CablesAndKits Blog

Happy Tuesday & Happy National Greasy Food day! From fried chicken, pizza, nachos, and french fries to bacon and hashbrowns – it’s the perfect day to indulge.

In This Issue: Wedding Season | Cisco QSFP+ to 4SFP+ Breakout Cable | Throughput vs DRAM and Flash Specs | News to Start Your Day

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The CK Daily – Wedding Season

Happy Tuesday!

It’s wedding season! My husband and I have been doing a ton of traveling this month for several weddings! This week we decided to stay with friends between the two we have to close out the month, so are hanging out in Colombus, Ohio this week. Our friends have been taking us to all of their favorite places and tonight we’re going to a Blue Jackets game. It will be my first NHL game, so I’m looking forward to it!

I love weddings. They are so sweet and I love the raw emotions that the day brings. I think my favorite part about weddings is gifting. My husband and I have made it our thing to purchase some of our favorite 2-player games to gift to the couple. We have so much fun playing games together and hope to bring this joy to others.

Do you have any fun 2-player games you’d reccomend we try out?

Hope you have a great week!

Ashley

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Product Spotlights & Updates

Our fully Cisco-compatible breakout cable allows for versatility in your network by connecting a single 40G QSFP+ connector to (4) 10G SFP+ connectors over a passive copper twin axial cable. This direct attach breakout cable is hot-swappable, reliable, and an excellent option for achieving 40G connectivity without utilizing fiber optic cabling.

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Learning Center Article – Throughput vs DRAM and Flash Specs

When it comes to designing and managing networks, there is an endless challenge of trying to improve performance. Inevitably, that includes upgrading and replacing hardware. When you research hardware for upgrades and replacements, you’ll see a lot of different tech specs listed in the descriptions.

Two common terms that come up are throughput and bandwidth. You’ll see bandwidth more in advertising spaces, and you’ll see throughput more when you look up real-world tests of the hardware. Why is throughput so important? Why don’t you see more about flash specs?

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Today’s News to Start Your Day:

• Five people have been stranded about 21 stories underground at Grand Canyon Caverns since the attraction’s elevator malfunctioned Sunday evening.
• Rishi Sunak took office as British prime minister Tuesday, acknowledging the mistakes of his Conservative Party predecessors and warning of difficult decisions ahead for a country mired in political and economic trouble.
• WhatsApp, the messaging platform, was starting to come back online and the company said the issue has been fixed after users across the world reported problems earlier on Tuesday. At about 07.50 GMT, the outage reporting site Downdetector had shown more than 68,000 users in the UK had reported problems with the app. Issues were also reported by 19,000 users in Singapore and 15,000 in South Africa.
• A Russian court on Tuesday denied WNBA star Brittney Griner’s appeal and upheld her nine-year prison sentence on drug charges.

Happy Monday! I think it’s safe to say it officially feels like fall! What are your favorite things about the fall weather?

In This Issue: Local Festivals | Cisco 2901 Integrated Services Router | Routers vs Modems | News to Start Your Day

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The CK Daily – Local Festivals

Happy Monday!

This weekend we had the opportunity to visit the Braselton Antique & Artisan Festival. We hadn’t visited a festival in a very long time, so this was a real treat. There were over 375 vendors selling all sorts of things from crafts, and clothing, to paintings, and even furniture. We enjoyed visiting the ice cream truck for some treats and dog watching (similar to people watching). There were a ton of dogs at this festival from tiny ones that people carried around to ones that were bigger than the people walking them. The weather was perfect, and I would even say a tad bit warm. The only problem we had was finding parking, but luckily a family member lived a short 10-minute walk away from the festival, so we parked at their house.

It was so nice being at an event outside and I think I appreciate it more this year, because of the last couple of years when we weren’t willing or able to go out. It feels like things are returning to the way they were (in a good way) and I’m thankful for that. Have you attended any local festivals recently?

Cris

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Product Spotlights & Updates

Cisco 2901 Integrated Services Router builds on 25 years of Cisco innovation and product leadership. The new platforms are architected to enable the next phase of branch-office evolution, providing rich media collaboration and virtualization to the branch while maximizing operational cost savings. The new Integrated Services Routers Generation 2 are future-enabled with support for new high-capacity DSPs (Digital Signal Processors) for future enhanced video capabilities, high-powered service modules with improved availability, multi-core CPUs, Gigabit Ethernet switching with enhanced POE, and new energy visibility and control capabilities while improving overall system performance.

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Learning Center Article – Routers vs. Modems

When you’re building a network, there are a few essential components that show up in every design, especially if this network accesses the internet.

Somewhere along the line, you have to attach a modem. It’s essential for internet connectivity. Assuming you use more than one device with this network, you probably also need a router. Each of these devices is essential, and they are often combined together into a single networking device.

But, what are they really doing? What are the key differences between modems and routers?

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Today’s News to Start Your Day:

• First, the storm. Then, a plague of insects. Hordes of mosquitoes have proliferated in floodwater and debris left in Hurricane Ian’s wake, and now swarm Florida communities. State and local officials are waging a multimillion-dollar war against the bloodsucking insects — which are known to spread diseases like West Nile virus and St. Louis encephalitis — as they try to keep residents safe and prevent the voracious insects from slowing down the recovery crews working to fix power lines and rebuild infrastructure.
• Beyond Meat is launching a steak substitute in grocery stores on Monday. The new product will roll out nationwide at more than 5,000 Kroger and Walmart stores, as well as Albertsons, Ahold Delhaize, Jewel-Osco, Sprouts and other local grocers.
• U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported 2.3 million migrant apprehensions at the southern border in the last 12 months — surpassing the record high set last year.
• An unseasonably early spike in respiratory syncytial virus cases among young children is pushing some hospitals to capacity. Most years, infections typically occur in the late fall and winter, often overlapping with flu season. But at least since last year, physicians have begun seeing surges starting during summer months.

Happy Friday! The cool weather is moving in and we are loving it. What are you weekend plans?

In This Issue: “Crocktober” Festivities | Cisco 1000BASE-SX SFP Module | Basics of MPO / MTP Fiber Cables | News to Start Your Day

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The CK Daily – “Crocktober” Festivities

Happy Friday, folks! We are having a gathering at the CK office today. It has been affectionately called “Crocktober” for fun! We’ll be having all sorts of food to eat, a pie-eating contest, and playing some cornhole.

While we are primarily a remote workforce now, I really look forward to these gatherings where we can see each other in person. It helps us continue building the company culture and maintaining personal relationships.

Feel free to stop by and say hey if you’re in the Buford, GA, area around lunchtime. We’d love to see you!

Have a great weekend!

Chris

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Product Spotlights & Updates

The GLC-SX-MMD is a hot-swappable Small Form-Factor Pluggable (SFP) device that plugs into the Gigabit Ethernet port or slot on a switch or router to link the device with your fiber optic network. 1000BASE-SX SFP modules are a popular option because they can be used in combination with other IEEE 802.3z-compliant transceiver modules, including 1000BASELX/LH and 1000BASEZX interfaces.

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Learning Center Article – Basics of MPO / MTP Fiber Cables

Fiber optic cables drive modern communication. They are the only viable means for arranging the ultra-high-speed systems that run the backbones of digital communication. Long-range internet connectivity is dominated by fiber optic cables. Perhaps more importantly, the massive data processing that goes on at data centers does the majority of the workload for internet communications and digital information handling.

These centers require increasingly fast speeds and throughput, and innovations in fiber optics technology continue to drive their development. As the cables themselves become more advanced, data centers are able to expand their capacity and performance.

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Today’s News to Start Your Day:

• Starting on Monday, Apple’s iOS 16.1 update will allow iPhone, iPad and Apple TV users to access Fitness+ even if they don’t have an Apple Watch. Apple is debuting its iCloud shared photo library. Unlike shared albums, everyone in the shared photo library will have the ability to add, delete, edit, or favorite photos and videos. On iOS 16.1, clean energy iPhone charging optimizes charging for when cleaner energy sources are available, Apple says, helping to decrease your iPhone’s carbon footprint.
• Thousands of hawks are doing what we all wish we could – flying south for the winter. In Michigan, for example, metro Detroiters are noticing hundreds of hawks flying in the sky and resting in backyards. In the last five days alone, the Detroit River Hawk Watch has counted 9,934 hawks. The association watches the birds fly every day from the Lake Erie Metropark, about 30 miles from downtown Detroit.
• Only three hours after releasing her new album, Midnights, Taylor Swift has dropped seven more songs written during the album’s conception.
• News broke late last night that the Panthers traded Christian McCaffrey to the 49ers, and early this morning McCaffrey posted a message of thanks to his former home. McCaffrey, who arrived in Carolina as the eighth overall pick in the 2017 NFL draft, wrote on social media that he’ll have fond memories of his time with the Panthers.

Happy Thursday! The talk of the town lately seems to be the growing sport of pickleball. As we shared in the news section yesterday, it’s the fastest-growing sport in the world. Are you a pickleball fan? Do you enjoy watching or playing…or both?!

In This Issue: 1,000 Little Things | CAT6A Ethernet Patch Cable | All Wireless Standards are NOT Created Equal | News to Start Your Day

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The CK Daily – 1,000 Little Things

Happy Thursday!

Whew, it has been a crazy week working on the new CK website. Craig (our CEO) has a saying…” 1,000 little things”. I feel like we are at the point where there are a thousand little things left to do, but all those little things add up to some awesome big things for the site. It really is exciting to see the site come together. There will be tons of new features for all our customers, a whole new design, and all the “bells and whistles” to help me and the team manage the site more easily to bring y’all some pretty cool stuff. It is going to be awesome! Stay tuned for more updates as we get closer to the site launch. If you would like to be involved in the beta launch reply and let me know.

Last weekend was a weekend of “1,000 little things” for me personally too. That to-do list seems to get longer and longer every week. I cross off one thing and two more things pop up. LOL! BUT…one awesome thing from last weekend was the 5k race that I mentioned last week in my email. It was pretty cold that morning, but I think that might have helped me. I came in 1st in my age group and 3rd overall out of a little over 100 racers. I also had my best 5k time in a long time at 23:55. That was pretty cool! Now, on to training for the half-marathon on Thanksgiving Day.

I hope each of you has a great rest of the week and weekend!

Jason

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Product Spotlights & Updates

We just saved you a ton of time and made managing your network cabling much easier! Introducing our EASYboot ethernet patch cables. These Snagless Cat6a patch cords have skinnier cable boots to make it easier to connect and disconnect the cable and prevent the cable from catching when pulled through tight spaces. Built to last, our high-quality Ethernet cables are pure copper for maximum throughput and reliability. Individually bagged and labeled in retail packaging, these Cat6 cables are easy to store and the length and type are easily identifiable.

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Learning Center Article – All Wireless Standards are NOT Created Equal

Everything is wireless these days so upgrading your Wi-Fi hardware is critical to future-proofing your network. When the time for new components is at hand, it is important to select the products that fully support your communication and data transfer needs. From fiber cabling to Wi-Fi routers, the choices abound and each one can have a direct impact on your overall network performance. Despite very similar nomenclature, the varying forms of 802.11 are all quite different.

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Today’s News to Start Your Day:

• NATO is rushing equipment to Ukraine as troops are preparing to hunker down for the winter.
• NASA released an image of newly formed stars from the James Webb Space Telescope. The image captures nascent, bright-red stars within a billowing cloud of gas and dust at an iconic stellar birthplace known as “The Pillars of Creation.”
• James A. McDivitt, who served as commander in two pivotal NASA missions in the early, awe-inspiring days of spaceflight — including the Gemini launch that featured the first American spacewalk — died Oct. 14 at a hospital in Tucson. He was 93.
• Brooklyn Nets star Kevin Durant is the latest celebrity athlete taking his love of pickleball big league. The NBA All-Star and his business partner Rich Kleiman announced that their firm, Thirty-Five Ventures (35V), has purchased Major League Pickleball’s newest expansion team.

Happy Wednesday! I’m not sure about you but this week has been busy. With gearing up for wrapping up the year and kicking off the new year, there’s a lot to do! Cheers to a full pot of coffee in the office this morning!

In This Issue: Senior Festivities | Cisco Aironet 1040/1140/1250 Series Power Injector | Single Mode vs Multimode Fiber Cables | News to Start Your Day

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The CK Daily – Senior Festivities

Happy Wednesday!

This week is bittersweet. It’s senior week for my little brother! His school has done all kinds of things this week to celebrate his accomplishments throughout his 4 years of high school. My parents even got the opportunity to decorate his football locker with photos of when he was little to remind him how far he’s come. It’s been fun checking in with him every day to see what the surprise of the day has been and how he’s feeling about the reality of actually (and finally) being a senior!

We will wrap up the week this week at his football game on Friday by walking him across the field to recognize his effort and the hard work he’s put in for his team. I’m sure there will be several tears but also big smiles for what’s to come for him.

It is such an honor to be his big sister and one of his biggest cheerleaders in life. Here’s to a win on Friday night!

Ashley

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Product Spotlights & Updates

Power Injectors are a great budget-friendly solution to power up and connect access points that are run off of non-PoE switches with an ethernet cable. Power Injectors also remove the cumbersome and sometimes cost-prohibitive task of installing electrical outlets to power up access points. The AIR-PWRINJ4 converts 100 to 240 volts AC into 56 volts DC that can then be injected into a Cat 5 ethernet cable to power an access point.

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Learning Center Article – Single Mode vs Multimode Fiber Cables

Fiber optics are essential for building the most capable networks, but when making design choices, there are plenty of options that serve fiber optics in general. One of the primary choices available to any network engineer exists between single-mode fiber and multimode fiber.

These are physically different approaches to fiber optics communication, and as such, they offer different strengths and weaknesses. To effectively choose the right design for your network, it helps to have a better understanding of what separates these types of cables.

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Today’s News to Start Your Day:

• Tens of thousands of civilians and Russian-appointed officials are being moved out of Ukraine’s southern Kherson region ahead of a Ukrainian offensive. Vladimir Saldo said all Russian-appointed departments and ministries would cross the Dnieper river. Ukraine has called on residents to ignore the Russian move.
• The Internal Revenue Service has released dozens of inflation adjustments affecting individual income tax brackets, deductions and credits for 2023.
• Netflix beat third-quarter expectations on the top and bottom lines. The company said it added 2.41 million net subscribers during the quarter, higher than the 1 million it had forecast. Netflix will begin to crack down on password sharing next year.
• Pickleball is the fastest-growing sport in America, with over 4.8 million people playing the game. However, its rapid growth has caused some growing pains, stemming from competing professional leagues, managing hundreds of tournaments, a lack of courts to meet demand and channeling the flood of investments. By 2030, pickleball is projected to attract an estimated 40 million players across the globe, with even more investors jumping in looking to cash in on the craze.

Cupcake fans, today is your day! It’s National Chocolate Cupcake Day! Stop by your local bakery and grab your favorite chocolate cupcake. 🧁

In This Issue: A Good Weekend for the Soul | HPE Aruba 2530 Series Switch | How to Choose Ethernet Cables for Gaming | News to Start Your Day

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The CK Daily – A Good Weekend for the Soul

Good Morning & Happy Tuesday! It was a great weekend around here as I got to watch one of my childhood friends get married on Friday evening! The wedding was in Atlanta which, if I’m being honest, is one of my least favorite places to drive to. The traffic is horrendous and just thinking about having to drive around there gives me anxiety, but it was totally worth the drive as the wedding was incredibly beautiful! She was a glowing bride and the night was picture-perfect. We spent a lot of time reminiscing and I got to catch up with many of her family members who I hadn’t seen in a while. It was a great time and was so good for the soul!

Now I’m looking forward to putting in a solid week of getting stuff done before I head out on vacation next week! We’re heading to Hilton Head Island for a little family vacation which should be a lot of fun! My nephew came with us last year and he was truly living his best life. He’s joining again this year and I’m hopeful that he has just as much fun!

Hope everyone has a fantastic week!

Rebecca

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Product Spotlights & Updates

The Aruba 2530 Series of switches was designed to offer cost-effective, reliable, and secure access layer connectivity for a wide range of uses from enterprise, to branch offices and small to mid-sized businesses. These easy-to-deploy switches feature an energy-efficient design that lowers power consumption for greater energy savings. These rackmount switches come in a wide variety of options including 8, 24, and 48 port models, PoE+ options, Gigabit and Fast Ethernet models as well as compact and fanless models. They are easy to deploy and manage using Aruba AirWave or Aruba Central with Zero Touch Provisioning.

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Learning Center Article – How to Choose Ethernet Cables for Gaming

It’s good that you are looking at Ethernet internet options. As a gamer, you likely understand the horror of laggy games. When it comes to home networks and gaming, latency is a huge deal and can make or break your whole experience – and in the game, whether you live, die, or succeed. Latency is always with us; it’s just a matter of how significant it is. Wi-Fi simply isn’t as stable as Ethernet, and it leads to slower effective experiences due to higher chances of interference. Slow internet speeds can ruin the entire game, so you want something that can keep up. At the same time, you don’t want to spend a life’s fortune just on cables.

The good news is that Ethernet has a lot of options for you these days. From Cat5 to Cat8 cables, there is an option out there that matches the performance you want without committing you to too much money out of your pocket.

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Today’s News to Start Your Day:

• Kodiak Robotics and IKEA announced a pilot program in Texas. Trucks equipped with Kodiak’s self-driving system will make daily deliveries from a warehouse near Houston to an IKEA store near Dallas. Kodiak has been operating self-driving trucks in Texas since 2019.
• Microsoft has laid off employees across multiple divisions making it the latest big player in the tech space to cut jobs in the face of an economic downturn.
• After 170 days in orbit, NASA astronauts Bob Hines, Kjell Lindgren, and Jessica Watkins and European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti safely splashed down Friday, Oct. 14, 2022, off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida, completing the agency’s fourth commercial crew mission to the International Space Station. Teams aboard SpaceX recovery vessels retrieved the spacecraft and astronauts.
• Apple is expected to unveil new iPad Pro tablets with its M2 chip in the next few days.