Computers and mice must communicate with each other in order to operate properly. Most computers and mice communicate via a method called “stream mode”—as a mouse is being moved, it... more/see it nowsends the coordinates of its new position in a constant stream of information.

However, some computers communicate via a method known as “burst” or “prompt” mode. With this method, the mouse holds its data until the CPU sends a request (or “prompt”) for it. This mode of communication presents a problem for many KVM switches, as they normally pass along mouse coordinates in a stream mode. This results in a CPU receiving data when it isn’t expecting it, and the mouse simply won’t function properly.

All ServSwitch™ products contain support for stream-mode CPUs, and several ServSwitch products support both stream and burst/prompt modes. Call our FREE Tech Support about requirements for your application. collapse

Many headset ear capsules fit awkwardly in the ear and make telephone professionals uncomfortable. If you wear a headset all day, that can really affect productivity. When choosing a headset,... more/see it nowmake sure the ear capsule has a hinge on it. This design enables you to adjust the headset for all-day comfort and better productivity. collapse

A quick disconnect enables you to disconnect your headset without disconnecting your call or taking off your headset. This option is expecially convenient when you need to leave your desk... more/see it nowand keep your caller on the line. When you return to your desk, all you need to do is reconnect the plug and you’re talking again. The quick disconnect works well for call centers and busy offices where files aren’t at your desk or when you need to speak to a supervisor. collapse

Frequency-Hopping Spread Spectrum wireless communication provides error-free transmission, top security, and high levels of throughput without the need for an FCC site license. The key to Spread Spectrum is a... more/see it nowfrequency-hopping transceiver.

Narrow-band frequency hoppers use a predefined algorithm to maintain synchronization and high throughput between master and remote modems. They achieve this by continually switching or “hopping” from one transmission frequency to another throughout the Spread Spectrum band. The sequence of frequencies is very difficult to predict and thus nearly impossible to eavesdrop on or jam. If interference is encountered at any particular frequency, the built-in error correction detects it and resends the data packet at the next frequency hop. Because EMI/RFI interference rarely affects the entire available bandwidth, and each frequency hop is at least 6 MHz, the radio transmitter has access to as many as 100 frequencies within the spectrum to avoid interference and ensure that data gets through. collapse

Sags
The Threat — A sag is a decline in the voltage level. Also known as “brownouts,” sags are the most common power problem.

The Cause — Sags can be caused... more/see it nowlocally by the start-up demands of electrical devices such as motors, compressors, and elevators. Sags may also happen during periods of high electrical use, such as during a heat wave.

The Effect — Sags are often the cause of “unexplained” computer glitches such as system crashes, frozen keyboards, and data loss. Sags can also reduce the efficiency and lifespan of electrical motors.

Blackouts
The Threat — A blackout is a total loss of power.

The Cause — Blackouts are caused by excessive demand on the power grid, an act of nature such as lightning or an earthquake, or a human accident such as a car hitting a power pole or a backhoe digging in the wrong place.

The Effect — Of course a blackout brings everything to a complete stop. You also lose any unsaved data stored in RAM and may even lose the total contents of your hard drive.

Spikes
The Threat — A spike, also called an impulse, is an instantaneous, dramatic increase in voltage.

The Cause — A spike is usually caused by a nearby lightning strike but may also occur when power is restored after a blackout.

The Effect — A spike can damage or completely destroy electrical components and also cause data loss.

Surges
The Threat — A surge is an increase in voltage lasting at least 1/120 of a second.

The Cause — When high-powered equipment such as an air conditioner is powered off, the excess voltage is dissipated though the power line causing a surge.

The Effect — Surges stress delicate electronic components causing them to wear out before their time.

Noise
The Threat — Electrical noise, more technically called electromagnetic interference (EMI) and radio frequency interference (RFI), interrupts the smooth sine wave expected from electrical power.

The Cause — Noise has many causes including nearby lightning, load switching, industrial equipment, and radio transmitters. It may be intermittent or chronic.

The Effect — Noise introduces errors into programs and data files. collapse

If you manage a heavy-traffic data network and you demand high bandwidth for high speeds, Black Box has what you need to send your data digitally over super-fast T1 or... more/see it nowE1 communication lines.

Both T1 and E1 are foundations of global voice communication.
Developed more than 30 years ago and commercially available since 1983, T1 and E1 go virtually anywhere phone lines go, but faster.

T1 sends data up to 1.544 Mbps. E1 supports speeds to 2.048 Mbps. No matter where you need to connect—North, South, or Central America, Europe, or the Pacific Rim—T1 and E1 can get your data there—fast!

Both services provide flexibility for a multitude of applications.
Whether you need to drive a private, point-to-point line or a high-speed circuit; provide corporate access to the Internet or inbound access to your own webserver; or support a voice/data/fax/video WAN that extends halfway around the world, T1 or E1 can make the connection.

Both offer cost-effective connections.
In recent years, competition among telco service providers has led to increasingly more affordable prices for T1 and E1 services. In fact, most companies seriously considering a shift to T1 or E1 find they can negotiate even better rates with just a little comparative cost analysis.

Typical applications:
• Trunking of V.90 and ISDN remote connection to a central location.
• Accessing public Frame Relay networks for voice, fax, and data.
• Merging voice and data traffic. A single T1 or E1 line can give you several additional voice and data lines at no additional cost.
• Making LAN connections. If you’re linking LANs, a T1 or E1 line offers excellent performance.
• Sending bandwidth-intensive data such as CAD/CAM, MRI, CAT-scan images, and other graphics with large files. collapse

Fiber optic cables have different types of mechanical connections. The type of connection determines the quality of the fiber optic lightwave transmission. The different types we’ll discuss here are the... more/see it nowflat-surface, Physical Contact (PC), Ultra Physical Contact (UPC), and Angled Physical Contact (APC).

The original fiber connector is a flat-surface connection, or a flat connector. When mated, an air gap naturally forms between the two surfaces from small imperfections in the flat surfaces. The back reflection in flat connectors is about -14 dB or roughly 4%.

As technology progresses, connections improve. The most common connection now is the PC connector. Physical Contact connectors are just that—the end faces and fibers of two cables actually touch each other when mated.

In the PC connector, the two fibers meet, as they do with the flat connector, but the end faces are polished to be slightly curved or spherical. This eliminates the air gap and forces the fibers into contact. The back reflection is about -40 dB. This connector is used in most applications.

An improvement to the PC is the UPC connector. The end faces are given an extended polishing for a better surface finish. The back reflection is reduced even more to about -55 dB. These connectors are often used in digital, CATV, and telephony systems.

The latest technology is the APC connector. The end faces are still curved but are angled at an industry-standard eight degrees. This maintains a tight connection, and it reduces back reflection to about -70 dB. These connectors are preferred for CATV and analog systems.

PC and UPC connectors have reliable, low insertion losses. But their back reflection depends on the surface finish of the fiber. The finer the fiber grain structure, the lower the back reflection. And when PC and UPC connectors are continually mated and remated, back reflection degrades at a rate of about 4 to 6 dB every 100 matings for a PC connector. APC connector back reflection does not degrade with repeated matings. collapse

Black Box offers several headsets for office use. Choosing the right one for your application depends on your needs.

First, do you need a monaural, binaural, or stereo headset? Monaural headsets... more/see it nowhave only one earpiece, making it easy to have over-the-phone conversations as well as face-to-face interactions, such as in a busy call center setting (see models HS402 or 64338-31, for example). Binaural headsets have two earpieces, which are on the same audio channel (HS113A or 2009-820-105). They are great when a user needs to have long, over-the-phone conversations. Stereo headpieces also have two earpieces, but operate on distinct audio channels. These last types of earpieces are best for listening to music.

Secondly, comfort is a big factor, especially if you have to wear a headset all day. Do you want an over-the-head model? Or would you prefer to wear your headset behind the ear? Headsets with two earpieces are almost always over-the-head models (see H16N). For long-wear applications and optimum sound quality, these are a good choice. Over-the-ear models are better for in-office interactions, or for when you are on and off the phone all day (26089-11 or M140). The sound quality is still excellent, but they enable you to also be aware of your environment.

Thirdly, choose an amplifier that matches your telephone and the way you work. The Two-Prong Carbon Amplifier (HS101A) is designed for phones that have a two-prong headset port. Several headsets have amplifiers built-in, such as the Elite Call Center Headset (HS111A).

Most Black Box headsets are noise-canceling models that reduce background sounds. They are ideal for busy office environments.

We have wireless headset models, plus cords, plugs, and adapters that enable extra mobility during calls. In addition, we carry extra parts such as earhooks, ear pads, headbands, and microphone covers. collapse

When the ServSwitch™ brand of KVM switches was first introduced, there were only two ways to switch: from front-panel push buttons or by sending command sequences from the keyboard. While... more/see it nowthis was more convenient than having a separate keyboard, monitor, and mouse for each CPU, the operator still had to remember key combinations and which server was connected to which port—leading to many cryptic, scribbled notes attached to the switch and to the workstation.

But with the advent of on-screen menus, an operator can use easy-to-read, pop-up menus to identify and select CPUs. It’s even possible to give each CPU a name that makes sense to you—names like “MIS Server,” “Accounting Server,” and so on.
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What is Fibre Channel?
Fibre Channel is a set of communication standards designed to provide high-speed data transfer over a duplex, serial interface. It’s an open standard that supports multiple protocols... more/see it nowincluding higher-level protocols, such as FDDI, SCSI, HIPPI, and IPI, to manage data transfer.

Although it operates at a range of 133 Mbps to 4 Gbps, Fibre Channel is most commonly used at speeds of 1 or 2 Gbps. A working standards group recently announced that 10-Gbps speeds are expected in soon.

Why is it called Fibre Channel?
Originally, Fibre Channel was designed to support only fiber. When copper was added, the International Standards Organization (ISO) task force changed the spelling of fiber to fibre instead of renaming the technology.

Fibre Channel history.
Fibre Channel was first developed in 1988, and the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) formed a committee in 1989. To ensure interoperability, IBM®, Hewlett-Packard®, and Sun Microsystems® formed the FCSI (Fibre Channel Systems Initiative), a temporary organization, in 1992. FCSI later dissolved, and development was handed over to the FCA (Fibre Channel Association) in 1994. ANSI accepted Fibre Channel as a standard in 1994.

The best of both worlds.
This hardware-based standard combines the best of both channel and network communication methods into one I/O interface. It takes advantage of hardware-intensive, quicker point-to-point channel links that offer low overhead, such as SCSI bus technology, as well as the broad connectivity and long-distance benefits of software-intensive network technology.

Where Fibre Channel is used.
Fibre Channel is used to transfer large amounts of data quickly between supercomputers, mainframes, workstations, desktop computers, storage devices, displays, and other peripherals.

Fibre Channel offers reliability, scalability, congestion-free data flow, Gigabit bandwidth, compatibility with multiple topologies and protocols, flow control, self management, hot pluggability, speed, cost efficiency, loop resiliency, and distance. This makes it ideal for large data operations such as Internet/intranets, data warehousing, networked storage, integrated audio/video, real-time computing, on-line services, and imaging.

The most popular application for this technology right now is Storage Area Networks (SANs). Independent methods of centralized storage management within a SAN (e.g., RAID, tape backup or library, CD-ROM library) run more efficiently with a Fibre Channel backbone.

Fibre Channel topologies.
Fibre Channel can be connected by three methods. In all cases, the topology of the network is transparent to the attached devices.

Point to point is the simplest topology, which uses simple bidirectional links between two connected devices.

Arbitrated loop is the most common topology and the most complex. It is distributed, connecting up to 126 devices across shared media, and it offers shared bandwidth. Two ports on the loop establish a point-to-point, full-duplex connection through arbitration among all ports.

The cross-point or fabric-switched topology uses 24-bit addressing to connect up to 2 (to the 24th) devices in a cross-point switched configuration. This enables many devices to communicate at the same time and does not require shared media.

Fibre Channel layers.
Fibre Channel protocol is divided into five hierarchical layers: The three bottom layers, FC-0–FC-2, define the physical transmission standard. Layers FC-3 and FC-4 address interfaces with other network protocols.

FC-0: Media and interface layer that defines the physical link.

FC-1: Transmission encode/decode layer. Information is encoded 8 bits at a time into a 10-bit transmission character (8B/10B from IBM).

FC-2: Signaling protocol layer that serves as the transport mechanism performing basic signaling and framing. FC-2 includes the following classes of service:
• Class 1 provides dedicated connections. Intermix is an optional type of Class 1 service in which Class 1 frames are guaranteed a special amount of bandwidth.
• Class 2 is a frame-switched, connectionless service, also known as multiplex. It guarantees delivery and confirms receipt of traffic.
• Class 3 is a one-to-many, connectionless, frame-switched service. It’s similar to Class 2 except it uses buffer-to-buffer flow control and does not confirm frame delivery.

FC-3: Common-services layer that provides common services required for advanced features such as striping, hunt groups, and multicast.

FC-4: Upper layer for protocol mapping of network and channel data transmitting concurrently over the same physical interface.

Fibre Channel media.
Fibre Channel runs at up to 1 Gbps over copper or fiber, but for higher speeds, fiber is required. Copper-wire cable can be video coax, miniature coax, or, most commonly, shielded twisted pair with a DB9 or HSSDC connector. Fiber choices include 62.5- or 50-µm multimode and 7- or 9-µm single-mode fiber, all with an SC connector.

Other Fibre Channel equipment includes disk enclosures, drivers, extenders, hubs, interface converters, host bus adapters, routers, switches, and SCSI bridges. collapse