Often not considered, it is important to remember that looks really do matter!

Topics: optical fiber, network simulation, latency

In order to meet the growing needs of the local community, many municipalities have chosen to make significant investments to both deploy and maintain their own fiber optic networks for communications relating to a number of important areas:

Topics: fiber monitoring

Wide Area Network Emulators, or WANem, are designed to simulate WAN connections for use in laboratory settings, and makes for a good delay simulator as well.

By calculating the interactions between different network entities, WAN emulation creates artificial delay, bandwidth constraints and other impediments and functions.

This functions as a way to gauge applications and protocols against actual conditions. WAN characteristics like packet loss, disconnections, jitter, and time delay can be mimicked over a transparent application gateway with a WANem. This unique test condition allows users to bring the internet into their development, laboratory or test environment.

Topics: optical time delays

While fiber optic technology has been utilized for many years in the communications industry, consumers generally identify with the role that it plays in wired communications such as Cable TV, Fiber-To-The-Home, and the related networking equipment.  However, what most overlook or do not realize is the significant impact that deploying optical fibers has also had on something consumers use every day – mobile devices.  In order to achieve the high speed data levels that we have become accustomed to when using mobile devices, cell towers and their supporting networks had to be retrofitted with optical fiber cables.

Topics: optical fiber

Topics: multimode fiber, optical taps, single mode fiber

There are many scenarios in today’s networks that require the replication of an optical signal, also known as optical multicast. Some of those scenarios include video feeds or data streams that need to reach multiple endpoints simultaneously. In other scenarios an expensive 40/100Gbps port may need to be replicated. In either case, current multicasting solutions create potential problems associated with congestion, cost, and latency.

Topics: optical switching, latency

While there are a number of aspects that can be discussed in regards to optical switching technology, the focus of this article is to provide information about two key categories of optical switches – symmetric and asymmetric.  The concept is very straightforward, but still important to understand when determining which type of optical switch will be most suitable for a given application.

Topics: optical switching

As a provider of Optical Modulation Index (OMI) Instruments used for optimizing laser transmitter performance, our organization has the opportunity to work closely with many of the talented technicians and engineers at the leading CATV operators around the world.  As a result of the many discussions related to both the importance and use of OMI for maximizing system performance, there have been a number of consistent topics we have seen regarding the deployment of transmitters in the network.

Topics: omi

As the use of mobile applications and services that require increasingly more bandwidth continues to grow, wireless service providers must find cost-effective and efficient methods for meeting the bandwidth demand. Legacy transport networks are no longer capable of adequately serving today’s cell sites. Newer technologies such as GPON, WDM-PON, and Ethernet over CWDM/DWDM are all well-suited to cost-effectively address the growing bandwidth needs of wireless service providers. Regardless of the technology used, M2 Optics’ SplitLight product is an integral part of the solution.
 

Topics: WDM, PON

Currently, one of the challenges in deploying new, higher speed services to both enterprise customers as well as MDU/MTU customers is how to deliver these services using the least amount of space possible, while maintaining network flexibility and service quality.  M2 Optics’ recent release of the SplitLight^tm High-Density Platform (HDP) enables unprecedented space savings and enhanced flexibility without sacrificing performance.

Topics: WDM, PON