In This Issue: PoE Injector, 10/100, 24 Watts, IP Phone 7900/8800/8900/9900 Series | Understanding Wavelengths | News to Start Your Day
Friday is finally here! Who’s ready for the weekend?! We sure are! To get you through this Friday, enjoy a delicious sugar cookie and celebrate National Sugar Cookie Day! Here’s a delicious recipe to make and enjoy at home!
The CK Daily – Hello World!
Happy Friday from the other Cris… The one without an “H”! Typically, you hear from the other Chris today, but you’re hearing from me today! Some fun facts about me… one of them is not true can you guess which one?
– I really like spicy foods!
– I own 1 goose and 3 ducks
– I learned how to play the bass during the pandemic
– I’m a big nerd and also like to play Skyrim
– I once ran into a parked school bus (it wasn’t even running)
Other than these weird things, I’m a product marketer here at CablesAndKits and I’ve worn many hats in the company including in our lovely customer service and sales departments as well as in software dev and IT! When I’m not trying to showcase our amazing products, you can typically find me hanging out with my wife and two daughters. I hope you have a fantastic weekend and do let me know which fact you think is not true!
Cris
Product Spotlights & Updates
Happy Friday! Today we’re spotlighting a PoE power injector for Cisco IP Phones.
You can’t go wrong with our 24 Watt Power Injector from CablesAndKits. This is the perfect replacement for CP-PWR-CUBE-4 and/or AIR-PWRINJ4. The 24 Watt Power injector will ensure your connection never fails when you need it most. Perfect for powering up your phone at home or office where PoE might not be an option, this Injector comes ready with an AC power cord so you don’t have to worry about ordering that separately.
The POEINJ24WPMD will be on sale for the next two days only for a whopping 25% off… be sure to pick one up today!
Understanding Wavelengths – CK Learning Center
No one ever accused fiber optics of being simple technology. Instead, we tend to acknowledge that this powerful technology is difficult to design and complicated in its application. Mastering those complications is often worth it because it enables us to build better networks and do a better job with those networks. In that endeavor, we can tackle a brief tutorial on wavelengths and how they impact fiber optic designs.
What Is Wavelength?
The second word in “fiber optics” already tells us plenty about the nature of this technology. It deals with light — more specifically electromagnetic radiation — as the signaling medium. Wavelength is very simply a measure of the space between two photons in a solid beam of light. Conversely, we have frequency which measures the time between two signals. The two terms are opposite sides of the same coin. If you have a shorter wavelength, it takes less time between signals and a higher frequency.
With this in mind, the wavelength (or frequency) of any light source tells us the physical limitation of how we can use that light in signal processing. We can never send signals that are faster than the frequency of the beam, and we cannot use equipment that is smaller than the wavelength. This is a rough summary, but it paints a good enough picture.
Aside from the basics, the wavelength also tells us how light will interact with other objects. When it comes to designing fiber optics, those interactions are the most important pieces of information hiding within a wavelength.
Absorption
When fiber optics are engineered and tested, there are two issues that can impact their effectiveness. Absorption is one of them. Materials have a natural ability to absorb electromagnetic radiation. For any given substance, only radiation of certain wavelengths can actually interact and be absorbed. When we deal with fiber optic cables, the largest source of absorption actually comes from microscopic water droplets. That drives manufacturers to avoid wavelengths where that absorption is at its worst.
Scattering
Like absorption, scattering happens at different wavelengths for any given material. Also like absorption, the culprits of scattering within a fiber optic cable are small and easy to overlook. Particles of dust and even the air itself can cause scattering problems, so again, the design is to use wavelengths where these problems are smallest.
The term for signal loss related to absorption and scattering is attenuation. Engineers try to make attenuation numbers as small as possible, and when you account for both absorption and scattering at the same time, you find that very specific frequencies work best. The most common wavelengths in use today are 850, 1300, 1310, and 1500 nanometers. You’ll notice large gaps between each of those numbers. Those just happen to be the magic wavelengths where the attenuation values hit minima.
This is only the beginning. We can find that different types of fiber optic signals can further impact which wavelength is best for a function. Multimode and singlemode fiber, for instance, have different naturally occurring sources of interference. That’s why they tend to operate with noticeably separate wavelength ranges.
Putting it all together, it isn’t necessary to optimize wavelengths when you choose fiber optic systems. That’s baked into the design. Instead, it helps to understand why wavelength is an important identifier and how emerging, more advanced systems might play with wavelength in order to improve the technology.
You can find this article on the CK Learning Center.
Today’s News to Start Your Day:
- NASA’s groundbreaking Ingenuity Mars Helicopter has sent back stunning photos it took on July 5 while flying over the Red Planet’s rocky landscape — and this time, they’re in color. While in the air, Ingenuity took a series of stunning images, showing a multicolored landscape and tracks left behind by NASA’s Perseverance rover.
- The deadly collapse of the condo building in surfside, Florida, has spurred many in the region to ensure that their buildings are structurally sound. In the long term, those assessments — as well as buyers’ fears and rising costs — could lead to a reshaping of South Florida’s real estate market as a whole.
- A Florida entrepreneur has been accused of involvement in the assassination of Haiti’s president, Jovenel Moïse. James Solages, a former security guard, is one of two Haitian Americans the Haitian government said it arrested in the capital, Port-au-Prince, in connection with the killing at the presidential residence.
- The pool industry is seeing substantial growth as many Americans move to the suburbs, migrate to warmer states, and increasingly look to make their own yards better places to spend time.
- Wells Fargo is shutting down all existing personal lines of credit in the coming weeks and will no longer offer the product.