EoW July 2011

technology news

Draka Communications is upgrading its entire range of UC-branded fibre cabling solutions with OM3 and OM4 multimode technology to bend-insensitive fibre technology, giving greater value for the same price. For cable shipments beginning April onwards, MaxCap-BB-OM3/4 technology will be included as a standard feature of the cabling solution, as well as bend-friendly replacements for OM2 assembly and distribution cables. “Bend-insensitive technology represents a huge boost in functionality and solution quality for IT managers and thanks to our strong production base, we are taking this leadership position to raise the standard of all LAN and data centre cabling,” commented Carsten Fehr, EMEA marketing manager, Draka Communications. “Our decision delivers real value for end users as well as installers looking to future-proof cabling infrastructures. This is effectively a free bend-insensitive upgrade for our customers. It will eventually result in end-users enjoying higher reliability data centres, lower downtime and maintenance and savings in racks and housings thanks to higher cabling density.” Bend-insensitive fibre technology provides benefits in LAN and data centre cabling, such as increased spare system margin that improves 10G and higher network reliability. It also stimulates the possibility of new, reduced-size cable designs that are lighter in weight, improve cooling efficiency and offer reduced environmental footprints – supporting the evolution to greener data centres. Fibre deployment is growing exponentially in data infrastructures with storage, server and edge devices moving in the direction of 10Gb/s speeds and beyond, and a core network now needs to support much higher data traffic speeds. This has led to the development of 40GbE and 100GbE standards, designed to address short reach transmission, through parallel transmission over multimode optical fibre cabling, with cost advantages over LAN WDM when compared with the use of single-mode optical fibre. In parallel to the continued evolution of OM4 multimode fibre standards, bend-insensitive fibres have been developed to enable more compact cable cabinets. Smaller diameter flexible cables also increase cabling density, alleviating the pressure that massive optical cabling puts on installation practices by eliminating bending as a critical factor for data signal loss. Draka introduced the first versions of BendBright in 2002 and has since expanded the product family to five versions of bend-insensitive fibre, spanning both single-mode and multimode types. The latest developments in BendBright technology leverage the versatility of Draka’s PCVD manufacturing deposition process, using a simple, robust all-solid Single-Trench- Assisted Fibre profile. In 2009, Draka introduced MaxCap-BendBright-OM3/4, the multimode version of bend-insensitive fibre featuring high-end bending performance with full backward compatibility to standard multimode fibres. Draka Communications – Netherlands Fax : +31 20 56 89 899 Email : info@draka.com Website : www.draka.com multimode fibre cabling solutions Bend-insensitive technology for

INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITY By a big wire ropes industry, at the center of Europe A partner for installing wire drawing project is sought PO BOX 0302 Wire & Cable ASIA magazine and EuroWire magazine, 46 Holly Walk, Leamington Spa, Warwickshire CV32 4HY

38

EuroWire – July 2011