CI&M Fiber Trends & Connections

Date: December 11, 2024
Sponsor: CommScope & Legrand
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FIBER IS CI&M

For 30 years, CI&M has been the ICT industry’s trusted source for practical, technical information about the deployment and use of fiber-optic cabling systems. In that time, data center and enterprise networks have evolved significantly, and the fiber-optic options available to them have grown accordingly.

The vast majority of CI&M’s audience is involved in the specification, design, installation, or management of fiber-optic cabling systems in a number of environments—and carry the responsibility for making decisions about fiber types, connectivity configurations, system architectures, and brand choices.

By taking part in the Fiber Trends & Connections day of learning, you will allow your organization’s technical expertise to assist and guide these decision-makers as they navigate the many possibilities in fiber-system deployment.

Roundtable: 11am ET / 10am CT / 8am PT
Duration: 1 hour

The Future of Fiber-Optic Technologies in the Data Center and Enterprise 

Summary

Fiber-optic cabling systems are the enabling technologies that will serve as the foundation of communications systems in data center and enterprise networks for years to come. As network requirements evolve, so too do the physical characteristics as well as design and installation best practices for fiber-optic cabling systems. 

This roundtable discussion examines the current state and future direction of fiber cabling. Covering applications in data centers as well as enterprise environments, this conversation describes the technological evolution of optical fiber, fiber-optic cable, and fiber connectivity that allow the medium to meet current and future user demands.

Speakers

Webchat: 1pm ET / 12pm CT / 10am PT
Duration: 30 minutes

How VSFF Connectivity Supports Higher Density in the Data Center Landscape

Summary

Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Big Data, cloud computing, and the Internet of Things (IoT) - everywhere you turn, the data center industry is actively talking about how accelerated use of these technologies will impact it now and into the future. To support this digital revolution, data center operators and facility managers must both transform and future-proof their facilities for increasingly higher-density deployments, optimized efficiency, improved performance, and elevated resiliency. It’s a tall ask and that means every aspect of a data center’s “nuts and bolts” must be put under the microscope, especially the fiber cabling connectivity within.

In this session, we will discuss the potential of a new kind of optical transceiver with inbuilt Very Small Form Factor (VSFF) connectivity to revolutionize data center architecture and network configuration. This new design enables channelization straight from the QSFP transceiver, enabling data center operators to improve optical performance and uptime protection as well as enhance network resilience and agility.

Consider this futuristic example. Conventional 400G/100G spine-leaf architectures rely on different layers of switches to breakout traffic, from 400G to 100G for example and most still have redundant paths, an A side and a B side. By performing this breakout at the switchport itself, utilizing VSFF connectors plugged into a new design of optical transceiver, it could become possible for data center operators to reduce reliance on redundant switching layers. Weaving redundancy instead, into the data center network’s fabric by channelizing directly from the transceiver itself holds significant potential to liberate data center operators to simplify their network architectures, reduce optical loss and improve uptime and resilience.

This session will provide 3 key takeaways:

1. The pressures data center operators face (shrinking optical loss tolerance values, increased uptime, network scalability) and the challenges of conventional spine-leaf architecture.

2. How data center operators can benefit now and into the future by leveraging the channelization and distribution capabilities of VSFF optical transceivers.

3. How leveraging other fiber cabling management solutions (like alignment independent multifiber interconnection systems with direct mating breakout capability) can help data center operators future-proof their facilities for the AI, IoT and ML pressures of the future.

Speaker

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