TIA sets objectives for 40G over twisted pair

In a post on the Network Infrastructure Blog, Valerie Maguire of Siemon provides some detail on the work being done within the TIA TR-42.7 Copper Cabling Subcommittee to establish specifications for 40-Gbit/sec or higher transmission over twisted-pair copper cabling.

Maguire states that these next-generation cabling parameters are expected to be published in 2014, in addendum 1 to TIA-568-C.2. She further explains that four task groups have been formed to investigate these parameters. The subjects being investigated are Application Space, Capacity, Cables and Connectors.

The blog post also includes a table that lists a series of objectives and whether the TR-42.7 Subcommittee considers each objective "required," "highly desired," "nice to have" or "not required."

You can read Valerie Maguire's full blog post here.

Copper connectors putting Large Hadron Collider out of commission

Are you familiar with the Large Hadron Collider? I knew nothing about it until I read Dan Brown's Angels and Demons. Then it started popping up in the news all the time, so it seemed. The LHC -- I don't know if that's its real abbreviation or not -- is a particle accelerator that was built and is operated by the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN. (Side note: According to credible sources such as Dan Brown and Wikipedia, CERN invented the Internet. Not DARPA. Not Al Gore. CERN.)

Those who have followed the Collider's history are familiar with a recent shutdown that took it offline for several months. Within the past few weeks CERN brought it back online and has had great expectations of it. However, news got out today that, perhaps among other components, copper connectors will be responsible for the Large Hadron Collider going offline at the end of next year for what's likely to be a year's worth of repair.

I learned about this through Australian news agency The Age, which quoted a CERN scientist as saying, "We are pushing technologies towards their limits." It looks like the collider will run at half power between now and the end of next year when the repairs begin.

Now I'm not a gambling man, but I'd be willing to bet a dinner that the copper connectors that are the collider's weak links are not of the RJ-45 variety. So no snarky comments saying this wouldn't have happened if they'd used fiber - or anything like that.

I just couldn't resist passing this info along, as a high-profile example of the criticality of a "little thing" like a connector. Our industry lives and breathes the importance of high-technology systems' infrastructure components. Sometimes the rest of the world gets wind of that importance as well.