Effectively enabling your network comes down to your ability to address a range of different connectivity questions. For starters, with cabling, it’s a matter of dealing with long range, short range and twisted pair options. From there, it becomes a matter of dealing with pluggables — which goes beyond simply matching the speed, mode and fiber type.
As Fuel Member Ian P. Johnston, a security engineer and analyst, describes, “The ISO Seven Layer Networking Model is still essential to designing, maintaining, operating and troubleshooting networks. We can be thankful that Ethernet and IP now dominate layers 2 and 3, but getting the layer 1 fiber connections right seems to get harder by the month: Just as one gets used to LC and ST, along with the options for SFPs, SFP+s, LR, SR, SM, MM, etc. etc., something new like 40G or 100G comes along! Great news for data transfer, but more trouble for the engineer who's got to figure out the best connectivity options and create the BOM.”
We caught up with Chris Bihary, CEO and co-founder of Garland Technology, which provides network test access points (TAPs), to help address questions related to network connectivity. Bihary, along with Patrick Nixdorf, system engineer for Garland, will be presenting a webinar* on May 2 that addresses the basics of network connectivity, along with vendor-specific connectivity such as BiDi and MTP®. This webinar will also dive into the unique environmental considerations within Industrial Ethernet and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) settings.
