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The Ethernet standard supports 10-, 100-, and 1000-Mbps speeds. It supports both half- and full-duplex configurations over twisted-pair and fiber cable, as well as half-duplex over coax cable.

However, the Thick... more/see it nowand ThinNet Ethernet standards support only 10-Mbps speeds.

Standard (Thick) Ethernet (10BASE5)
• Uses “Thick” coax cable with N-type connectors for a backbone and a transceiver cable with 15-pin connectors from the transceiver to the network interface card.
• The maximum number of segments is five, but only three can have computers attached. The others are for network extension.
• The maximum length of one segment is 500 meters.
• The maximum total length of all segments is 2500 meters.
• The maximum length of one transceiver cable is 50 meters.
• The minimum distance between transceivers is 2.5 meters.
• No more than 100 transceiver connections per segment are allowed. A repeater counts as a station for both segments.

Thin Ethernet (ThinNet) (10BASE2)
• Uses “Thin” coax cable (RG-58A/U or RG-58C/U).
• The maximum length of one segment is 185 meters.
• The maximum number of segments is five.
• The maximum total length of all segments is 925 meters.
• The minimum distance between T-connectors is 0.5 meters.
• No more than 30 connections per segment are allowed.
• T-connectors must be plugged directly into each device. collapse

1. Quality. Your system’s performance depends on the quality of your SCSI cables. Without high-quality cables specifically designed for SCSI applications, you could be jeopardizing your SCSI lifeline. Inferior cables,... more/see it nowadapters, and terminators can cause random errors, data corruption, or even a system crash! Black Box® SCSI Cables and components are the absolute best-quality products. And they’re guaranteed for life.

2. Length. For peak network performance, make sure your cables are the right length. As cable runs get longer, signals weaken and are more susceptible to noise. Always use the shortest cable for the task. And stay within the SCSI-1 and SCSI-2 standards of six meters or three meters for Fast SCSI. Remember, this is the total length of the bus, including all internal and external cables. collapse

DisplayPort is a digital video interface that was designed by the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) in 2006 and has been produced since 2008. It competes directly with HDMI®. Unlike... more/see it nowHDMI, however, DisplayPort is an open standard with no royalties.

This digital interface is used primarily between a computer and a monitor or a high-definition television and is built into many computer chipsets produced today. It’s incredibly versatile, with the capability to deliver digital video, audio, bidirectional communications, and accessory power over a single connector.

DisplayPort v1.1 supports a maximum of 10.8 Gbps over a 2-meter cable; v1.2 supports up to 21.6 Gbps. DisplayPort v1.2 also enables you to daisychain up to four monitors with only a single output cable. It also offers the future promise of DisplayPort Hubs that would operate much like a USB hub.

The standard DisplayPort connector is very compact and features latches that don’t add to the connector’s size. Unlike HDMI, a DisplayPort connector is easily lockable with a pinch-down locking hood, so it can't be easily dislodged. However, a quick squeeze of the connector releases the latch.

DisplayPort supports cable lengths of up to 15 meters with maximum resolutions at cable lengths up to 3 meters. Bidirectional signaling enables DisplayPort to both send and receive data from an attached device.

With the proper adapters, DisplayPort cable can carry DVI and HDMI signals, although this doesn’t work the other way around—DVI and HDMI cable can’t carry DisplayPort. Because DisplayPort can provide power to attached devices, DisplayPort to HDMI or DVI adapters don’t need a separate power supply.

The Mini DisplayPort (MiniDP or mDP) is a miniatured version of the DisplayPort interface. It carries both digital and analog computer video and audio signals. Apple® introduced the Mini DisplayPort connector in 2008 and it is now on all new Mac® computers. It is also being used in newer PC notebooks. This small form factor connector fully supports the VESA DisplayPort protocol. It is particularly useful on systems where space is at a premium, such as laptops, or to support multiple connectors on reduced height add-in cards.

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There are two styles of fiber optic cable construction: loose tube and tight buffered. Both contain some type of strengthening member, such as aramid yarn, stainless steel wire strands, or... more/see it noweven gel-filled sleeves. But each is designed for very different environments.

Loose tube cables, the older of the two cable types, are specifically designed for harsh outdoor environments. They protect the fiber core, cladding, and coating by enclosing everything within semi-rigid protective sleeves or tubes. In loose-tube cables that hold more than one optical fiber, each individually sleeved core is bundled loosely within an all-encompassing outer jacket.

Many loose-tube cables also have a water-resistant gel that surrounds the fibers. This gel helps protect them from moisture, so the cables are great for harsh, high-humidity environments where water or condensation can be a problem. The gel-filled tubes can expand and contract with temperature changes, too.

But gel-filled loose-tube cables are not the best choice when cable needs to be submerged or where it’s routed around multiple bends. Excess cable strain can force fibers to emerge from the gel.

Tight-buffered cables, in contrast, are optimized for indoor applications. Because they’re sturdier than loose-tube cables, they’re best suited for moderate-length LAN/WAN connections, long indoor runs, and even direct burial. Tight-buffered cables are also recommended for underwater applications.

Instead of a gel layer or sleeve to protect the fiber core, tight-buffered cables use a two-layer coating. One is plastic; the other is waterproof acrylate. The acrylate coating keeps moisture away from the cable, like the gel-filled sleeves do for loose-tube cables. But this acrylate layer is bound tightly to the plastic fiber layer, so the core is never exposed (as it can be with gel-filled cables) when the cable is bent or compressed underwater.

Tight-buffered cables are also easier to install because there’s no messy gel to clean up and they don’t require a fan-out kit for splicing or termination. You can crimp connectors directly to each fiber.

Want the best of both worlds? Try a hybrid, breakout-style fiber optic cable, which combines tight-buffered cables within a loose-tube housing. collapse

10-Gigabit Ethernet, sometimes called 10-GbE or 10 GigE, is the latest improvement on the Ethernet standard, ratified in 2003 for fiber as the 802.3ae standard, in 2004 for twinax cable... more/see it now as the 802.3ak standard, and in 2006 for UTP as the 802.3an standard.

10-Gigabit Ethernet offers ten times the speed of Gigabit Ethernet. This extraordinary throughput plus compatibility with existing Ethernet standards has resulted in 10-Gigabit Ethernet quickly becoming the new standard for high-speed network backbones, largely supplanting older technologies such as ATM over SONET. 10-Gigabit Ethernet has even made inroads in the area of storage area networks (SAN) where Fibre Channel has long been the dominant standard. This new Ethernet standard offers a fast, simple, relatively inexpensive way to incorporate super high-speed links into your network.

Because 10-Gigabit Ethernet is simply an extension of the existing Ethernet standards family, it’s a true Ethernet standard—it’s totally backwards compatible and retains full compatibility with 10-/100-/1000-Mbps Ethernet. It has no impact on existing Ethernet nodes, enabling you to seamlessly upgrade your network with straightforward upgrade paths and scalability.

10-Gigabit Ethernet is less costly to install than older high-speed standards such as ATM. And not only is it relatively inexpensive to install, but the cost of network maintenance and management also stays low—10-Gigabit Ethernet can easily be managed by local network administrators.

10-Gigabit Ethernet is also more efficient than other high-speed standards. Because it uses the same Ethernet frames as earlier Ethernet standards, it can be integrated into your network using switches rather than routers. Packets don’t need to be fragmented, reassembled, or translated for data to get through.

Unlike earlier Ethernet standards, which operate in half- or full-duplex, 10-Gigabit Ethernet operates in full-duplex only, eliminating collisions and abandoning the CSMA/CD protocol used to negotiate half-duplex links. It maintains MAC frame compatibility with earlier Ethernet standards with 64- to 1518-byte frame lengths. The 10-Gigabit standard does not support jumbo frames, although there are proprietary methods for accommodating them.

Fiber 10-Gigabit Ethernet standards
There are two groups of physical-layer (PHY) 10-Gigabit Ethernet standards for fiber: LAN-PHY and WAN-PHY.

LAN-PHY is the most common group of standards. It’s used for simple switch and router connections over privately owned fiber and uses a line rate of 10.3125 Gbps with 64B/66B encoding.

The other group of 10-Gigabit Ethernet standards, WAN-PHY, is used with SONET/SDH interfaces for wide area networking across cities, states—even internationally.

LAN-PHY
10GBASE-SR (Short-Range) is a serial short-range fiber standard that operates over two multimode fibers. It has a range of 26 to 82 meters (85 to 269 ft.) over legacy 62.5-µm 850-nm fiber and up to 300 meters (984 ft.) over 50-µm 850-nm fiber.

10GBASE-LR (Long-Range) is a serial long-range 10-Gbps Ethernet standard that operates at ranges of up to 25 kilometers (15.5 mi.) on two 1310-nm single-mode fibers.

10GBASE-ER (Extended-Range) is similar to 10GBASE-LR but supports distances up to 40 kilometers (24.9 mi.) over two 1550-nm single-mode fibers.

10GBASE-LX4 uses Coarse-Wavelength Division Multiplexing (CWDM) to achieve ranges of 300 meters (984 ft.) over two legacy 850-nm multimode fibers or up to 10 kilometers (6.2 mi.) over two 1310-nm single-mode fibers. This standard multiplexes four data streams over four different wavelengths in the range of 1300 nm. Each wavelength carries 3.125 Gbps to achieve 10-Gigabit speed.

WAN-PHY
In fiber-based Gigabit Ethernet, the 10GBASE-SR, 10GBASE-LR, and 10GBASE-ER LAN-PHY standards have WAN-PHY equivalents called 10GBASE-SW, 10GBASE-LW, and 10GBASE-EW. There is no WAN-PHY standard corresponding to 10GBASE-LX4.

WAN-PHY standards are designed to operate across high-speed systems such as SONET and SDH. These systems are often telco operated and can be used to provide high-speed data delivery worldwide. WAN-PHY 10-Gigabit Ethernet operates within SDH and SONET using an SDH/SONET frame running at 9.953 Gbps without the need to directly map Ethernet frames into SDH/SONET.

WAN-PHY is transparent to data—from the user’s perspective it looks exactly the same as LAN-PHY.

10-Gigabit Ethernet over Copper
10GBASE-CX4
10GBASE-CX4 is a standard that enables Ethernet to run over CX4 cable, which consists of four twinaxial copper pairs bundled into a single cable. CX4 cable is also used in high-speed InfiniBand® and Fibre Channel storage applications. Although CX4 cable is somewhat less expensive to install than fiber optic cable, it’s limited to distances of up to 15 meters. Because this standard uses such a specialized cable at short distances, 10GBASE-CX4 is generally used only in limited data center applications such as connecting servers or switches.

10GBASE-Kx
10GBASE-Kx is backplane 10-Gigabit Ethernet and consists of two standards. 10GBASE-KR is a serial standard compatible with 10GBASE-SR, 10GBASE-LR, and 10GBASE-ER. 10GBASE-KX4 is compatible with 10GBASE-LX4. These standards use up to 40 inches of copper printed circuit board with two connectors in place of cable. These very specialized standards are used primarily for switches, routers, and blade servers in data center applications.

10GBASE-T
10GBASE-T is the 10-Gigabit standard that uses the familiar shielded or unshielded copper UTP cable. It operates at distances of up to 55 meters (180 ft.) over existing Category 6 cabling or up to 100 meters (328 ft.) over augmented Category 6, or “6a,” cable, which is specially designed to reduce crosstalk between UTP cables. Category 6a cable is somewhat bulkier than Category 6 cable but retains the familiar RJ-45 connectors.

To send data at these extremely high speeds across four-pair UTP cable, 10GBASE-T uses sophisticated digital signal processing to suppress crosstalk between pairs and to remove signal reflections.

10-Gigabit Ethernet Applications
> 10-Gigabit Ethernet is already being deployed in applications requiring extremely high bandwidth:
> As a lower-cost alternative to Fibre Channel in storage area networking (SAN) applications.
> High-speed server interconnects in server clusters.
> Aggregation of Gigabit segments into 10-Gigabit Ethernet trunk lines.
> High-speed switch-to-switch links in data centers.
> Extremely long-distance Ethernet links over public SONET infrastructure.

Although 10-Gigabit Ethernet is currently being implemented only by extremely high-volume users such as enterprise networks, universities, telecommunications carriers, and Internet service providers, it’s probably only a matter of time before it’s delivering video to your desktop. Remember that only a few years ago, a mere 100-Mbps was impressive enough to be called “Fast Ethernet.” collapse

V.35 is the ITU (formerly CCITT) standard termed “Data Transmission at 48 kbps Using 60–108 KHz Group-Band Circuits.“

Basically, V.35 is a high-speed serial interface designed to support both higher data... more/see it nowrates and connectivity between DTEs (data-terminal equipment) or DCEs (data-communication equipment) over digital lines.

Recognizable by its blocky, 34-pin connector, V.35 combines the bandwidth of several telephone circuits to provide the high-speed interface between a DTE or DCE and a CSU/DSU (Channel Service Unit/Data Service Unit).

Although it’s commonly used to support speeds ranging anywhere from 48 to 64 kbps, much higher rates are possible. For instance, maximum V.35 cable distances can theoretically range up to 4000 feet (1200 m) at speeds up to 100 kbps. Actual distances will depend on your equipment and cable.

To achieve such high speeds and great distances, V.35 combines both balanced and unbalanced voltage signals on the same interface. collapse

MPO stands for multifiber push-on connector. It is a connector for multifiber ribbon cable that generally contains 6, 8, 12, or 24 fibers. It is defined by IEC-61754-7 and EIA/TIA-604-5-D,... more/see it nowalso known as FOCIS 5. The MPO connector, combined with lightweight ribbon cable, represents a huge technological advance over traditional multifiber cables. It’s lighter, more compact, easier to install, and less expensive.

A single MPO connector replaces up to 24 standard connectors. This very high density means lower space requirements and reduced costs for your installation. Traditional, tight-buffered multifiber cable needs to have each fiber individually terminated by a skilled technician. But MPO fiber optic cable, which carries multiple fibers, comes preterminated. Just plug it in and you’re ready to go.BR>
MPO connectors feature an intuitive push-pull latching sleeve mechanism with an audible click upon connection and are easy to use. The MPO connector is similar to the MT-RJ connector. The MPO’s ferrule surface of 2.45 x 6.40 mm is slightly bigger than the MT-RJ’s, and the latching mechanism works with a sliding sleeve latch rather than a push-in latch.

The MPO connector can be either male or female. You can tell the male connector by the two alignment pins protruding from the end of the ferrule. The MPO ferrule is generally flat for multimode applications and angled for single-mode applications.

MPO connectors are also commonly called MTP® connectors, which is a registered trademark of US Conec. The MTP connector is an MPO connector collapse

Many new, high-quality Mini Disc, pro-audio, DAT (Digital Audio Tape), CD, DVD, and laser disc players, as well as digital amplifiers, DSS satellite receivers, and computer sound cards, are manufactured... more/see it nowwith digital optical output connectors.

These connectors attach to optical cables, which are constructed with a PVC jacket and a plastic core. The cables transfer information accurately over short distances via digital light signals with low loss and no distortion.

Digital optical cable with plastic-core construction is less expensive than fiber optic cable with a glass core, but it still provides the benefits of optical transmission over short distances.

Digital audio makes it possible to use high-quality digital-to-analog converters, which help to maintain the integrity of sound signals from high-end electronic devices.

The two types of connectors associated with digital optical transmission are TOSLINK®, a Toshiba® trademark, and the 3.5-mm Mini Plug connector. collapse

Channel solution. You hear the term a lot these days to describe complete copper or fiber cabling systems. But what exactly is a channel solution and what are its benefits?... more/see it now

A definition.
A channel solution is a cabling system from the data center to the desktop where every cable, jack, and patch panel is designed to work together and give you consistent end-to-end performance when compared with the EIA/TIA requirements.

Its benefits.
A channel solution is beneficial because you have some assurance that your cabling components will perform as specified. Without that assurance, one part may not be doing its job, so your entire system may not be performing up to standard, which is a problem — especially if you rely on bandwidth-heavy links for video and voice.

What to look for.
There are a lot of channel solutions advertised on the Internet and elsewhere. So what exactly should you be looking for?

For one, make sure it’s a fully tested, guaranteed channel solution. The facts show an inferior cabling system can cause up to 70 percent of network downtime — even though it usually represents only 5 percent of an initial network investment. So don’t risk widespread failure by skimping on a system that doesn’t offer guaranteed channel performance. You need to make sure the products are engineered to meet or go beyond the key measurements for CAT5e or CAT6 performance.

And, sure, they may be designed to work together, but does the supplier absolutely guarantee how well they perform as part of a channel — end to end? Don’t just rely on what the supplier says. They may claim their products meet CAT5e or CAT6 requirements, but the proof is in the performance. Start by asking if the channel solution is independently tested and certified by a reputable third party. There are a lot of suppliers out there who don’t have the trademarked ETL approval logo, for example.

What ETL Verified means.
The ETL logo certifies that a channel solution has been found to be in compliance with recognized standards. To ensure consistent top quality, Black Box participates in independent third-party testing by InterTek Testing Services/ETL Semko, Inc. Once a quarter, an Intertek inspector visits Black Box and randomly selects cable and cabling products for testing.

The GigaTrue® CAT6 and GigaBase® CAT5e Solid Bulk Cable are ETL Verified at the component level to verify that they conform to the applicable industry standards. The GigaTrue® CAT6 and GigaBase® CAT5e Channels, consisting of bulk cable, patch cable, jacks, patch panels, and wiring blocks, are tested and verified according to industry standards in a LAN environment under InterTek’s Cabling System Channel Verification Program. For the latest test results, contact our FREE Tech Support. collapse