Saturday, June 13, 2009

Telecoms Company Bucks The Trend

Trail-blazing telecommunications company, Intune Networks, has today launched a fresh recruitment drive to fill 22 high technology vacancies before the end of September. This follows on from its announcement of a £9.27m investment in Northern Ireland in April. It has promised to create 77 jobs by the end of 2010 in its research and development centre in Weavers Court in the city centre. Jayne Brady, General Manager in Belfast, said high calibre individuals should apply for the posts, which will be split between Belfast and Dublin.

She added: “This latest announcement means the company will have exceeded its initial projections for staffing levels in Northern Ireland by more than 50%.”

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Saturday, May 23, 2009

High fibre: multicoloured data transfer - Irish Times

PACKETS OF communications data – whether for phone calls, e-mails, or music, video and text files – are increasingly transported using fibreoptic cable rather than old-style copper cable. Data is carried by laser light sent through the thin optical fibres.

Because (as is seen when a rainbow forms) “white” light is actually made up of different colours, each a slightly different wavelength, a fibre cable can carry data on eight wavelengths/colours, increasing the cable’s capacity. This is called wave division multiplexing (WDM).

Currently, a separate laser has to be calibrated for each colour carried on a cable, and lots of switches must be attached to manage how data traffic is divided up into smaller packets, directed over networks, and reassembled as it enters and leaves the servers that connect fibre networks across the globe. Along the way, packets of data generally get lost or delayed – which makes for poor playback of a YouTube video or sound file, for example.

Packet loss also means carriers cannot guarantee quality of service very easily for businesses – at least not without reserving lots of extra bandwidth capacity and leaving it idle except for the odd occasion that it is required.

The breakthrough claimed by Dublin company InTune Networks is to have created a system of tuneable lasers, where a single laser can be retuned to different colours on the fly, in microseconds. So, a single laser can do the job of eight, and lots of bandwidth can be reallocated instantly if needed and then reassigned after use for a large transfer of data. It’s a bit like a gate efficiently directing car traffic down a highway so that there are no backups or delays.

In addition, intelligence built into the system eliminates the need for most switches, and allows every data packet to be sent directly to its destination IP address and monitored through its travels.

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