This new way of safely delivering hundreds or even thousands of watts of power over longer distances promises to disrupt the market—in a good way.

WHAT IS FAULT-MANAGED POWER?
Fault-managed power (FMP) systems can have a peak voltage output of up to 450 V with no wattage limit on the power delivered. While these voltage levels are frequently considered dangerous, FMP systems fundamentally differ from power-limited systems in how they mitigate risk of shock and fire. Rather than limiting power at the source, FMP systems are defined by their ability to limit the amount of energy that can go into a fault.

Read this informative article in BICSI’s ICT Today magazine. 

The INFORM Consumers Act (Integrity, Notification, and Fairness in Online Retail Marketplaces for Consumers Act) is bipartisan federal legislation passed by Congress and signed by the President. It is critical in helping law enforcement, manufacturers, retailers, and online marketplaces of all sizes work together to protect consumers from bad actors peddling counterfeit and stolen goods.

Why has CCCA supported this bill?
As part of a coalition from several industries to support this bill since 2021, CCCA has testified to Congress about the proliferation of counterfeit communications cable on the market that is sold through online retailers. Many companies selling communication cables online don’t list any information for the consumer to contact them, which is incredibly distressing when a consumer discovers it is counterfeit or non-compliant cable. It is even more upsetting when the buyer/consumer realizes the danger of counterfeit communications cable. 

CCCA announces the election of new officers. Brian Ensign, VP Marketing of Superior Essex, was elected as CCCA Chairman, Jeff Hofstetter of Wesco, Secretary and James Malkemus of Prysmian, Treasurer. Joining the officers on the Executive Committee are Neil Wilkin of OCC and Eric von Brockdorff of Chemours.

Brian Ensign follows Eric Lawrence, of Berk-Tek, a Leviton Company, who was CCCA chairman since 2014. “I look forward to serving as CCCA’s next Chairman and building on the successes of past Chairmen who guided CCCA to where it is today,” states Ensign. “My goal is to continue a tradition of growth by broadening our educational programs on new technology and supporting CCCA initiatives that strengthen the quality and integrity of our industry. We must continue our anti-counterfeit efforts and educational programs to stem the constant influx of low-quality cable and connectivity products, which present a serious public safety hazard.” 

Local area networks (LANs) have historically been designed in a way that ensures all end devices are within 100 meters (m) of a telecommunications room (TRs) to comply with industry cabling standards. Now with the adoption of smart building technologies, more devices than ever are being connected to and powered by the network. Today’s LAN environments commonly encounter situations where a connected end device is located too far from the nearest TR to maintain the 100 m distance limitation.

It has long been known that twisted-pair copper cabling is one standards-based option for connecting devices beyond 100 m, but there is confusion in the industry about the distances that twisted-pair copper cables can reliably support at various transmission speeds and remote powering levels. To strategically address scenarios where a device is located beyond 100 m with reduced risk, ICT professionals need to understand the pros and cons of the various options, technical factors involved, and key considerations surrounding testing to help them identify reality and navigate claims.

This article is intended to provide the reader with a guide to the key changes in the 2023 National Electrical Code that are of interest to manufacturers, installers, distributors and users of Class 1, 2, 3 & 4, communications, fire alarm and optical fiber cables.

The National Electrical Code^® (NEC®) is published by the National Fire Protection Association with revisions on a three-year schedule. The 2023 NEC, which replaces the 2020 NEC, will be issued by NFPA in August 2022. 

This article discusses various technology advancements that have paved the way to next-generation fiber implementations in the data center, standards-based approaches to 400 Gig, and the impact on fiber connectivity.

It also discusses ongoing developments in optical transceiver technology and applications standards for imminent 800 Gig and future Terabit applications and how they may potentially further impact fiber connectivity in the future. 

Purchasers, specifiers, installers and inspectors of telecommunication cables placed in risers or plenums during building construction or upgrade must be aware that cables that do not meet safety requirements present a significant risk of hastening the spread of fire. This represents an unacceptable risk — and avoidable hazard — to building occupants and owners. 

This article takes a look at how recent data center trends and the impact of COVID-19 are fueling the need for high-speed, low-latency connections and fast, flexible and cost-effective data center expansion. It examines why and how enterprise business is shifting to more privately hosted IT workloads via hyperconverged techniques and why this approach requires structured cabling.

While data center growth was already expected to continue increasing over the next decade, the COVID-19 pandemic is now changing the way people live and work and the way the world does business, further driving data center expansion. Data centers are needing to quickly add more capacity to support remote IT capabilities, enhanced e-commerce, increased video streaming and gaming, and a greater need for applications like telemedicine, distance learning and online collaboration. And they’re focusing heavily on connectivity to do so.

Click Read More for CCCA’s article in Cabling Installation & Maintenance Magazine.  

The evolution and growth of applications and new technologies are driving the need for high-performance and high-value cable, a crucial infrastructure necessity which is often overlooked or thought of as a “commodity”. Today’s critical applications require 100% reliability and ever higher data transmission rates over this cable, now with the added duty of Powering over Ethernet (PoE), also coined “Power over Everything” in smart building applications. Pushing power over the same conductors as data can also increase heat within the cable, potentially causing signal degradation and a fire hazard if inferior cabling is installed.

Click Read More for CCCA’s article in Cabling Installation & Maintenance Magazine.  

The convergence of previously separate cabling systems is adding new dimensions to cabling performance and safety requirements, as is evidenced by revisions to the National Electrical Code (NEC®) starting with the 2017 edition and continuing with the 2020 edition.

This paper takes a look at the current trends in data center architecture to support high-speed, low-latency performance, as well as advancements in technology and ensuing standards developments that are driving 25, 50 and 100 Gb/s server connections in both the enterprise and cloud/hyperscale data center environment. While there is no single infrastructure design for every data center, the current trends and developments make it clear that modern data center environments will benefit from the use of standards-based fiber optic structured cabling.

Click Read More for CCCA’s article in Mission Critical Magazine. Click here for a Free Video Presentation on the topic. Click Read More for the article in Mission Critical magazine.