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South Cerney, UK, November 20 2017 – Leading provider of compatible optical networking infrastructure, ProLabs, has introduced its latest development to the world of transceivers with its new high-speed SFP- NBase-T transceiver.

Ideal for bi-directional communication over copper cable, the NBase-T transceiver module is a high-performance integrated duplex data link, with the ability to support 2.5G transfer speeds at cable lengths of up to 100M using Cat5e cabling and 5G using Cat 6 Cabling.

“More than 90% of structured cabling installed between 2003-2014 (approximately 70 billion meters) has been CAT5/6, with current technologies’ throughput on these cable types limited to 1Gbps. This will be a bottleneck to delivering bandwidth available from end points such as 802.11ac that have the capability to deliver greater than 1.3 Gbps with Wave 1 and greater than 2.3 Gbps with emerging Wave 2 products,” said Tony Lefebvre, VP Products & Marketing at ProLabs.

“Rather than incur the time and expense of replacing existing plant with CAT6A/7 or fiber, the NBase-T transceiver solution from ProLabs enables customers to use existing SFP+ port on their network equipment and connect over existing CAT5/6, delivering 2.5/5Gbps throughput. With the NBASE-T transceiver solution, customers can greatly increase their time-to-service and defer costly re-cabling.”

With the advent of 802.11ac with Wave 2 Wi-Fi Access Point (AP) products delivering greater than 2.3 Gbps, customers need to address the backhaul connectivity which in the case of CAT5/6 is limited to 1Gbps with current technologies. When replacing existing previous generation AP’s, the NBASE-T transceiver enables customers to keep their CAT5/6 infrastructure intact while delivering the throughput required by the newly added 802.11ac AP.

HD CCTV and high-performance computing also benefit from NBase-T’s greater throughput, allowing these and other bandwidth hungry applications to run at a higher rate over existing infrastructure, not only improving end user quality of experience but deferring costly cabling infrastructure replacement programs.

The IEEE-802.3bz/NBase-T transceiver is SFF-8431 and SF-8432 MSA compliant with low power consumption and EMI emissions. It also features MDI/MDIX crossover with unshielded and shielded cable support, multiple loopback modes for testing and troubleshooting, built-in cable monitoring and link diagnostic features, and robust die cast housing.

Gothenburg, Sweden. 18 September 2017: Tony Lefebvre, VP of Product Management & Marketing at optical transceiver specialist, ProLabs, today addressed why monitoring power consumption is integral to manage data centre environments.

Speaking at ECOC 2017, Mr Lefebvre warned that operators need to be extra vigilant as data rates increase beyond 10G to 100G.

“On a short-range optic, we are seeing typical power consumption on the transceivers go from 1W to greater than 3.5W maximum power consumption. While this efficiency per Gbps is impressive, the data centre manager is in a constant battle as they experience a greater than three times increase per link in power consumption,” he said. “The greater heat dissipation that this power consumption directly correlates with requires an increase in the cooling of the room to maintain a reasonable operating temperature and sizing backup power.”

Mr Lefebvre’s comments come as other major players in the industry realise the concern, as leaders such as Microsoft recently experimented with placing data centres under water to aid with the cooling.

“While silicon photonics solutions are being introduced into the market to combat this challenge, the mass scale deployment of this is years away, and we need an immediate solution,” he continued.

The 100G hybrid solution or Silicon Optical Bench (SiOB), from ProLabs offering is a free-space optical interconnect technology which utilises a silicon-based 45° micro-reflector to align the laser to the fibre medium, eliminating the need for the optical lens. This then reduces the optical path to less than 200 µm, leading to a 60% reduction in the optical power and resulting in less heat dissipation, and ultimately greater than 30% reduction in power consumption.

“In order for us to keep up in an ever-changing and rapidly evolving market, we need to stay one step ahead. With the demand for data rising, it is no secret that data centres consume a vast amount of energy, but we want to show our customers that we can help ensure that this consumption does not get out of control. If you think of the number of connections in a data centre, the resulting power savings and the effect that the SiOB will have on the need for less cooling is significant,” said Mr Lefebvre.

His comments come the same day that ProLabs unveiled its new logo and branding to the global market at ECOC.

“At ProLabs, we are constantly investing into research and development to make sure we are on top of the latest market trends and evolving with the industry. While our brand has evolved, our excellent customer service stays the same,” Mr Lefebvre concluded.

ProLabs offer an extensive range of optical and copper transceivers to fit the customer’s requirements. All transceivers are standards-based, compliant with the appropriate MSA (Multi-Source Agreement) and are interoperable with all major optical switching and transport platforms. Transceivers range from 100BASE-FX to 100Gb with duplex, simplex (BiDi) and WDM variants. Considering data rate, fibre utilization and network equipment options, ProLabs is your single source with over 8,000 transceivers to meet your network needs.

ProLabs’ High Density CWDM transceivers, ideal for node splitting, effectively double the amount of bandwidth, allowing an increase in the fiber by carrying multiple signals down an individual fiber connection, doubling the capacity of existing CWDM multiplexers and extending the life of existing CWDM equipment, so the customer does not have to invest in more fiber.

ECOC exhibition visitors can visit ProLabs at Booth 175 at ECOC 2017 this week in Gothenburg, Sweden.

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Now, with that in mind, I’m going to try to explain a bit about Wavelength Division Multiplexing or WDM. Before we get into the specifics of WDM, let’s start with a brief introduction to optical transmission – or light, as you may know it. You are probably aware that light rays from the sun travel massive distances to reach us, and that light bulbs perform a similar function but over much shorter distances. To send data down a fibre optic cable, we use lasers to make light. We use different wavelengths (or colours) to be able to reach short distances (up to a few hundred metres) or long distances (up to 100s of kms). By switching the laser on and off, we can transfer 1s and 0s (data bits) from one end of a fibre to the other. Oh, and we can do this very quickly. Due to the costs involved in deploying fibre and data switches, we want to get the most out of the infrastructure and send as many data bits as we can, as fast as possible at the most economical cost. That brings us to WDM. How can we send more than one set of data bits down the same fibre at the same time?

Let’s take a sideways step and look at some musical instruments. You may ask “what has this got to do with optical transmission?” And it’s a good question – the answer is that sound behaves in the same way as light. When a musician plays a note, the sound carries and is received at your ear. In effect, we are sending data bits from instrument to listener. We can increase the rate of data transfer in this case by playing faster and/or by playing more than one note simultaneously. Playing multiple notes at the same time is Wavelength Division Multiplexing. So, If I can play the piano with all of my ten fingers, I can send ten times the amount of data as using one finger. Going back to our optical fibre transmission we can achieve the same increase in data bit transfer speeds by sending multiple different coloured light beams (i.e. of differing wavelengths) down the same fibre.

There are two main variants of WDM – Coarse (CWDM) and Dense (DWDM). The big difference between the two is how many different wavelengths (notes or colours) you can squeeze into the system. If I strum all six strings on a guitar I am simultaneously playing six notes in the range of about four octaves. There is a separation between each note and the listener can easily tell which notes are being played. This is coarse or CWDM. Imagine now being able to play every single note on every fret of the same guitar, at the same time. That would be 120 notes in a similar overall range as before, but the notes are now closer together (and should still be individually distinguishable). This is dense or DWDM. Now in the optical fibre transmission system we use different colours of light alongside each other. In CWDM we can use up to 18 different colours and in DWDM this increases to around 160. You can think of CWDM as being like major colours (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue etc..) whereas DWDM would use many shades of colours (Scarlet, Pink, Crimson, Salmon, Ruby, Rust etc..). Unfortunately for this analogy the colours of light used in optical transmission are in the infra-red spectrum and are not visible to the naked eye, so they are all in fact shades of infra-red!

We have discussed the ‘how’ but what about the ‘why’? Why do we need to use all these different colours, can’t we just send the data bits faster? Well let’s go back to the musician analogy – yes Brian May can play the guitar faster than say, Ed Sheeran, but there is a physical limit to how fast they can play. It’s the same with light, although the limit has not yet been found, the cost increases exponentially as you move to the faster speeds. So, I could hire ten local guitarists for less than the cost of one Brian May and at ten times the data rate of the slowest, I can still play more notes than with one high speed guitarist. With CWDM and DWDM I can send multiple 1Gb/s or 10Gb/s signals much more cost efficiently than sending one single larger data bit flow.

Learn more about ProLabs range of WDM products.