The Thomas & Betts Ocal Liquidtight Connector with Grounding Ring ensures personnel and equipment safety.   Thomas & Betts’ (T&B) patent-pending ground ring in its new Ocal Liquidtight Connector with Grounding Ring provides a perfectly secure connection for a sustainable ground path to ensure personnel and equipment safety. “If a fault occurs within the wiring in aRead More

The need for increased bandwidth in telecommunications networks has given rise to many new innovations. What does the future hold for the WAN?     With traditional telecom service providers’ revenue finally growing again, so are their capital expenditures – both at about 5% annual growth rates. However, bandwidth demands are growing at anywhere fromRead More

As enterprises begin to adopt passive optical LAN (POL) technology, they face a number of design and implementation challenges and choices.     When it comes to premises networks made of fiber, system integrators, installers, and customers are faced with choosing between pre-terminated plug-and-play fiber assemblies or terminating the fibers to length on site duringRead More

Cyber and physical worlds merge in connected industry to radically alter industrial production.   Until today, industrial facilities have largely followed a simple concept – that of automated tasks being performed by automated devices that are connected to a central controller. That’s it; nothing more is necessary for industrial production. The network is merely the vehicle for theRead More

Today’s market for mobile electronics requires both innovation and very rapid product development cycles. Configurable connectors in mobile electronics may be the answer.     Today’s market for mobile electronics products is fiercely competitive. Product success requires not only creativity and innovation but also an ability to execute very rapid product development cycles. In manyRead More

Today, redundancy is the de facto standard for any network cabling system, and there are a variety of ways to accomplish it.     Years ago it seemed as if disaster preparedness and redundant cabling systems were considered forward-thinking (and something of a luxury) for many network and data center owners and operators. Today, however,Read More

As connectors continue to shrink in size, we wonder how much smaller they can go. Bob Stanton of Omnetics discusses the factors that will enable further miniaturization, as well as what limitations there might be.     What’s happening with connector sizes these days? The evolution of connectors in our phones and laptops, the changeRead More

Connector companies are meeting SWaP challenges as we move to mobile and wearable devices, but is there a time or a function when tiny is too small?     Electrical connectors just keep getting smaller as companies push size and weight out of their devices. Connector companies have risen to meet the SWaP (size, weight, and power) challengesRead More

Nanominiature connectors provide an ideal solution for challenging wiring systems in the constantly evolving aerospace industry. Here, Radiall offers tips on how to specify the connectors for these applications.     To address the challenges airframers experience in the civil and military aerospace industry, a new format for multipin connectors was introduced. The nanominiature connectorRead More

Once distinct markets, wearables, smartphones, and tablets are merging into one product segment. What does the future hold for these devices and related technologies?      The smart computing device market includes wearables, smartphones, tablets, and laptops. One can define this segment as a market because these previously distinct product areas are converging – andRead More

Next up in our “Connector Basics” series, APEX Electrical Interconnection Consultants offers advice on when and why you need someone with failure analysis expertise.     Something is not working out in the connector manufacturing process or, worse yet, a connector fails in the field – in either case, the failure should land on theRead More

Automotive is the fastest growing market sector for fiber optic connectors.     The market for fiber optic connectors, after years of promising predictions, is finally (really) taking off. From plastic optical fiber (POF) used in automobile communications systems to embedded optics in high-performance computing (HPC), fiber-optic connector use is growing. The largest revenue opportunitiesRead More