What's Up at Integra Optics

Top 10 Tips: How to Ensure Your Fiber Serves You Well

Selecting fiber for your project is not always as easy as you would hope it would be. With so many variations available, picking the correct ones can seem to be an overwhelming task. You also are focusing on making sure your selection is going to be reliable for as long as possible for as long… Read more »

Multi-Platform Coding Demystified

We all use pluggable transceivers of various shapes and sizes, but have you ever wondered what a pluggable optical transceiver is comprised of?  That small device certainly has a lot going on inside! A transceiver is a combination of specialized components, sensors, communication lanes, and a microcontroller to tie them all together.  Let’s dive into… Read more »

Efficiency in Versatility: Choosing Parts That Reduce Costs While Minimizing Downtime

Network design, implementation, and maintenance are undertaken with versatility, manageability, and reliability in mind; and of course, cost. The network interconnections that you have don’t make your business money, but they are crucial to reliably providing the services and maintaining the operations that do. You need to plan transceiver needs for each of your platform’s… Read more »

Fiber Optic Technology: Advancements Through Time

Fiber optic technology has advanced drastically over the years, and looking back at where it all started compared to where we are now is truly inspiring! Take a look through history and see the advancements, starting in the early days of signal fires and morse code through present day with 400G and coherent optics before… Read more »

New Product Showcase: 10G BiDi Tunable DWDM Transceivers

When we have fiber connections between two locations, we need ample justification before taking the plunge and increasing fiber count. Aside from path redundancy, we resist the call for more fiber for as long as we can. The reason? Fiber spans are expensive! There’s not only the initial investment, but they usually come with lengthy… Read more »

Datacenter Planning: Installation, Maintenance and Expansion

All datacenters, from the smallest corporate data center to the largest hyperscale datacenter of cloud service providers, have many components in common, and all of these components need to communicate. That means lots of connections, and opportunities to either excel or fail when it comes to speed, efficiency, reliability, and security, regardless of size. Let’s… Read more »

A Look Ahead: What to Expect in 2021

With 2020 in the rear-view mirror, network needs are beginning to look a little different as we kick off 2021. With a growing percentage of the population working and learning from home, higher bandwidth is increasingly critical, while simultaneously pushing reach to the edge of networks. So, what does this mean for our industry? QSFP+… Read more »

QSFP28 100G ZR4: Fast Transfers and Greater Distances

If there’s one thing you can say with certainty about the telecommunications industry, it’s that it’s always pushing for higher bandwidths and greater distances. Attaining these goals within currently supported transceiver form factors is a challenge, to put it mildly. Progress is made through innovations in transmit and receiver implementations. The transmit side is optimized… Read more »

Breaking Down Buzzwords: Coherents

Throughout our “Breaking Down Buzzwords” series, we have taken a look at Remote Phy, and FTTX. To continue our series, let’s dive into coherent optics and attempt to provide a simplified (and, dare I say, coherent) explanation of some of the common terms and acronyms associated with this optical solution. Before we dive into the… Read more »

New Product Announcement: Uptime Kits

Preparing For The Future There comes a time in every company’s year where it needs to consider what expenditures will make it more capable of responding to operational and market challenges. Testing gear and emergency preparedness spends are a perfect example. Maintaining operational continuity is crucial because downtime is expensive! Many departments look to spend… Read more »