For years, the concept of speed has been the lifeblood of many of the “vertical” market segments that combine to make the overall “horizontal” connector industry. This publication provides information on connectors of all shapes (though symmetry is rather constant), sizes (but they all seem to have gotten smaller), and flavors (that’s where our diversity truly shows through). As a general statement, the majority of the connectors manufactured and engineered into electronic equipment have been saddled with the burden of not being the weak links in ever-speedier circuits.
We needn’t look any farther than this issue of Connector Specifier as evidence. Nychelle Hallock and Michael Fogg talk about speed of transmission signals as well as quick termination time in their discussion of the MRJ21 connector (page 10). Similarly, Doug Coleman references transmission speeds as high as 40 Gbits/sec and also discusses rapid installation in his article on no-epoxy/no-polish fiber-optic connectors (page 18).
The Hallock/Fogg and Coleman articles explain that in the cases of the connectors they discuss, accommodating speed does not have to come at the cost of degrading performance. Alas, as it has always been, speed is a nicety and performance is the absolute must. The articles from Mark Page and Thomas Mowry on medical connectors (page 14), and from Craig Hunter and Chris Reynolds on fighting tin whiskers (page 30) hit home with that point.
The marriage of speed and performance is about to celebrate another milestone; I learned just before this issue went to print that the IEEE, in early June, approved the 802.3an specifications. 802.3an, commonly referred to as 10GBase-T, is the Ethernet protocol that sends a whopping 10 billion bits per second down twisted-pair wires. And when such a speedy signal makes it to the end of such wires, we all know what it passes through before hopping onto the electronics within a network switch-an 8-pin modular jack-and-plug mated pair.
A group of engineers within the Telecommunications Industry Association’s TR-42 Engineering Committee is responsible for the specifications dictating performance of the connecting hardware in cabling systems that have been designed specifically for 10GBase-T transmission. As this issue goes to print, we are getting in touch with members of that engineering group to find out the what/when/how of the specs they are working on. We’ll have full details for you in our August/September issue.
Although I have not gotten into much detail about a projected publication date for specifications of Augmented Category 6 connectivity, as the TIA is calling it, I can tell you now with a fair degree of confidence that when you see our next issue, they’ll still be working to finalize a few things.
So, it will be just a little while before anyone can say they really offer standards-compliant connectors for that application. The connectors themselves have been available for quite some time, in reality. The pre-standard connectors that have been on the market for well over a year required some rather elaborate and, I think, ingenious engineering to combat the phenomenon known as alien crosstalk. Users in Roswell, New Mexico and everywhere else will have to contend with crosstalk not just from pair-to-pair/pin-to-pin, but from cable-to-cable/connector-to-connector.
It was one thing-and no small thing-for developers to come up with technology that combats this electrical-performance challenge and doesn’t infringe on another’s patents. It’s quite another thing for the TIA’s standards-making body to set specifications that spell out interoperability among these varied connector types, as well as backward compatibility to all previous-generation eight-pin modular connectors.
With 10GBase-T, users will have speed aplenty. With iron-clad specifications for 10GBase-T-capable connectivity, they’ll have reliability to go along with it. We’ll keep you posted, here and on our Website, www.connectorspecifier.com.
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Patrick McLaughlin
Chief Editor
patrick@pennwell.com
