More often it’s a lack of understanding of the real...

Ethernet Cable Categories Explained: A Brief History

Millennials who entered the workforce between 2003 and 2016 are accustomed to the digital era: high-speed internet access, smartphones, online everything. And while they’ve definitely experienced advancements in technology during their lifetime,...

The Future of Fiber Optics Is Certainly Bright

In another blog, we discussed some of the benefits of fiber to the edge from a sustainability and smart building perspective. While fiber optics is slowly making its way into the horizontal LAN, copper twisted-pair cabling such as Category 6 and...

How to Test an SFP Transceiver and Network Cable

Recently we have been getting questions about how to determine if an SFP (Small Form-factor Pluggable) transceiver is working. We refer to SFP generically here to represent a multitude of the various optical modules that are available. Fluke...

Choosing the Best Fiber Optic Scope for Today’s Fiber Inspection

Contaminated connections remain the number one cause of fiber related problems and failures in data centers, campus, and other enterprise or telecom networking environments. But it’s not enough to just clean every fiber end face—there is no way to...

Fiber vs. Copper to the Edge: Why Fiber is a Growing Choice for Smart, Sustainable Buildings

For years, we’ve heard about FTTX making its way into the horizontal LAN — fiber to the desktop, fiber to the office, fiber to the enclosure, fiber to the zone, etc. Often referred to as “fiber to the edge” or FTTE, most of these deployments have...

What You Need to Know to Choose a PoE Tester

@media only screen and (min-width: 768px) { .img-float { float: left; max-width: 300px; margin-right: 20px; } } Power over Ethernet (PoE) has gained tremendous momentum since the original IEEE 802.3af Type 1 PoE standard that delivered up to 15.4...

Why upgrade test reference cord LC connectors to the Metal LC?

Fiber optic test cords connect your tester to the fiber link you’re testing and therefore act as a “window” into it. If that “window” is of poor quality or dirty, then your measurements will be, too. Of the about one hundred test cords we offer,...

Are your fiber optic cables and testers ready for 400G Ethernet?

Driven by large hyperscale and cloud data center providers, advancements in signaling and transceiver technology have led to the development of next-generation transmission speeds. There are now multiple options available for 400G Ethernet...

Insertion Loss

What is Insertion Loss? Insertion loss is the amount of energy that a signal loses as it travels along a cable link. It is a natural phenomenon that occurs for any type of transmission—whether it's electricity or data. This reduction of signal, also...

The Metal LC Connector: say goodbye to broken latches on fiber test reference cords

While there are many different types of optical connectors depending on what type of components you’re using, LC connectors have become very common throughout the networking industry. Plastic LC connectors Using plastic for connections that are...

PoE Load Testing: Advanced Troubleshooting for Your PoE Systems

Since the original IEEE 802.3af Type 1 power over Ethernet (PoE) standard that delivered up to 15.4 Watts (W) was first introduced in 2003, the technology has evolved to include Type 2 (up to 30 W), Type 3 (up to 60 W), and Type 4 (up to 90 W). That...

Cross Connects and Interconnects in the Data Center

In the data center space, cross connects and interconnects via patch panels are commonly used between active equipment purely for management and flexibility, typically residing between switch tiers or between switches and servers. Some scenarios...

How to Use a Network Cable Tester - LinkIQ™

div.net-blog h2 { font-size: 30px; } div.net-blog li { list-style-type: disc; color: #737373; } In this video, Fluke Networks Product Manager, Erik Webb, not only shows what’s included in the box when you buy a LinkIQ™ Cable+ Network Tester , but...

How to clean your cable and fiber network tester

Cleanliness has long been a best practice in fiber optic installation, but it’s not just the fiber end faces you need to worry about. If you think about how often your cabling tools and testers are touched by you and others on the job site, it’s...

How to Test Patch Cords and Fiber Jumper Cables - The Weakest Links

Equipment cords are an integral part of any network—whether it’s a fiber jumper used to make connections between fiber patching areas and switches in the data center or a copper patch cord out in the LAN to connect end devices to the work area...

VLAN Troubleshooting with LinkIQ

div.net-blog h2 { font-size: 28px; } div.net-blog h3 { font-size: 22px; } figcaption { font-size: 14px; } div.net-blog li { list-style-type: disc; } Everyone in the ICT industry has heard of a local area network (LAN) and likely understands that...

2021 Network and cabling salary survey results

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Introducing LinkIQ™️ – Fluke’s Newest Ethernet Cable, Network, and PoE Tester

Cabling is the number one cause of Ethernet problems in both commercial and industrial applications. With Fluke Networks’ newest Ethernet tester, LinkIQ™️ Cable + Network Tester , you can troubleshoot that cabling and the network it’s connected to....

LinkWare Live passes 50M results uploaded as cabling contractors adopt the free cloud-based software for the new remote workplace

One result of the COVID-19 pandemic was the acceleration of digital transformation in business, government, and education. While many organizations were already on the path to going digital, the pandemic created a critical need to move ahead more...

How to Test if Your Ethernet Cables Support PoE

Power of Ethernet (PoE) is combining power and data communications in a single cable. As it’s become more and more popular, there are a huge array of devices that source and consume power and data through the same cable. Do all Ethernet cables...

Testing Profinet: The Basics

We all know by now that Ethernet has infiltrated the factory floor as the communication protocol of choice for exchanging data between devices and controllers, with applications like Modbus, EtherCat, EtherNet/IP and Profinet that are all based on...

Standards Update, February 2021

I bet you are all wondering what installed fiber optic testing standards are in process for this year. Here is a short list by committees for those of you that want to keep up to date.

Why Linus Sebastian of Linus Tech Tips Loves Using the Fluke CertiFiber Pro to Inspect, Test, and Certify Fiber Optic Cable

The Linus Tech Tips team recently upgraded their video editing storage network from copper cabling to fiber in order to maximize both bandwidth and speed. In the video below, both Linus and his assistant, Jake, work through the process of...

What’s an Expanded Beam Fiber Connector?

In the premises and data center infrastructure world, most of us are familiar with typical fiber connectors like duplex LC, SC and ST connectors and multi-fiber MPOs. Perhaps you’ve also heard about expanded beam fiber connectors or have encountered...

Considerations for Using Hybrid Copper-Fiber Cable

In a previous blog , we covered what to do when you need to connect a device that is located beyond the 100-meter distance requirement and described four ways to address the problem—a new TR, the use of an extender device, extended-reach copper...

End of Year Reflections

When Winston Churchill said that the holiday season is not only one of rejoicing but also of reflection, he didn’t know that 2020 would be the year that family gatherings are kept to a minimum and parties take place over Zoom and FaceTime. So, while...

Is Power over Ethernet Safe?

Power over Ethernet (PoE) has been around now for several years, starting with Type 1 PoE (IEEE 802.3af) introduced in 2003 that delivers up to 15.4 W, with 13 W available for the device. That was followed by Type 2 PoE (sometimes referred to as PoE...

Recertified Test Reports: Are they really valid? Part 3

In my last two blog articles (Part 1 and Part 2 ) we looked at recertification of test reports for copper and fiber tests. We were able to see that with Fluke Networks’ approach, in using our LinkWare® PC software, recertified test reports are...

Ethernet Alliance PoE Certification: MicroScanner™ PoE

What’s the Difference Between Channel and Component Standards?

When it comes to cabling standards, you’ve probably heard of channel standards and component standards. The two are not one and the same, so we thought it might make sense to explain the difference, why you should care and how they are tested.

Extending and Testing Cable Runs Beyond 100 meters

In our last article on how to connect end devices beyond copper Ethernet’s 100 meter range, we looked at various solutions to the dilemma of needing to connect an end device that’s just a little too far from the nearest telecommunications room (TR),...

Breaking the 100-Meter Barrier

It’s a common problem – you need to connect an end device that’s just a little too far from the nearest telecommunications room (TR). While industry standards limit the length of a channel to 100 meters, connecting the device maybe require a channel...

Physical Infrastructure Management Reduces Network Downtime

Planet IRM and Fluke Networks have integrated LinkWare Live into the Planet Infrastructure Relationship Management software solution, allowing customers to access detailed cable test results from their physical asset network diagrams, providing a...

Re-Certified Test Reports - Part 2 - Fiber Optic Tests

Re-Certified Test Reports: Are They Really Valid?

The first in a series of articles on re-certification. Recently I was talking to a consultant in the structured cabling business and he was concerned that for a major project he was overseeing, some of the test results indicated that they had been...

Cable Testing 101: Considerations for Mixing Multimode Fiber Types

In our last Cable Testing 101 series, we covered the difference between OM3 and OM4 50µm multimode fiber -- primarily the fact that the fiber core of OM4 has been constructed to provide better attenuation and higher bandwidth, thereby allowing for...

An Update on IEC 61280-4-1 Edition 3, Multimode Attenuation Measurement of Installed Cabling Plant

Introduction IEC and other organizations, such as TIA, routinely reaffirm standards every few years. Reaffirmation is a way for subcommittees to decide if a standard is “dated” or still applicable to current times. Technology and market needs change...

Ten Dumb Industrial Ethernet Mistakes Smart People Make

Whether you’re a process or plant engineer, a technician, or an electrician, you’ve got to be an expert in a wide array of areas today--including Industrial Ethernet (IE). Sooner or later, you’re going to run into a problem caused by others who...

Cable Testing 101: Understanding Near and Far End Crosstalk

If you’re at all familiar with copper cable, you’ve probably heard about crosstalk--the phenomenon by which a signal transmitted on one pair or one channel creates an undesired affect on another pair or channel. Crosstalk causes interference on an...

Social Distancing the LinkWare Live Way

While everyone has been working smart and social distancing, LinkWare Live surpassed another milestone with over forty million test results uploaded since it was launched back in 2015. Last spring, we passed the twenty million mark meaning that...

The OM Mantra

Adopted by TIA, the nomenclature for multimode fiber found in the ISO/IEC 11801 standard includes the prefix “OM.” Rather than the spiritual mantra you hear in yoga class, most sources in our industry state that the acronym OM comes from “optical...

2020 Cabling Industry Salary Survey Now Available

For the second year, Fluke Networks has teamed up with Cabling Installation and Maintenance to survey structured cabling professionals for salary information. We conducted the survey in late 2019, before any awareness of a looming pandemic. By the...

What are all those specialty cords you use?

I was recently asked by a customer, to whom I was demonstrating a Fluke Networks OptiFiber® Pro OTDR and CertiFiber® Pro OLTS, why do you need all those specialty test leads to make measurements? Why can’t I use patch cords? We often take the...

But I can’t get to the far end!

There are often times when you have to test a fiber link, but you can’t access the far end. One of our customers, for example, was required to test fiber links to offshore wind platforms. Unfortunately, in order to set foot on a platform, the...

Get Reel Before You Install!

It’s obvious why you might want to test reel of cable before you commit your time and resources to installing it. While it would be nice to think that every reel of cable coming out of the factory is in perfect condition, that’s not always the case....

What’s On Tap?

For those of you who got excited at the thought of happy hour when your customer requested a TAP, we thought you could use a little tutorial on these data traffic monitoring devices, the difference between passive and active TAPs, and some of the...

Electromagnetic Interference Mitigation in Industrial Ethernet Cabling

While standard and Industrial installations of Ethernet share many of the same characteristics, such as frame sizes, signal levels and data rates, there are significant differences as well. One of these is the physical environment in which the...

Industrial Ethernet vs. Commercial

We all know that Ethernet is the de facto physical layer communication protocol for data transmission between devices in a local area or wide area network. It has evolved over the years to deliver higher levels of performance while maintaining...

Testing Plug-Terminated Links—Internationally

The Modular Plug Terminated Link, or MPTL, where a horizontal cable run terminated on one end to an RJ-45 plug connects directly into a device, has become increasingly popular for connecting a variety of devices—from wireless access points and...

Standards Update

Since the last standards update, I represented Fluke Networks and attended the TR42 meeting in New Orleans and the SC25 WG3 meeting in Sydney Australia. The following are some of the highlights worth noting.

A Closer Look at Industrial Ethernet Cables

Last month, we published a blog about the various industrial Ethernet connectors including M-series and some new small form factor connectors like the iX and emerging single-pair Ethernet connectors. But what good is a connector designed to...

Industrial Ethernet Cable Problems - MICE

Industrial Ethernet is very sensitive to delays caused by dropped or damaged data frames (sometimes called packets). Just a few dropped or damaged packets can cause a machine to shut down. These problems are often intermittent and can be caused by...

Get in the Know at the BICSI Winter Conference!

Planning to attend the upcoming BICSI Winter Conference & Exhibition on February 9-13 at the Tampa Bay Convention Center in Tampa, FL? Fluke Networks is offering plenty of educational opportunities to learn all about fiber, Industrial Ethernet and...

What Went Wrong with the Insertion Loss?

Have you ever carefully calculated insertion loss during the design phase and then passed your permanent link testing after installation only to find out that the channel isn’t performing once it went live?

Sometimes…It’s the Cable

There’s an ad that says, “We know a thing or two because we’ve seen a thing or two.” With billions of links certified by our testers and something like five more every second of every business day, we’ve seen just about every possible cabling...

Industrial Ethernet Connector Round-Up

Over the past decade, we have heard a lot about the Internet of Things (IoT), and the increasing number of connected devices and integrated systems being driven by sensor technology and the shift of traditionally proprietary and analog devices to...

History of the RJ45: A Case of Mistaken Identity

Our industry commonly uses the term “RJ45” to refer to the modular 8-position, 8-contact (8P8C) interface deployed for Ethernet over copper twisted-pair network cabling despite it pretty much being a case of mistaken identity. But since the RJ45...

Cable Testing 101: What’s My Loss Budget?

While you might hear your CFO grumbling about staying under budget from a dollar perspective, staying under your loss budget from a fiber perspective has a much bigger impact on your network performance – which ultimately impacts your bottom line by...

This Decade’s Top 5 Tech Flicks for Your Holiday Downtime

As we head into the holidays and a new decade, you may find that you’ve finally got some time to wind down at home as you use up the remainder of this year’s vacation days. And even if you’re stuck in the office keeping the network up and running,...

Fluke Networks Previews Single Pair Ethernet Testing at Industrial Automation Show – Part II

Last week, we talked about how Single Pair Ethernet (SPE) is making waves in the industrial automation world as a potential replacement for fieldbus architectures. At the recent Rockwell Automation show, Fluke Networks demonstrated a prototype...

Fluke Networks Previews Single Pair Ethernet Testing at Industrial Automation Show

Single Pair Ethernet (SPE) is making waves in the industrial automation world as a potential replacement for fieldbus architectures. At the recent Rockwell Automation show, Fluke Networks demonstrated a prototype Single-Pair Ethernet (SPE) adapter...

Anixter’s New Utility Grade Infrastructure

Fluke Networks has announced support for Anixter’s Utility Grade Infrastructure. That means that Anixter Certified UTG Integrators can use the DSX CableAnalyzer to certify their installations. We thought we’d explore the UTG program and what it...

Troubleshooting Fiber on the Cheap

If you troubleshoot fiber on a regular basis, you probably have an array of tools to help you do the job, including an Optical Time Domain Reflectometer. But we often get questions from customers who don’t troubleshoot fiber enough to justify such...

The Poet’s Guide to the Physics of Twisted Pair Cabling

I once took a class where the professor would explain concepts in two ways. First, he would dive into the mathematics behind the idea, filling the whiteboard with equations and showing how they all related to one another. He tagged this “for the...

6912-Fiber Cable: Now That’s Testing!

While most enterprise data centers see fiber counts ranging from 12 to 144, the fibers counts found in cloud and colocation data centers are much higher – typically anywhere from 864 to 1728.

Versiv Keeps on Truckin’

This week, we announced the latest enhancement to the Versiv Cabling Certification System : the FiberInspector Pro MPO inspection camera. We thought this would be a good time to review the changes made to Versiv since it launched and how that lets...

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.

Cable Tracing – Up to 600 V?

In a typical week, we get more questions on our Pro3000 Tone and Probe Series than any other product. That’s not surprising, as we sell a very large quantity of these testers.

Three New Innovative Products and Maybe a Future One?

If you dropped by the Fluke Networks booth at the Fall BICSI Exhibition on Las Vegas this week, you had a chance to see three winners of the Cabling Installation and Maintenance Magazine’s Innovator’s Awards, and a possible candidate for a future...

Prototyping a Future of “Hands Free” Testing

Sometimes, it seems like you need an extra hand when you’re testing. For example, when using our FI-3000 FiberInspector Pro MPO camera, you need a hand to hold the connector, a second to hold the camera, and a third to run the phone or Versiv unit...

Different Plugs, Same Test

Several vendors offer field-terminated plugs – both crimp style and modular insulation displacement. These plugs can be terminated to category twisted-pair cable to create patch cords or for use in a Modular Plug Terminated Link (MPTL) where...

TRC Results: Why You the Owner Should Care

In addition to individual link insertion loss and length results, a LinkWare Live report includes plenty of other useful information, including the date and time of the test, the test limit selected based on the application and the cable type. And...

Lighting the Way for Visible Light Communications

Lately it seems that there is a lot of attention surrounding digital lighting and the ability to power and control LED lights over the network infrastructure using Ethernet-based technologies like TCP/IP and PoE. While the benefits of LED lighting...

101 Series: Set Your Reference Like a Wizard!

When it comes to testing fiber systems, connector loss refers to the loss of a mated pair of connectors – it’s actually impossible to measure a single connector. To test the loss of the first connector, it must be mated to a similar, known quality...

101 Series: Stranded vs. Solid Patch Cords

You’ve likely heard copper patch cords referred to as being constructed of either “stranded” or “solid” cable, but do you know the difference and which to choose when? Just like the name implies, stranded four-pair cables are cables where each of...

7 Reasons to Certify

When it comes to testing a cabling installation, there are essentially three choices: verification, qualification, and certification. Verification is great for troubleshooting as it will tell you if your cabling is connected correctly and can help...

101 Series: Ethernet Back to Basics

It’s been more than 40 years since Bob Metcalfe published this simple diagram explaining his invention for interconnecting computers and printers at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in California. His patented multipoint data connection system...

Know the Punch Line

Installers have been punching down copper twisted-pair cable for decades and still do so for terminating cables to IDC towers on jacks, patch panels and connecting blocks. While the practice hasn’t changed, punchdown tools have come a long way, and...

AV over Twisted Pair: What Do I Need to Test For?

Whether it’s video conferencing or digital signage, many of you are likely facing requests from your customers to deploy cable plants that support audio-visual systems. Many of these a pplications utilize twisted pair cabling, and technology...

Not Exactly in the Limelight – Yet

It’s been a while since we’ve talked about OM5 multimode fiber, and despite its lime green color and being added to the ANSI/TIA-568.3-D standard in 2016, it hasn’t exactly been in the limelightbut it looks like that won’t always be the case. With...

Cabling Chronicles’ 4th of July Reflections

The 4 th of July is always a time to reflect on our history, where we come from and the dedication of our founding fathers. But it’s also a time to look ahead, learn from past mistakes and progress towards a better future. Our industry has a lot of...

Channel, Permanent Link, Patch Cords, MPTL, E2E… Oh My!

With the addition of the modular plug terminated link (MPTL) configuration to the latest ANSI-TIA 568.2-D standard, and now end-to-end (E2E) configurations getting some attention in ISO/IEC standards (and likely soon TIA as well), you might be...

Understanding insertion loss and loss budgets: Make or break an ICT career Digital Transformation and Industrial IoT age Part 3 of 3

Expert Profile: Vangie Michenzi, Senior Fiber Optic Project Manager, Advanced Communication Technology Services Part 3 of a three-part series In this day and age, with everyone preparing for the future of 5G, the internet of things, and industrial...

Getting Polarity Right the First (or Second) Time Around

While the fact that a fiber link’s transmit signal (Tx) must match the corresponding receiver (Rx) at the other end makes perfect sense, ensuring proper polarity to ensure that this correspondence is maintained continues to cause plenty of confusion...

Disaster Due Diligence

If you’ve turned on the news in the past couple of months, or if you live anywhere in the southern or central U.S., you’re well aware that natural disasters are at an all-time high – from recent tornadoes that have stretched from Texas north to...

Wi-Fi 6 is Here! So Now What Will You be Testing?

Earlier this year, the IEEE released its 802.11ax Enhancements for High Efficiency Wireless (HEW) LAN standard, known commonly as Wi-Fi 6. This new advanced Wi-Fi application is positioned to theoretically deliver close to 10 Gig transmission...

With New High-Density Fiber Connectors Come Tier 1 Testing Challenges

In response to the need for higher density in data centers, a couple of new fiber connectors have recently been introduced to the market. Because these connectors are new, test equipment with these interfaces has not yet been introduced, which...

You Too Can Transform How You Do Business

Last week, Fluke Networks announced that the number of results uploaded to our LinkWare Live cloud service has exceeded 20 million. If you’re one of the many who contributed to the doubling of total results over the past year, you’ve already...

What is (+All) and When Should I Choose It?

When it comes to testing twisted-pair cabling, there are some key testing parameters required for certifying a permanent link to industry standards — parameters like insertion loss, NEXT, PSNEXT, ACR-N, PSACR-N, ACR-F, PSACR-F and return loss. And...

What Ever Happened to the Mechanical Splice?

When it comes to joining two or more optical fibers together, fusion splicing whereby cleaved fibers are aligned and fused by an electric arc provides the lowest loss and strongest, most reliable joint. While mechanical splice connectors have come a...

Cat 6A – A Bright Future Ahead

We all know that Category 6A is considered the highest performing twisted-pair cabling that supports 10 Gig speeds, and it’s been around now for more than a decade. So, you might be surprised to learn that Category 6 (now 17 years old!) continues to...

Testing on the Edge

You’ve probably heard all the buzz about edge data centers. Don’t worry – this doesn’t mean you’ll be testing fiber links while hanging on the side of cliff. But while you might be testing in new spaces, edge data centers won’t really change what...

Shutting the Door on Dust

We know we talk a lot about fiber cleanliness, but let’s face it, contamination of fiber endfaces is still the number one cause of failures – regardless of much we harp on the topic. You’ve probably often also heard comments surrounding the fact...

The Making of an Expert Fiber Tester and Network Troubleshooter Part 2 of 3

Profile: Vangie Michenzi - ( Read Part 1 of Vangie’s story ) Senior Fiber Optic Project Manager BICSI Credentialed ITS Technician Certified Data Center Designer and Installer Advanced Communications Technology Services

The Making of an Expert Fiber Testing and Network Troubleshooter Part 2 of 3

Part 2 of a three-part series Profile: Vangie Michenzi Senior Fiber Optic Project Manager BICSI Credentialed ITS Technician Certified Data Center Designer and Installer Advanced Communications Technology Services When we left Vangie Michenzi of...

Gearing Up for Single-Pair Ethernet in the Enterprise

Maybe you’ve been hearing some buzz recently surrounding single-pair Ethernet and a couple of new standards in development to support 10 Mb/s Ethernet. If you’re thinking that 10 Mb/s seems like old school, you’re probably not alone. After all,...

Why an MPO Inspection Camera? An Interview with the Product Manager

This week, Fluke Networks announced the FI-3000 FiberInspector™ Pro, designed for inspecting the end faces of Multiple Push-On (MPO) fiber connectors. We sat down with Carolyn Carter, the Senior Product Manager.

Single-Mode Fiber is On Rise. Are You Ready?

Many of you are likely seeing an increased use of single-mode fiber among your customers due to several benefits (primarily distance and bandwidth), connection to carrier networks, and emerging single-mode applications in development. With...

Copper Keeping Pace with the Trace

When it comes to Tier 2 fiber testing, there are many smart people in our industry who can read an OTDR trace and pinpoint the type and location of a fault within the cable. And for those who might not be proficient in reading a trace, Fluke...

Beware the Polar Vortex!

This winter’s phenomenon popularly known as a “polar vortex” has kept many of us around the world under a blanket of snow and ice and well below freezing temps. While it isn’t exactly pleasant to deal with -23°F below zero in Chicago, the coldest...

What’s Wrong with My Cable?

While the most common causes of failures in twisted pair cabling include installation errors, defects found in poor-quality components (cables, connectors, patch cords, etc.), damage to the installed cable and incorrect tester set up, sometimes...

To Bundle or Not Bundle?

If you have recently attended a conference, picked up an industry publication, or participated in a webinar, you’ve probably been exposed to plenty of information on PoE and its effect on cabling plants. By now, you may even be tired of hearing...

Expert Profile: Vangie Michenzi, Senior Fiber Optic Project Manager, Advanced Communication Technology Services Part 1 of 3

Part 1 of a three-part series Even though their work is essential to today’s world, you don’t hear much about the professionals who build and maintain the world’s communications networks. While their exploits may not have the wide interest of...

Importance of Cable Verification, Qualification and Certification

When it comes to testing a cabling installation, there are essentially three choices--verification, qualification and certification. While some features overlap between test tools as you move up the hierarchical ladder from verification to...

Learn from the Experts at the BICSI Winter Conference!

Learn from the Experts at the BICSI Winter Conference! Planning to attend the upcoming BICSI Winter Conference & Exhibition on January 20 - 24 at the Gaylord Palms Resort & Convention Center in Orlando, FL? Fluke Networks’ experts will be offering...

Insertion Loss Should Be a Positive Number

Insertion loss, or the loss of signal that happens along the length of a fiber optic link, is expressed in dBs and should always be a positive number. But it can be a negative number (which isn’t a good thing). Return loss, which measures the amount...

101 Series: Know Your Fiber Connectors

Fiber optic connectors include plugs that feature a protruding ferrule that holds the fiber in place and an associated adapter for aligning and mating fibers to form a connection point. The first ferrules introduced in the 1970s were comprised of...

Beauty Isn’t Skin Deep

While neatly combed bundles of cables might look really nice in exposed overhead cable trays and in racks and cabinets, this aesthetically pleasing deployment isn’t always a thing of beauty when it comes to performance. Sometimes this can be hard to...

Happy Holidays from All of Us at Fluke Networks!

'Twas the night before Christmas when all through the NOC, Technicians were testing, their eyes on the clock. The connectors terminated with the utmost care In hopes there would be not a single bit err. The Versiv set up, all ready to test And give...

Going the Distance

A couple of weeks ago, we published a Cabling Chronicles Blog about exceptions to the 100-meter (m) channel length rule and the fact that you can’t necessarily go the full distance due to temperature rise, gauge size and subsequent insertion loss...

What Ever Happened to Category 7?

If you Google “What ever happened to,” all the top search results have to do with past celebrities or that creepy 1962 Joan Crawford and Bette Davis thriller about Baby Jane. And if you finish your Google search to ask, “What ever happened to...

An Exception to Every Rule

An Exception to Every Rule You’re watching a baseball game, the batter hits a fair infield fly ball, and the umpire calls the batter out even though the ball isn’t caught. You might be thinking, “Hey, that’s not the rule.” But in fact, if the umpire...

Another Year of Thanks!

It’s that time of year again to give thanks! We are thankful for market growth continuing to be fueled by the IoT and Big Data, and for all the noteworthy standards ratifications that happened this year. We also wanted to take a minute to let all of...

Get to know Lengthonomics

This is a guest blog from Carrie Goetz (D.MCO, RCDD/NTS, CDCP, CDCS, 1st Degree IM) who is the Global Technology Director Paige DataCom Solutions. If you have not heard the term “Lengthonomics,” you should acquaint yourself with the concept. The...

Get to know Lengthonomics

This is a guest blog from Carrie Goetz (D.MCO, RCDD/NTS, CDCP, CDCS, 1st Degree IM) who is the Global Technology Director Paige DataCom Solutions.

Version 6.0 Features Benefit New and Current OptiFiber Pro Users

You’ve probably heard of the new OptiFiber Pro HDR models we recently introduced, which are designed for OSP and PON applications. However, there are a number of new features now available as part of this launch that work in both the current...

New OptiFiber Pro High Dynamic Range Modules for Outside Plant and Passive Optical Networks

With the new Fluke Networks OptiFiber® Pro High Dynamic Range (HDR) Optical Time Domain Reflectometer, Versiv becomes a single solution for applications ranging from FTTx, PON and datacenters to category-rated structured cabling. Since Versiv users...

It’s That Time of Year Again – Beware of Ghosts and Dead Zones!

There’s a chill in the air, leaves are falling and it’s time for all things spooky. So we thought that in the spirit of Halloween, we would post this blog again that takes a look at two of the most confusing (and perhaps scariest) OTDR...

What’s Up with Industrial Ethernet?

Due to its inherent reliability, performance and interoperability, Ethernet has infiltrated the factory floor as the communication protocol of choice for automation and control systems. This year, Industrial Ethernet has overtaken market share from...

What’s Up with Industrial Ethernet?

Due to its inherent reliability, performance and interoperability, Ethernet has infiltrated the factory floor as the communication protocol of choice for automation and control systems. This year, Industrial Ethernet has overtaken market share from...

101 Series: What is an APC Connector and How Do I Test It?

The singlemode fiber connectors you likely encounter the most feature a blue connector body, but if you’re working with any passive optical networks (PONs), carrier networks or large cloud/colo or hyperscale data centers, you may encounter...

Type 3 and Type 4 are Here!

Last week the IEEE 802.3bt standard for Type 3 and Type 4 PoE was finally ratified! While we’ve been talking about these higher levels of PoE for quite some time, now that they are finally an approved standard, we thought it was a good time to clear...

Mixed Mindfulness

When it comes to a cabling infrastructure, not all media and applications are always the same. So for each and every link, it’s important to be aware of what you’re testing—from both a media type and application standpoint.

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...

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...

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...

Coax Cable – You Might Just Need to Test It

When it comes to copper testing, we talk a lot about category balanced twisted-pair copper cabling like Category 6, Category 6A and Category 8 . And although this cabling type is widely deployed to support everything Ethernet transmission of voice,...

Versiv Gets an Upgrade to Version 5.6

Keep your Versiv tester on the cutting edge of technology with the newly released Version 5.6 now available for download. The new version makes it a lot easier to do something that Versiv already does – testing cables for their ability to work with...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

ANSI/TIA 568.2-D Approved!

The latest TIA standard for balanced twisted-pair cable systems – TIA 568.2-D – was approved for publication during the TR-42.7 meeting on June 12, 2018. It will replace TIA-568-C.2 and is expected to be published in the coming weeks. For the past...

TIA Recognizes MPTL Connections and You Should Too

If you are familiar with deployments where a horizontal cable run terminated on one end to an RJ-45 plug connects directly into a device, then you are familiar with what is now referred to as a Modular Plug Terminated Link, or MPTL (even if it...

Summer Reading: Top 4 for the 4th

While many of our blog readers are well versed in designing, installing and testing cabling systems, some of you may be new to the industry and still trying to make sense of the various performance parameters, standards and testing requirements that...

The Skinny on 28 AWG Patch Cords

Over the past few years, several manufacturers have released 28 AWG patch cords that offer a smaller diameter to help improve airflow around active equipment and ease cable management at high density patching areas due to reduced congestion and a...

Designing to Application Limits

When it comes to calculating loss budget, it’s important to know the loss limits for the given application as specified by industry standards. But if I really want to know how to design a system to these limits, you also need to know the loss of the...

Happy Fifth Anni-Versiv™!

To some, it may seem like just yesterday that Fluke Networks introduced the Versiv™ family of Cabling Certification Testers , especially for those who are still hanging on to their discontinued DTX CableAnalyzer™ (don’t forget that all service and...

Bye Bye Buzz!

While labeling per the ANSI/TIA-606-B Administration Standards is considered best practice, let’s face it—labels don’t always happen or sometimes they’re simply not visible where you need them. Over time, cabling links may also have been...

Look, No Hands!

Did you ever have one of those days where your hands feel like two foreign objects that aren’t connected to your body or your brain? Yesterday started off as one of those days for me. It went something (maybe not exactly) like this. The first...

Keeping Up has Never Been Easier!

Keeping up with the industry is not easy. Changing standards, ways of working, technologies … Don’t worry – we have your back! We know it is sometimes hard to find the exact information you need to keep you moving forward here are some resources...

How Many Stars are in Your Toolbelt?

We talk a lot about certifying copper cable plants using Fluke Networks’ DSX CableAnalyzer series certifiers , but voice, video and data deployments start with technicians having the right copper installation tools. While Fluke Networks offers a...

Picture Perfect AV Systems

Whether it’s video conferencing or digital signage, many of you are likely facing requests from your customers to deploy cable plants that support audio-visual systems. Many of these applications utilize HDBaseT or IP-based video transmission, and...

Upgrading to Four-Pair PoE: What You Need to Know

For several years, you’ve been deploying cable plants that support power over Ethernet (PoE) for variety of devices like VoIP phones and security cameras. So far, up to 30 Watts is all you’ve been requested to support, but with the plethora of...

Why can’t I use the 2-cord test method?

Like the TIA and ISO, Fluke Networks promotes the use of the 1-cord method to set reference for fiber loss measurements. The 1-cord method is where a launch cord is attached to a light source and the other end to a power meter. A reference is then...

Cable Testing 101: But the Standard Says 0.75 dB!

We’ve covered fiber insertion loss testing in depth in many blogs, so by now you should know that it is the loss of signal that happens in a channel due to the length of the cable and any connectors, splices or splitters. And hopefully you also know...

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...

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...

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...

101 Series: What is Modal Bandwidth?

table, th, td { border: 1px solid black; border-collapse: collapse; } 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...

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?...

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. If you were one of the more than 4,000 attendees at...

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...

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...

Previewing Our BICSI Presentation on Passive Optical Network (PON) Testing

A passive optical LAN, also sometimes referred to as simply a passive optical network (PON), is a point-to-multipoint architecture that used passive optical splitters to split optical transmission signals from a single strand of singlemode fiber...

Will My Existing Cable Plant Support 2.5/5GBASE-T?

Driven by the NBASE-T Alliance and compatible with the NBASE-T specification , IEEE 802.3bz specifies 2.5 Gbps over 100 meters of Category 5e cabling or 5 Gbps over 100 meters of Category 6 cabling. It also includes support for 5 Gbps over Category...

101 Series: 12-Fiber MPO Polarity

To properly send data over fiber cable, a link’s transmit signal (Tx) at one end of the cable must match the corresponding receiver (Rx) at the other end. And the role of polarity, which defines the direction that the signal travels, is to make sure...

2018 - Smack-Dab in the IoT Revolution

At this time of year, every industry tends to reflect on the past twelve months and make predictions about what 2018 will bring – it’s just what we do. So why should this year be any different? While no one can predict the future, 2018 puts us...

A Few of Our Favorite Blogs

In the spirit of the season and that “Sound of Music” favorite by Julie Andrews (that some have dubbed a holiday classic), we thought we’d take a moment to wish everyone Happy Holidays and Best Wishes for a Prosperous New Year and share with you a...

CPR - A Not-So-Ridiculous Regulation

There’s no doubt that the European Union has a lot of rules and regulations—something frequently pointed out by those who campaigned for a Brexit vote in the United Kingdom. And many joke about some of the more ridiculous ones, like the law that...

Troubleshooting Fusion Splices

A fusion splice is when two fibers are fused together using an electric arc. Often used with pigtails for connecting 250-micron outside plant fiber to 900-micron inside plant fiber at the building entrance, fusion splicing is achieved with a fusion...

The Next Big Step for PoE

The much-anticipated higher levels of PoE have been quite the buzz in the industry. Now that the 802.3bt standard for PoE that includes Type 3 and Type 4 PoE is expected to be ratified early next year, we will start to see more devices forego their...

Fun with Automagical OTDR Trouble-shooting

I had a fun tech support call the other day that I think you will find interesting. A customer sent one of the ugliest traces we had seen in a while. “Help! What is going on here?” This came with the usual, it is urgent, his boss will kill him, the...

Connector Loss, Return Loss, and Reflectance – “Highs and Lows”

The condition and characteristics of fiber optic connectors greatly affects the performance of an installed fiber optic link. High connector loss (e.g., insertion loss), low return loss, or high reflectance will impair an application (i.e....

Smart Testing for Fiber to the Desk

Fiber to the Desk (FTTD) applications have long been lumped in with other FTTX applications with the “X” signifying a variety of fiber optic access points, including Fiber to the Home (FTTH), Fiber to the Premise (FTTP), Fiber to the Curb (FTTC) and...

Data Center Standards and Guidelines

Regardless of the size and type of the data center, the switching topology and the applications, the underlying cabling infrastructure that creates all the links needed to connect data center equipment follows the same basic design principles...

The Rise of the Hyperscale Data Center

While the number of hyperscale data centers in the world is only estimated at around 300, with half of these belonging to U.S.-based companies (Think Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Ebay and Twitter) and another 100 hyperscale data centers...

Save Face: Why Fiber End Face Geometry Matters

We all know that dirty fiber connector end faces can cause loss and reflection, which is why they need to be cleaned and inspected before making that final connection. But what if you’ve properly cleaned and inspected the fiber end face for...

Importing Cable IDs from Excel in Linkware Live

Project managers spend a significant amount of their time managing cable IDs. A typical project has several hundred cable IDs. Large projects, such as Data Centers, can have 50k-300k IDs. When not managed carefully, these cable IDs can be incorrect,...

Lots to Learn Next Week at BICSI!

Fluke Networks has long provided educational content on anything and everything to do with testing network cabling systems—from standards and best practices, to application assurance and tricks of the trade. And we do it in many ways. There’s this...

MPTL: New Test Procedure for Today’s Converged Infrastructure

With the Internet of Things (IoT) and the development of sensor technology, more and more devices are becoming IP enabled and connecting to the copper horizontal cabling infrastructure. Most of these devices such as LED lights, security cameras,...

Testing and Structured Cabling Standards - Harmonization

If you ever attended a Standards meeting you might have heard the word “harmonization” mentioned frequently. The idea of harmonization, somewhat of a holy grail, is to have standards from different organizations agree. For example, imagine if the...

Series 101: Multimode vs. Singlemode

Fiber optic cabling comes in two types – multimode and singlemode. Most of you likely know that multimode cabling distances are shorter than singlemode, and singlemode is therefore deployed for outside plant long-haul fiber applications, while...

Cable Labeling Best Practices, Circa 2017

For professional contractors and installers of data communications cabling systems, compliance with ANSI/TIA 606-B Standards updated back in 2012 has required new levels of precision in cable labeling – often an arduous and time-consuming process...

On bi-directional testing with a light source and power meter

In the 2014 version of ISO/IEC 14763-3, testing of optical fiber cabling, unidirectional testing for permanent links is required. In specific cases, bi-directional testing is required. However, ISO/IEC 14763-3 provides no information on how a...

On cursor placement when making an OTDR measurement

Testing and characterizing a permanent link with an OTDR requires the measurement of connector attenuations A/B and fiber loss C. To make this measurement, a launch and tail cord are needed (see Figure 1). Figure 1 – Permanent link measurement using...

RJ-45: A Mainstay in the Data Center

Twisted-pair copper cabling is a cornerstone of data center infrastructure, and the RJ-45 connection is the highest-volume port type in servers today, with close to a billion ports of RJ-45 connectors sold every year. The features in RJ-45 that made...

Over 5 Million Test Results Uploaded to The Cloud!

Thanks to all, the contractors, installers and network maintainers around the world who rely on our Versiv™ family of products – you helped us to reach a significant industry milestone: More than five million tests results have been uploaded to the...

101 Series: What’s Different About TRCs and How Do I Choose One?

While it may look and feel like a fiber patch cord, Test Reference Cords, or TRCs for short, are not patch cords. There’s a little something different about these cords that are used for certifying fiber cabling systems to ANSI/TIA, ISO/IEC and IEEE...

All Fiber Roads Divisible by 2 and 8

By now you’ve probably heard of 8-fiber MPO plug and play solutions available on the market, which are ideal for Gigabit (40GBASE-SR4) and 100 Gigabit (100GBASE-SR4) applications that use 8 fibers with 4 transmitting and 4 receiving at either 10 or...

New Versiv Software Release Now Available

We’ve just posted Version 5.1 Build 4 of the Versiv software for the following products: DSX Series CableAnalyzers TM CertiFiber TM Pro Optical Loss Test Set OptiFiber® Pro OTDR FiberInspector TM Pro Fiber Inspection Scope Versiv Kit Configurator...

101 Series: What are TCL and ELTCTL?

Maybe you’ve seen TCL and ELTCTL listed on your cable spec sheet, or perhaps you’ve noticed them on your DSX CableAnalyzer, and you’re simply not familiar with these parameters, what they indicate and if they are required. Let’s take a closer look....

Clean Cords are Reliable Cords

Or, what a minor obsession with reliability looks like. We don’t get a lot of complaints about our product quality, so when we do, it gets our interest. After recently receiving a field complaint that a user’s OTDR launch packs were degrading...

Fluke Networks is 25 Years Old This Month!

Twenty five years ago this month, a highly animated character popped into my cubicle at Fluke. He had a mandate: find a new business opportunity for Fluke within 100 days. To assist this effort, he also had $100,000 and the authority to employ...

Top 5 Fiber and Cable Cleaning Tips from the Experts

Let’s face it. Spring cleaning stinks. I mean, does anyone actually enjoy cleaning? I don’t know about you, but I certainly am not counting down my winter days until I can scrub the house top to bottom only to have it quickly soiled by muddy feet...

Where Will I Testing Cat 8 Cabling Systems with Cable Tester

By now you probably know that Category 8 cabling was approved by the TIA TR-42.7 Copper Cabling Subcommittee, and maybe you’ve even heard that Fluke Networks introduced the DSX-8000 CableAnalyzer , the first field tester independently verified and...

101 Series: Understanding Copper Cabling’s Balancing Act

You have likely heard copper network cabling referred to as balanced twisted-pair copper cabling, and maybe you’ve heard of the testing parameter referred to as DC resistance unbalance. But what does all this balance-related terminology really mean,...

What’s the Deal with OM5 Cable Standards – WBMMF?

.question{ color: rgb(41,63,106); font-size: 18px; line-height:4px; } table tr td{ border: 1px solid black; border-collapse: collapse; } Guest Posting from Corning Optical Communications OM5, previously known as wide band multimode fiber or WB MMF,...

Pros and Cons of Bend Insensitive Multimode Fiber

Lately, I have been getting questions about why bend insensitive multimode fiber (BIMMF) can’t be used in test cords. The argument is that non-BIMMF (e.g., “traditional” fiber) is becoming more difficult to procure and installers need the...

Simplify the Complexity of Fiber Certification with TRC

No, not what Deedee would ask Dexter in his lab, what does that button do on the bottom of the FI-1000 video inspection camera? It turns out it has a really helpful function that I want to share with you here. I really like the Wizard to set a...

Benefits of Fiber Optic and Passive Optical LAN Test

In recent years, passive optical LANs have gained significant popularity as an alternative to horizontal copper structured cabling in a variety of enterprise spaces. The technology brings fiber out of the riser backbone and data center, and with...

How High-Speed Fiber Applications are Impacting the Networking Arena

In last week’s blog , we took a Closer Look at 40 Gig Duplex Multimode Applications, just one of the many ways that today’s data centers are cost-effectively achieving increased bandwidth in switch-to-switch fiber links. And when we say many ways,...

A Closer Look at 40 Gig Duplex Multimode Applications

There’s been a lot of talk in the industry surrounding solutions capable of running 40 Gig Ethernet over duplex multimode fiber—especially with OM5 wideband multimode fiber (WBMMF) now recognized within industry standards that specifies wavelengths...

Testing Cabling With MPO Connectors – What’s New?

With the wide variety of standards relating to fiber optic cabling, the absence of published standards for testing fiber optic cabling terminated with MPO connectors might come as a surprise. Finally, a technical report (TR), written by this author,...

What’s All the Buzz about Limited Power Certification?

You maybe have heard the recent buzz about LP-certified cable for power over Ethernet (PoE) applications and be wondering if you need this cable for your PoE installations. Let’s take a closer look at this new UL certification, its relationship to...

Understanding Propagation and Delay Skew in Cable Testing 101 Series

You may have heard that propagation delay and delay skew parameters are important for IPTV, surveillance and video conferencing, and many vendors may tout delay skew performance for these video applications. But do you know why these parameters are...

How to Test Shield Integrity?

Back when Wolfenstein 3D was all the rage, we set up an exhibit at a BICSI conference where we tried to make a Cat 5 link fail by inducing noise onto it. We tried all kinds of no-no’s, such as placing the cable next to a fluorescent ballast, a large...

#ICYMI: Highlights from 2017 BICSI Winter

The 2017 BICSI Winter Conference wrapped up last week in Tampa where thousands of ICT professional from around the world had a chance to gain valuable industry knowledge and check out the latest products from nearly 180 vendors in the exhibit hall –...

The Road to a Category 8 Cable Tester

On January 23, we announced the DSX-8000 CableAnalyzer™ , the first true Category 8 tester. You may be wondering what is required for a “true” Category 8 certification tester and why we launched it now. First, interface adapters are required for...

Tips to Identify Copper Clad Aluminium (CCA) Cables

So you came across some Category 6 cable available online for practically half what you’ve been paying for that brand name. It claims TIA-568-C compliance, includes the UL listing mark and even has a ETL verification legend printed right on the...

New Poster for Twisted Pair Cabling Measurements

While twisted pair can be straightforward to install, measuring its performance can be somewhat more complex. There are more than a dozen different measurements you can make to a twisted pair cable. Some, such as delay, are conceptually quite...

Goodbye 2016. You Weren’t ALL Bad

All over the news and social media, 2016 has gotten a pretty bum rap. With everything from shootings, terrorist attacks and the weirdest presidential election in history, to exploding cell phones, scary clown threats and numerous celebrity deaths,...

How to Save Money and Time in Testing Fibers with SmartLoop

The only way to get correct values when performing Tier 2 testing of duplex fiber links with an OTDR is via bidirectional testing that averages the measurements taken from both ends of the link. Bidirectional testing used to involve testing the...

Testing New Cable Tester in 2017

It’s that time of year again when we take a look at what we predict to be next year’s biggest trends in testing. Obviously the Internet of Things (IoT) will continue to be a major driver in all things network cabling--from the LAN where we will see...

How Accurate is Your Optical Loss Test Set?

table.mytable{ width:570px; text-align: center; } .mytable td, th { border: 1px solid black; text-align: center; } You have just made a loss measurement using an Optical Loss Test Set (OLTS). The measurement was made to a test limit, the result was...

Much to be Thankful for

There is much to be thankful for in our industry these days as market growth continues to be fueled by the IoT and big data driving the need for LAN and data center upgrades. We also wanted to take a minute to let all of our Cabling Chronicles blog...

Bi-Direction Testing with an OTDR

STANDARD OR APPLICATION NOTE Have you ever wondered how a Standard and an Application Note differ? No, the answer is not only that one is provided free by vendors. Both contain guidance and useful technical information so what is the difference?...

Cable Testing 101: How to Read the LinkWare™ PC Report

In our last 101 Series Blog, we took at closer look at everything in blue at the top of your LinkWare Report. But what if your customer wants you to explain the detail and those pretty charts to the right? Let’s dive deeper so you’re prepared for...

Cable Testing 101: Understanding Your LinkWare Report

So you used your DSX-5000 to test some recently installed copper network runs for your customer. You can easily see on your tester if the link failed or passed for the application you were testing, but now your customer wants a customized report...

Understand the Wide Band Multimode Fiber (WBMMF)

table, tr, th, td { border: 1px solid #111; text-align: center; } Recently, there has been some buzz about Wide Band Multimode Fiber (WBMMF). The 2016 edition of document TIA-492AAAE, released on June 1, is available. This document/standard is the...

Cable Testing 101: There's No Gain with "Gainers"

Akin to water flowing from a small pipe into a large pipe, gainers are essentially perceived increases in optical power that occur at splice points due to variations in fiber characteristics, including core diameter, numerical apertures, mode field...

Benefits of Using 8-Fiber Plug and Play MPO Solutions

The use of plug-and-play 12-fiber MPO solutions for multimode fiber backbones in the data center has been popular for several years, starting with 10 Gigabit Ethernet where 12-fiber MPO assemblies connect MPO-to-LC cassettes or modules that...

OTDR launch packs – what’s bend-insensitive got to do with it?

INTRODUCTION Testing standards for measuring attenuation of installed multimode (and single-mode) cable plant require using launch and tail cords with OTDRs. Standards mandate that the optical fiber sub category (e.g. graded index 50 µm) be the same...

Advantage of Automated Fiber Inspection over Manual

Over the past decade, the amount of fiber in the data center has increased significantly due to the need for higher bandwidth between switches and the ever increasing amount of equipment requiring fiber uplinks to storage area networks (SANs), not...

Deploy and Test Shielded Cable with Category 8

The TIA TR-42.7 Copper Cabling Subcommittee recently approved specifications for Category 8 cabling (TIA 568 C.2-1), the latest twisted-pair copper system designed to support future IEEE 25GBASE T and 40GBASE T applications currently under...

Upgrading Your Fiber Plant to 40 and 100 Gigabit Speeds

Just Now Upgrading to 10 Gig? We Didn’t Forget About You While upgrading backbone cable plants in the LAN to support 10 Gig has been going on for several years since the release of the 10GBASE-SR standard for fiber, many enterprise businesses did...

How to Evaluate Your Cable Plant as per NBASE-T Standards

If you’re looking to deploy 802.11ac on existing cabling, you have probably been watching developments in the NBASE-T world. NBASE-T is the technology that promises to provide speeds up to 5 Gbps to support the fastest 802.11ac access points over...

How to Set Up DSX-5000 for New Installation?

Getting the right setup to ensure the best test results with your DSX-5000 If you turn up to a new installation with your new DSX-5000 then it might be up to you to ensure the DSX-5000 is set up correctly. So what do you have to do? Well, if it’s...

Cable Testing 101: There's No Gain with "Gainers"

In a recent Cable Testing 101 series blog on mixing multimode fiber types , we covered the considerations surrounding mixing legacy 62.5 micron (µm) OM1 fiber with today's laser optimized 50µm OM3 and OM4 fiber and highlighted the "gainers" that can...

How to Measure the Loss in the APC Connector?

This question often gets asked in my classes at the same time as when talking about launch methods using launch and tail fibers. So let’s talk about launch fiber compensation. Launch fiber compensation: When we make an OTDR (Optical Time Domain...

Understanding POH: The Power Behind HDBaseT Technology

Last month we posted a blog about HDBaseT that explained the application and how testing isn’t really any different since standards-based Category 5e, 5 or 6A will support it. But maybe you’ve also heard about power over HDBaseT, or POH, and you’re...

All About Alien Crosstalk Measurement

Alien crosstalk is a relatively new measurement that’s widely misunderstood. I’m often asked why it’s an important measurement and if it’s required to be measured by the standards. Also misunderstood is the sampling criteria for alien crosstalk...

Cable Testing 101: What is the Difference Between OM3 and OM4?

OM3 and OM4 multimode fiber are two common types of fiber used in local area networks--typically in backbone cabling between telecommunications rooms and in the data center between main networking and storage area network (SAN) switches. Both of...

All Versiv Models Updated With New Software Version

New Versiv Version 4.8 Build 1 code and LinkWare PC 9.6 now available We’ve just released a new version of code for all cable certification Versiv models and we think you’re going to like what you see. The button on the side of the FI-1000 is now...

Cat 8 Products Coming Soon

By now, you’ve probably heard the news that the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) TR-42.7 Telecommunications Cabling Systems Engineering Committee has approved the ANSI/TIA-568-C.2-1 standard for Category 8 cabling systems. Category 8 is...

New App to Streamline Cable Labeling - iLink&Label

While probably one the least talked about standards, and one that is often considered voluntary, the TIA-606-B labeling standard exists for a reason. An unlabeled infrastructure results in an unmanageable mess that ultimately makes every...

Great Fiber Diagnostic Tool In Your Belt

Maximizing productivity in today’s fast-paced workplace is essential. Whether installing new fiber links or troubleshooting an existing network, the faster you can locate a problem, the faster you can fix it. That’s easier said than done when you...

HDBaseT for Ultra HD Video Displays and Digital Signage

So your customer has decided to deploy HDBaseT for ultra high definition video displays and digital signage. If you’re already experienced in deploying a copper cabling infrastructure for IP-based Ethernet applications like voice and data, you have...

Reap the Benefits of Zone Cabling with CPs and HCPs

With the growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) and intelligent buildings, there are more devices than ever being connected to the network, and many of them reside in the ceiling space--everything from LED lights and building automation devices, to...

Faster and Easier MultiFiber Pro Optical Fiber Tester

Guest writing for our blog this week is Mike Pennacchi, the owner and lead network analyst for Network Protocol Specialists, LLC. Mike has over 16 years experience as a full time troubleshooting consultant and trainer with a specialty centering...

Fiber Optic Cabling Standards - On the Road to 400 Gig.

Over the past decade, we have seen significant advancements in the capabilities of fiber optic cabling--from expanded distances to speeds reaching 40 and 100 Gig. While fiber loss requirements are getting tighter, efforts are also underway to...

Cabling Mistakes #6 - #7: Using Non-EF Compliant Cable Tester and Two-Cord

While the smart people who install, test and certify network cabling plants know the importance of meeting standards performance parameters and ensuring application support, even the best of us can make mistakes that adversely impact the bottom line...

Cabling Standard Subcommittee Work-Hand in Hand with IEEE

With the need for increased speed and power over Ethernet (PoE) being addressed within IEEE standards, work within TIA must follow suit as the two standards bodies work hand in hand to ensure that the applications put forth by IEEE can be adequately...

What’s New with Versiv Version 4.6 Build 2?

We repeatedly try to drive home the need to keep your tester up to date with the latest firmware, and for good reason. Not only do we want to make sure you don’t miss out on the latest features that can help you test faster and more accurately, but...

SmartLoop Technology Just Got Smarter and Faster

Bi-directional testing of fiber links for Tier 2 (OTDR) testing is not only required by industry standards and most manufacturers for warranty, it’s also the only way to know the actual overall loss for a link. That’s because measuring the loss of...

Save Time and Money with LinkWare Live

It’s late afternoon and your team has just finished a job. Now it’s time to gather up the testers and head back to the office with the results. But if that’s your white box truck back there sitting in miles of traffic, how much will it cost you?...

Developments on Fiber Connector End Face Inspection

The performance of an installed optical fiber link hinges on the condition of the connector end faces. Test suppliers have been pushing end face inspection for good reason – most service calls are due to problems with connectors. Standards bodies...

Cabling Mistakes #2 and #3: Neglecting Marginal Test Results and Parameters

While the smart people who install, test and certify network cabling plants know the importance of meeting standards performance parameters and ensuring application support, even the best of us can make mistakes that adversely impact the bottom line...

The IoT and LED Lighting: The Time for Balance is Now

In 2003, IEEE 802.af brought standardization to PoE with the ability to supply up to 15.4W over two pairs of a copper cable. With devices like wireless access points (WAPs) and pan-tilt-zoom cameras needing more power, IEEE 802.3at was introduced in...

Cabling Mistakes #8: Using BIMMF Test Cords and Common Mandrel

While the smart people who install, test and certify network cabling plants know the importance of meeting standards performance parameters and ensuring application support, even the best of us can make mistakes that adversely impact the bottom line...

Understand ISO/IEC 11801 - Generic Cabling for Customer Premises

ISO/IEC 11801, Information technology – Generic Cabling for Customer Premises is being overhauled. The last version, edition 2.2 was published in 2011. In that version ISO/IEC 11801 was one all-inclusive document. Since then, because of its size,...

Get Back to Cabling Basics If Anything Goes Wrong

How we communicate and share information today is all done via networks, and every day our world becomes more connected. The Internet of Things (IoT) is placing more IP-based devices on the network than ever before--from digital displays and LED...

Document Cabling Certification with LinkWare PC and LinkWareLive

Certifying a cabling installation doesn’t mean anything without the burden of proof. Documenting the results is the only real way to ensure installation accountability and integrity, resolve disputes and facilitate more efficient troubleshooting....

Cabling Mistakes #1: Specify Channel Testing While Installing Permanent Links

While the smart people who install, test and certify network cabling plants know the importance of meeting standards performance parameters and ensuring application support, even the best of us can make mistakes that adversely impact the bottom line...

How to Manage Cabling Certification Jobs Anytime, Anywhere

To maximize return on investment, your test equipment moves from jobsite to jobsite. At any given moment, several of your skilled technicians can be testing and certifying network cabling with multiple testers for multiple concurrent projects in...

Cabling Mistakes #5: Forgetting to Enable Plot Data

While the smart people who install, test and certify network cabling plants know the importance of meeting standards performance parameters and ensuring application support, even the best of us can make mistakes that adversely impact the bottom line...

Tips for Taking on Tier 1 and Tier 2 Fiber Testing

Unlike required Tier 1 testing for attenuation (insertion loss), length and polarity that can be achieved with an optical loss test set (OLTs), few technicians in the field find themselves faced with Tier 2 testing and the need for an Optical Time...

Understanding ISO/IEC 14763-3 Cabling Standards

ISO/IEC 14763-3 edition 2 was published in 2014. This standard supports the implementation and operation of customer premises cabling by specifying systems and methods for inspecting and testing optical fiber cabling. In 2015, a corrigendum was...

Cabling Mistakes #9: Rely on Duplex Tester for MPO Cable Certification

While the smart people who install, test and certify network cabling plants know the importance of meeting standards performance parameters and ensuring application support, even the best of us can make mistakes that adversely impact the bottom line...

Cabling Mistakes #4: “Winging it” on Alien Crosstalk Compliance

While the smart people who install, test and certify network cabling plants know the importance of meeting standards performance parameters and ensuring application support, even the best of us can make mistakes that adversely impact the bottom line...

Quality Workmanship – Way to Pass Cable Certification Testing

Virtually all of your customers are going to want the system warranty offered by their cabling manufacturer. It also lowers risk for architects, consultants and engineers by proving that the system meets the intended performance to support the...

What is the best Practices for Cleaning Optical Fiber

While it seems we can’t drive the point home enough that the number one cause of fiber network issues and failures is contaminated connectors, we hope by now that all fiber technicians at least know that they are SUPPOSED to clean and inspect every...

Cabling Mistakes #10: Skipping Fiber Inspection Steps

While the smart people who install, test and certify network cabling plants know the importance of meeting standards performance parameters and ensuring application support, even the best of us can make mistakes that adversely impact the bottom line...

Is Your Network Ready for Office Work Environment?

Today’s office environments are changing drastically in regards to where and how people work. Gone are the days of segregated work areas for each employee with siloed spaces featuring strictly wired connections for a computer and a phone. Companies...

How to Save 50% Time in bi-directional testing?

When it comes to Tier 2 testing using an OTDR, measuring the loss of specific events like connectors and splices, as well as overall link loss, depends on the direction in which the measurement is made. That is why getting correct values requires...

Is Your Network Cabling Ready for Next-Gen PoE?

IEEE 802.3bt continues to specify higher power levels to be delivered along cabling that was traditionally designed for purely data distribution, presenting exciting possibilities for the future, however PoE is only part of today’s bigger picture...

What is Instant Solution for DC Contact Resistance issues?

A standard Category 5e, 6, 6A or Class D, E, E A certification test many not catch faults such as contaminated contacts, wires not fully punched down in the back of the connector or broken wires making a loose connection. How can that be? A standard...

Testing Wide Band Multimode Fiber - WBMMF

Multimode fiber (MMF) dominates in local area networks and data centers. Electro-optic converters (e.g. transceivers) used for transmitting and receiving data are less expensive than those used for transmitting over single-mode fiber. Network...

Golden Rule of Fiber Inspection - Clean and Inspect Again

Contaminated connections remain the number one cause of fiber related problems and test failures in data centers, campus and other enterprise or telecom networking environments. And even if you think you have properly cleaned the fiber, you should...

Standard Update: 25GBASE-T Joins the Party!

Since the development of 40GBASE-T (IEEE 802.3bq) began a few years ago, most of us believed that the next Ethernet data center speed for twisted-pair copper cabling beyond 10 Gb/s would be 40 Gb/s. But in November 2014, IEEE 802.3 put out a call...

The Best Just Got Better—at Both Ends

How long are the fiber links you need to test? Is it a short 50-meter multimode data center link, a longer 550-meter backbone, or maybe even a 130-kilometer singlemode link? With contaminated connections remaining the number one cause of insertion...

Help! My Copper Cabling Link Failed

You’ve just finished a copper cabling installation for a customer, your DSX-5000 CableAnalyzer is properly configured and you’re ready to start testing. With a press of the “TEST” button, you’re off and running. Link after link, the tester displays...

Certification vs. Qualification: A Closer Look

cer · ti · fy \ˈsər-tə-ˌfī\ verb 1: to attest authoritatively 2: to officially recognize someone or something as possessing certain qualifications or meeting certain standards qual ·i·fy \ ˈkwä-lə-ˌfī\ verb 1: to have the necessary skill or...

Fluke Networks honored by Cabling Installation & Maintenance 2015 Innovators Awards Program

Last week at the opening of the BICSI Conference in Las Vegas, the editors of Cabling Business Magazine announced that Versiv and LinkWare Live have each won the Cabling Installation and Maintenance Innovator’s Award. These awards recognize the most...

What is Your Loss Measurement Uncertainty?

Testing structured fiber cabling to international standards such as ISO/IEC 14763-3 has been defined. In the last few years, the question of loss (attenuation) measurement uncertainty has been raised. Since 14763-3 specifies test limits, the user of...

Attack of the Drones - Part 2

When speaking of drone attacks, most people think first about risky encounters between remote-controlled drones and commercial aircraft ( /node/215376 ) or drones used for malicious airborne snooping and pen-testing ( /node/175608 ). However,...

Attack of the Drones - Part 1

In February, we pondered whether 2015 would be the year of the drones: Six months later, the answer appears to be a resounding “yes.” Near-miss encounters between commercial aircraft and remote-controlled drones continue to make headlines at an...

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Tier 1 Testing using an OTDR on Installed Fiber Cabling?

The Telecommunications Industry Association ( TIA ) is committed, by formal consensus , to develop standards for the benefit of industry and is represented by hundreds of companies. While participating companies cooperate to develop standards, each...

Testing Installed Fiber Cabling Terminated with MPO Connectors

Several published standards describe how to perform attenuation measurements on installed fiber optic cabling. However, no standard exists that provides guidance for testing installed fiber optic cabling terminated with MPO connectors. Currently, a...

What You Need to Know About Testing BIMMF

Developed for use in data centers and enterprise network applications with a very tight loss budget, bend insensitive multimode fiber (BIMMF) is able to withstand tighter bends with substantially less signal loss than non-BIMMF. A BIMMF design...

HOML as a Source Qualification Test

TIA adopted IEC 61280-4-1, the standard defining attenuation measurements of installed multimode fiber cabling, as ANSI/TIA 526-14-C. In IEC 61280-4-1, the encircled flux launch is defined as normative (required) for these cases and there is no...

Revision to IEC 61280-4-1 Ed 2.0, Fibre-optic communication subsystem test procedure – Part 4-1: Installed cable plant – Multimode attenuation measurement

This primary international standard provides guidance for measurement of attenuation using power meters, light sources and OTDRs on 50/125 µm and 62.5 µm multimode fiber cabling that may include connectors, adapters and splices. Various test methods...

Standards Update: The Four A’s of Harmonization

With ANSI/TIA being a North American standards body and ISO/IEC considered international, some often question why we need both, especially considering the similarities between the two. But there are also plenty of differences—from terminology and...

It’s Not You. It’s Your Tester

» ICT Article: Learn How Encircled Flux Makes Fiber Measurements More Accurate » White Paper: Encircled Flux: Real or Imaginary? When it comes to testing your multimode optical fiber installation, inconsistent results can leave you confused and...

The End of Era: Saying Goodbye to DTX

The year was 2004. The hottest mobile device was the Motorola Razr flip phone, Pierce Brosnan was still able to pull off a James Bond role, Facebook was a website nobody’s parents knew about, and The Red Sox won the World Series. It was also the...

Standards Update: Copper on the Move

In the 2009/2010 timeframe, copper standards got a lot of attention with the publication of the TIA-568-C standards and ISO 11801 2nd edition for 10-gigabit copper cabling, as well as IEEE 802.3at for PoE Plus. While more applications and devices...

Standards Update: The Four A’s of Harmonization

With ANSI/TIA being a North American standards body and ISO/IEC considered international, some often question why we need both, especially considering the similarities between the two. But there are also plenty of differences—from terminology and...

Training Article for Robin

In this week’s RSA 2015 session entitled “Mobile Vulnerabilities: From Data Breach to Complete Shutdown,” the co-founders of Skycure took aim at iOS and its increasing number of network security vulnerabilities – notably, an iOS SSL certificate...

New DSX-5000 Endorsements: Eurolan & Furukawa Industrial S.A.

We’re very excited to announce that two more manufacturers have endorsed the DSX-5000 this month! Eurolan has over 1,000 certified installers and engineers, and is a major supplier in Russia and the CIS countries. Furukawa Industrial S.A, is a major...

Slash Fiber Job Completion Time with New Fiber Testing and Certification Tools

The datacom industry is fast adapting an “all-for-fiber, fiber-for-all” mantra. Fiber developments and growth are everywhere, from high-speed data centers to bandwidth-hungry enterprises to Google Fiber. Fiber is the future, and for datacom...

No More “Dang It!” moments – Analyze and Manage Copper or Fiber Test Results Anytime, Anywhere

At Fluke Networks, we take test and measurement seriously. Proving that point, we recently announced the world’s first cloud-connected cable certification tool. That’s right, we unveiled LinkWare™ Live, a cloud-based service that enables...

Introducing the Versiv Family Yearbook: Class of 2014

For most structured cabling professionals, the days of nostalgically flipping through the pages of a school yearbook have passed. But Fluke Networks has introduced the next best thing – The Versiv Family Yearbook: Class of 2014. Highlighting...

Trends to Watch in 10GBASE-T and the Data Center

Network engineers need to pay attention to some emerging trends in the industry. In a report published earlier this year, “ Data Center Switch Long-Range Forecast Report ,’ Crehan Research Inc. predicted that the data center switch market will grow...

Fluke Networks Offers New Wireless Bundle

Cabling installers and contractors who provide wireless network deployments for businesses, government organizations and other customers can expect to see a rapidly growing market over the next several years. Enterprises are moving away from...

Prevent Errors, Limit Complexity and Reduce Cost Associated with Cable Certification

Perhaps the last thing a buyer of cable test equipment thinks about when looking for a product is how to prevent testing errors—and that’s a big mistake. While issues such as cost, standards and specifications including bandwidth and test speeds are...

You’re Just a Few Clicks Away from Finding Your Right Tool

In our ongoing efforts to enhance your credentials as a network management superstar, we have a new selection gizmo that will make picking the right tool as easy as, well, everything else we help you do. Our Portable Network Tool Selection Guide...

The Importance of ETL Verification

If you’re in the cable testing business, you should know about ETL Verification . When it comes to cable certification devices, users are expected to trust the vendor and the accuracy claims they make. There is no practical way for the user to...

New Infographic on What’s Really Going On in the Minds of Structured Cabling Professionals

You're deep in the trenches of cabling projects everyday, ensuring cleanliness, testing links and troubleshooting problems when they arise. Throughout the project work cycle, you may think to yourself, "Man, using all these different testers really...

A New Tester for the New Normal: Introducing the Versiv Family of Certification Tools

Terms like virtualization, cloud, SLA, SANs, SaaS and BYOD are all the rage in today’s technology world. But, none of these advancements are possible without the hard, diligent work done by cabling professionals to build, maintain, and optimize the...

Free Cable Test Management Software – Reaping the Benefits of LinkWare™

Testing advanced cabling plants today is so complex that a single Category 5e test report can include more than 400 data fields. With typical jobs including hundreds and even thousands of links, even if network engineers examine all the results and...

How to Increase Multimode Testing Accuracy with Encircled Flux

Anyone who’s ever tested a multimode fiber optic link with light sources from different equipment vendors will know that the loss measurement can vary by as much as 50 percent. Without proper controls, multimode light sources will inject light...

Co-location Data Center Operators Testing Next Generation Cabling.

I recently had occasion to visit with several individuals from a high growth sub segment of our industry. Co-location data centers enable organizations to rent equipment space and bandwidth. These facilities provide space, power, cooling and...

OTDR Troubleshooting in the Data Center? ...Yes we can!

The growing demand for higher bandwidth is affecting nearly every industry today, as organizations rely more on applications that support a variety of critical business processes. Whether it’s high-definition video, social media support, electronic...

Encircled Flux – What is it, and Why Should You Care?

With the introduction of low loss fiber optic components such as LC/MPO cassettes, loss budgets (test limits) are becoming increasingly smaller. As a result, installers are finding out that previous methods and assumptions about fiber testing no...

Finding the keys to success in the MPO datacenter

As companies try to address the rising demand in IP traffic in order to support a growing array of business applications, many are designing their data centers with fiber optic networks that support 10G or 40G Ethernet connections between servers,...

Need to test MPO cabling? No problem. -New MultiFiber Pro Optical Loss Tester reduces test time by 95%

MPO cabling used to be a royal pain to test. Traditional cable testers just couldn’t make the complexity of testing 12 fibers and managing a variety of polarity schemes easy. The technician had to use expensive fanout cables, and manually keep track...

LinkWare 7 –A good thing just got a lot better!

What do Albert Einstein and Michael Jordan have in common? No, they’re not both LinkWare users… They focused on continuously learning and pushing the envelope even though they were already far ahead of everybody else. Just like our engineers who...

This one is for the ages! New OTDR redefines enterprise fiber testing.

By now you will have heard about the new OptiFiber Pro OTDR and that’s a relief for me because I’ve been biting my tongue for a while! Now that its been announced, let me share my impressions and an overview of what makes the product unique. I will...

For the Good Times. -Looking back on the DSP Series one year after the retirement of repair and calibration services.

The end of March marks one year since calibration and service was available for the DSP 4300, and an end of an era for technicians certifying cabling with the Series. It was a long love affair. The DSP 100 was the first of the Series. It was...

Would you fight this speeding ticket? The 10% rule explained.

Ironically my desire to speed in traffic evaporated when I bought a real sports car. But this story is not about me and my desire to push the limits. It’s about you. I was stopped in the hallway by three different engineers at the recent BICSI...

Cloudy days ahead!

Everybody is talking about the cloud. Most of the chatter is about how it is changing the way we interact with data and our electronic devices. But what those of us in the cabling industry want to know about is how the cloud can represent business...

Re-upped!

I received my new RCDD certificate, good through the end of 2014, in the mail last week. My reaction was more pensive than the elation I experienced after first passing the exam in 2003. The Registered Communications Distribution Designer...

Why a Cat 6A Patch Cord Adapter has that funny little “A” next to the 6

If you’ve seen a set of Category 6 A Patch Cord Test Adapters, you may have wondered why the “A” is subscripted. It has to do with the standards that the adapters support. The little “A” denotes that the adapter meets the ISO/IEC specifications for...

The worlds most trusted cable tester reaches an imporant milestone

When I was a technician we worried about, bad cable, poorly performing jacks, and doubted our testers. The threat of ongoing callbacks and the risk of large installation re-dos keep contractors up at night. Those that have passed the test of time...

VoIP for the masses…the end of “voice grade cabling”

When I was a cable installer, we often built redundant networks for voice and data communications. The data cabling was terminated on patch panels, and the voice grade cabling was terminated on wiring blocks. There are thousands of installations...

Encircled Flux still a hot topic in the standards

Fluke Network’s fiber optic technologist Seymour Goldstein just returned from Melbourn Australia where he attended IEC SC86C/WG1, and ISO/IEC JTC 1 SC25/WG3 meetings. I caught up with him this week and got a download from his trip. Seymour indicated...

Bridge Taps Killing DSL Performance? New TS100 PRO Cable Fault Finder Detects Multiple Bridge Taps on DSL Cable Lines

Today we announced a new product, the TS100® PRO Cable Fault Finder, the first field technician tool that can detect multiple bridge taps on DSL cable lines and can detect taps up to 3,200 feet. Bridge taps are extra lengths of cable that are a...

Product Registration...Whats the point?

I don’t register products that I buy. I am not worried about another email or phone call, black helicopters, or any of that. It’s just that most of the stuff I purchase isn’t worth the effort to fill out a form, find a stamp, and mail it to the...

A visit from visionaries Koeman, Thwing, and Martins.

The other day I heard a familiar, yet unexpected voice coming from the Fluke Networks Lab. In a moment I recognized the voice of Henri Koeman, the retired long time Fluke Networks employee and veteran of the cabling standards commitees. I set my...

Blog A001

As you can tell from the title of this post, this is my first Cabling Chronicles blog. My name is Harley Lang and I’ll be the guy doing most of the blogging here, so let me introduce myself and how I got here. The story could start with a ten year...

The Truth About Twisted Pair Patch Cords Take 2

As I mentioned in the previous blog, the interest in patch cord testing caught my attention. I picked up some cords from local distributors, got a DTX CableAnalyzer a couple of sets of patch cord adapters, and hit the lab for a couple of hours. My...

The Truth about Twisted Pair Patch Cords

Non compliant cabling products have been the subject of magazine articles, discussions at conferences, publicized lawsuits, and government agency investigations during the last few years. In an article published by Cabling Installation and...