Modular Fiber Patch Panels

Welcome, my name is David Posner, and I am the Director of Marketing at Tripp Lite for Cables and Connectivity. Today I’m going to introduce to you, Tripp Lite’s new modular patch panel solution. Tripp Lite’s offering a unique product, it is modular, highly flexible, it integrates 10, 40 and 100Gb equipment in a simple solution. It’s easy and effective and adds order and manageability to your connectivity. And it future proofs your fiber and copper network.

Everyone is aware of the data explosion. Whether it’s Facebook or Instagram, emails, google queries or YouTube, there’s more and more data in the world. This has created a voracious appetite for bandwidth. The digital universe is doubling every 2 years; networks need to be able to handle this, and they need to be able to get faster.

Now it took 15 years to transition from 1 Gb to and 10 Gb equipment. Now 40 Gb equipment is replacing 10 Gb in just 5 years after the standard was approved. Now if you look at 10 Gb equipment we’re using duplex fiber cable to connect equipment, but we’re starting to reach the maximum speeds available within a duplex fiber connection. We’ve been able to increase those speeds recently up to 25 Gb, but how do you get a major jump in speed?

Well it’s done by parallel optics. Parallel optics has allowed us to crash through the speed barrier. It combines multiple 10 Gb pairs to provide 40 Gb data. We’re using the same philosophy to get up to 100 Gb speed.

Now the beauty of parallel optics is that it’s easy to switch speeds. A 40 Gb cable can be broken down into 4 10 Gb lanes. We currently achieve that using custom breakout cables; on one end of the cable will be a 40 Gb connection through an MTP plug, and at the other end of the cable will be 4 individual LC connections, each for a 10 Gb piece of equipment.

Now that creates a solution that is somewhat complex. It forces us to use custom cables, nothing is standard, nothing is available off the shelf, lead times are long, and if you have a piece of equipment that needs to be installed and you’re delayed on that cable, your equipment can’t be installed. The cabling can be complex and hard to manage, and even a simple change is not at all simple.

Tripp Lite’s modular patch panel solution, now this is made up of modular cassettes that get mounted into a single rackmount chassis, either 1 or 2U in size, they’re easy to install, easy to manage, easy to change. This provides high-density, high-capacity solution. We can connect 168 connections within a single 2U space.

Now the breakout functionality is actually built-in to the cassettes. We have a large number of options available, whether it’s from 40 to 10 Gb connections, whether it’s 100 to 40 Gb, or to 10 Gb connections, they’re all in-stock and ready-to-ship. And we’re using standard cable to connect between the cassette and the equipment. So the result is equipment that is easy to connect and manage, the switch connects to the back of the cassette and the equipment connects to the front. We use standard cable which is in-stock and readily available. It’s a modular solution which means it provides outstanding flexibility, it can handle changes and moves very easily, scalability is not an issue because as you add equipment so you can add additional cassettes. It has built-in cable management, and a labeling system as well. And it is future proof, so as new equipment is launched into the market at higher speeds, so we can introduce new cassettes to handle the connectivity of that new equipment, as well as connecting to the 10 Gb and 40 Gb equipment that’s already there.

Now another beautiful solution is our modular cassette sleeve. This is a magnetic sleeve that holds one cassette, it can be located anywhere you want, it’s a 0U solution, so you can magnetize or you can connect that cassette to the side of a rack or to the cable management system. You can located the switch in one rack and you can run a single multi-strand fiber cable to the cassette located at another rack, breaking it out into the multiple connections to your 10 Gb equipment. And as you add racks, so you can simply add these 0U solutions to each of the racks for that connectivity.

Now one of the challenges of high-density installation is the ability to connect and disconnect the fiber cables into your rack. Right now, the only solution is to use a tool to insert and remove those fiber cables. We’ve introduced a line of fiber cables that have push/pull tabs built-in to the connector so that you can simply connect and disconnect the cable by using the push/pull tab. So no tools are needed now.

So as a recap, we’re offering an easy to manage connectivity solution that uses standard cables. It offers outstanding flexibility, it is scalable, it has built-in cable management, everything is stocked and ready to ship. This is a future-proof solution that can handle future technologies and it comes with a limited lifetime warranty.

Thank you for your interest in Tripp Lite, this is David Posner.