LTC Rewind: BICSI Certification, BIX vs Krone Blocks, MPTL Testing, and Fiber Transceivers

LTC Rewind: Join us as we bring back a fan favorite since Chuck has come down with the flu and can't broadcast live tonight. 

Dive deep into the intricate world of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) with LTC Rewind, your go-to podcast for unlocking the secrets of the industry. Join us as we rewind the tape on essential topics, featuring expert insights, practical tips, and engaging discussions that empower you to excel in the dynamic field of ICT.

In this episode, we unravel the mysteries surrounding BICSI Certification for large groups, explore the battle between BIX and Krone Blocks, uncover the nuances of MPTL Testing, and shed light on the transformative power of Fiber Transceivers. Whether you're a seasoned professional or a curious newcomer, LTC Rewind equips you with the knowledge and tools needed to navigate the complexities of low voltage projects across diverse industries.

Tune in to LTC Rewind and embark on a journey of continuous learning, growth, and mastery in the ever-evolving landscape of ICT.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to After Hours. Ask Chuck Bowser, rcdd. How's everybody doing tonight? Glad to have everybody here. A buck of the dial tone, I like that. A buck of the dial tone. That's the trick that we used to pull on our new guys. The dial tone is the sound that you hear when you pick up a landline, and we would send our new guys out to go get a bucket of dial tone and we used to mess with them. We used to do that kind of stuff. We used to pull all kinds of jokes on our people. Now let me see, we are live, everything's broadcasting, fine and dandy. So how is everybody doing tonight?

Speaker 1: 0:51

You know we always start off every show with what are you drinking? What are you drinking that always start off every show? Now, this looks like water. I think you guys can see it there. I got tic-tac going live right here. It looks like water, but this is actually root beer, zevia soda. Root beer, zevia soda. How about go to the warehouse for some frequency increase? That's a good one too, yes. So what are you drinking tonight? Tell me in the chat and the comments what are you drinking? I love my zevia soda. No sugar, no caffeine, all that fun stuff. So let's check in the chat box See what people are drinking.

Speaker 1: 1:31

Anthony Romeo is in the house. He is drinking black tea. Nolan is in the house. Nolan, what are you drinking this after hours? And Mr Steve is in the house. Mr Steve is drinking some water. He's playing at conservative tonight. So anything alcoholic it can be, it's after hours. It's after hours. That's why I named it this. It's called the after hours for a reason. I can't be drinking because I'm doing the show. Maybe it might make the show a little more entertaining if I did. I don't know. Lisa is in the house. Hello, lisa, she's drinking water as well. Let me see what was Nolan saying. He was drinking In the car. Drinks all gone. Yep, yep, yep.

Speaker 2: 2:19

Mr.

Speaker 1: 2:19

Brian Tague is in the house, my fellow TDM study group member. He's not drinking anything yet because he's got to read his homework. Good job, good job, remember, 70 pages, 70 pages. Have you done the test, the practice test for chapter one yet, brian? Let me know in the chat box. Yeah, so we got a good show lined up for you tonight. We're going to be talking about NPTEL testing, big C training, b plus and C plus transceivers and the difference between Bigs blocks and LSA blocks, right, so we're going to be starting off with all kinds of cool stuff tonight.

Speaker 1: 2:55

Now, before I get oh, I forgot the acronym challenge I can turn off that. Turn off this caption first. Do you do, do, do. This is what happens when you're one man band. So we got to put in the acronym challenge because we always started off every week and if you, if you're following me on LinkedIn, you know that I do a acronym challenge every weekday morning at 810. And if you, really if you want to, my ardent people, you know that this week I am in chapter 12, the outside plant edition chapter of the TDM. I'm going through the team and few chapters, so this acronym is found specifically in chapter 12. It's another chapter too, but it is in chapter 12.

Speaker 1: 3:40

And the acronym is PVC, pvc. Now, do you know what PVC means? If you do put it in the chat box, right, let us know. Right, pvc. That is the acronym challenge. Oh, I've got to say my acronym morning, right? Please spay? Or new to your acronyms. Help control the acronym population. We have enough. We don't need anymore, right, so spare. New to your acronyms? So the acronym is PVC and it stands for that Ready One, two, three, drum roll, boom, polyvinyl chloride and and a. Kudos to Mr Nolan for knowing that. Kudos to you, buddy. And PVC. Now, pvc is a compound that's used. I apologize if you hear my puppy, our pizza must be getting here. Polyvinyl chloride is actually used for wrong button thing. It, polyvinyl chloride, is used for lots of things. It's used for making conduit, it's used for making the jacket of the cable, so that now you know I love something that way.

Speaker 1: 4:52

Hey, you might have noticed I put a new new thing up here in the corner. It's a QR code. See, right there, somebody put their camera on that QR code and let me know if it works. Please just put your camera up to it.

Speaker 1: 5:05

It should pop up and say, open up that website, that will take you to what's called a link tree, and then that link tree is going to give you quick access to my Instagram account, my TikTok account, my LinkedIn account. It's going to give you access to give me an email. There's even a tab there for scheduling time 15 minutes with me, right. And there's also a tab there to buy me a cup of coffee. If you buy me a cup of coffee, I'll send you one of these for free. Yeah, I'll send you one of these if you buy me a cup of coffee. Yeah. And then there's a link to the podcast. There's a link to the show.

Speaker 1: 5:42

You can start seeing a QR code everywhere. My buddy Todd would probably be happy with me, because then I'm used other figured out QR codes and I'm actually using them, yes. So there you said anybody, anybody, try that to see if it worked. By any chance, it does work. Yes, thank you. That is absolutely cool. I'm gonna start putting it on my stuff now. See when this gets recorded and Then it gets put out on the on the YouTube and LinkedIn. It's always gonna be there.

Speaker 1: 6:10

So all there's someone's gonna do is hate what's a QR code ding? Hello, I am just a social media Star. What can I say? Alrighty, so permanent virtual connection. That's what the old tech guy says on tiktok. Is that actually true? You just make that up, just curious, just curious.

Speaker 1: 6:31

Okay, so here's the first question. This question, actually, was a leftover from last after-hour show that you probably remember. Last Thursday I didn't do a show, and I didn't do a show Because, honestly, I forgot about it and actually I remembered it at like 440 Something, and I'm like I don't have enough time to put this together now, because it takes about an hour and a half to Two hours of prep time to do the show, believe it or not. So can I colorize it with my own logo? I, you know, I don't know. I will give that a shot. That would be cool, wouldn't it? That would help my branding even more. Off the try that, because that would look really, really cool. But, yeah, I'll give that a shot.

Speaker 1: 7:18

So how do I take my coffee? I take my coffee With cream and sugar, yeah, so thank you for asking. It's. If you click on that QR code, there's a spot we can go. Buy me a cup of coffee and then I'll. I'll send you a, a Sticker. You know, that's right, my brain is not working right there.

Speaker 1: 7:37

Giving back to my original question, remember, this question actually came from last, the two weeks ago, and this is a summation of it, because when I saw the thing come out right, I Saw come up in the chat box, but the chat box is pulling feed from YouTube and LinkedIn and Facebook and I just could not find the Comment. So but I did remember and the guy and I remember who wasn't I apologize and they, whoever was asked Chuck, what is the difference between a big block and an LSA block? The big block and an LSA block. I'm kind of glad that I didn't answer a door in the show, because that allowed me to create this cool graphic. Now, my tiktok folks, you're not getting to see this cool graphic. I'm sorry, but if you go to YouTube and watch the YouTube live stream, you'll see it there. So what you see on the screen in front of you, on the left top left is a big connector and the top right you see an LSA Connector. So the question that was put to me is what is the difference between these two connectors? Right now, I've terminated both of these. I'm changing glasses because I can see better with these right.

Speaker 1: 8:44

So let's start off with the Bix block. That's the one on the left-hand side. Now, when you look up in catalog it's always spelled B-I-X, b-i-x. Just looking to do an Ethernet birth test, what like in Cas-7, but want to verify. I have a termination. Oh, jason took and fiber flippers in the house so I've got some test people in here that might be able to help you with that Moving on. So it's actually B-I-C-S and that's like acronym, another acronym and it stands for Building Industry, cross Connect, but it's pronounced Bix, so people just spelled B-I-X.

Speaker 1: 9:21

Now Bix is used for IBDN work and that is information building something, distribution network, integrated building, distribution network. So, and it was actually created by a company called Nortel, nortel and it uses a dovetail base and you can terminate both unshielded and shielded cabling. Okay, that's the Bix block I'm talking about there on top. Let's see in the screen of your thing. It can accommodate cables between 22 and 26 gauge and it does not allow you those to stack conductors like the 66 blocks. We could actually put two conductors on a pin, but you can't do that with the Bix blocks. Now, according to the Bix telecom distribution methods manual, the TDMM, you can actually get these Bix blocks up to category 6A. I've never terminated one up to category 6A. It's been years, decades, even since I've terminated one, it was probably cat 5E or maybe even cat 3, right Now, when you actually look at the pins inside of that Bix block, it's a phosphorus-blond alloy that's played with tin alloy.

Speaker 1: 10:32

So the way that you actually would terminate this block, when you look at the block you'll notice there's some labeling in the middle of the block, but then there's these two holes on the very left-hand side and two holes all the way over in the right-hand side. You actually have to put these two little tie wraps through those things and then you put this block in the holder, the 100-pair holder, and then you bring the cable in from the top and you run it through those tie wraps and then you double it back and then you terminate it. Now it uses a very special tool, the tool you see underneath that that's called a Bix tool, and I really like the Bix tool when I first started doing terminations with them, because the Bix tool has like a pair of snips or scissors on it. It cuts the conductor for you and then, after you cut it down, you've got to take the Bix block out, rotate it and then put it back in. I never liked that part of it because I could never get it to look nice. So I'm not a real big fan of the Bix blocks. I'll be the first to admit it.

Speaker 1: 11:28

And then there's the LSA connectors. Now some people know them as the Crone connectors, but Crone was a company that came out with the Crone connector. They're based in, I think, germany, berlin, I think, actually. So the LSA actually and I'm not even going to try to pronounce those words because they're German, right, I don't want to try it but the LSA, l is a word, s is a word, a is a word. But those words actually mean if you run them through the translator on Google, did you know Google was a translator? Isn't that cool? Isn't that cool? You run them through there and what it means is solder free, screw free and strip free. So that's what that means.

Speaker 1: 12:13

So the connector you see there the Crone has actually two different connectors. They've got one connector for doing four pair cabling and another one for doing back bone cabling. So what you would do is you run the cable up behind. They have a metal can that you would mount to the wall and then the metal can. You've got to be really careful because those ends, where the blocks come on, are extremely sharp. Sorry, ask me how. I know that. Yeah, and then what you do is you run the cables up, you run it through the little hook thing in the back of the block, bring it up over the top, you punch it down with the Krone tool punch tool and then it punches it and then you can't really tell from the picture here, but there's actually a spot inside of that you can actually insert an equipment cord and you can actually test it and you can actually even do a disconnect with it.

Speaker 1: 13:02

Now here's the cool thing. So the Krone tool I mean the Krone punch block it also uses a dovetail design as well, but there's these two connection clips inside of it it grabs a hole in the connector at a 45 degree angle. A 45 degree angle which is different than the Bex. Now, I remember all the marketing literature when this thing first came out, and he said that the advantage of that 45 degree was, if you're trying to identify a cross-connect and you're tugging on the cross-connect, you're not going to pull it out of that block. Okay, that was one of the marketing tools.

Speaker 1: 13:34

And then the connectors are also phosphorous brown alloy, but the original Krone ones, the original Krone blocks, were played with silver Silver. Yeah, if you're my TDMM study group, remember, we talked about silver this week, didn't we? Silver and gold are the best conductors for electricity, but we don't use them for cabling because the cost Copper is a much more cost efficient way of doing that. So my preference to it has always been to do the Krona over the Bex. Oh, one other thing about the Bex With a 66 frame you start from the left, you work your way to the right and it's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve and so on and so forth.

Speaker 1: 14:23

With the Bex, you start down here and you put one there, and you put one there, and then you put one up here and you put one there. It's like a really weird kind of thing, so, but I still have my. Somebody on TikTok says they still had the Krone punch. I had mine too, floating out in the garage. I haven't used it in 20 years, right? So, and here's the funny thing. So Krone got bought out. They got bought out by who was it? I think I wrote it down, yeah. So Krone got bought by ADC, which then got bought by Tyco, which now, I think, is ComScope. So some of your new, some of your new LSA blocks aren't silver-plated, they're actually tin-plated like dollars. So I don't know if you still get the good advantage out of that. So there you go, alrighty.

Speaker 1: 15:09

So let's go up to the next question Dun dun, dun, dun Boom. So this question came to me via Facebook. I get lots of questions throughout the week and I always save them. I answer them to the people in the in, the in where media they come from, but I save them for the show as well. So this one and I kind of get boiled down that question. That question reads hey Chuck, if I was looking to get 20 plus of my technicians to take the Big C Tech one certification, what would be my recommendation for a game plan?

Speaker 1: 15:42

First off, I got to say kudos to you. Kudos to you for doing that, because a lot of people in our industry don't. I thought everybody wanted to get certified in it, but I see a lot of comments from people saying, oh, I don't want to do certification, and they're doing it either out of fear or whatever the personal reason may be. But I'm telling you a certification tells an employer or a potential customer that you're willing to go the extra mile. I heard that from Lee Renfrow. Thank you, lee. At the Big C conference I told you I was going to steal it. Told you, I warned you yeah, it's going to go the extra mile. So that way, if you're the customer, you know that that technician is going to go the extra mile for you when it comes to doing your job. So that's kind of cool there, right?

Speaker 1: 16:29

So you have several different options here, okay, and I don't know any of the costs, because when I became a Bixie instructor, that was 20 something years ago. So if you want the actual cost, you're going to have to go to Bixie. I'll talk about that more in a second. So the first option and these options are in no particular order. So the first option is send all 20 of your guys to Tampa. They go take a class. Now, that's going to be expensive because the class is going to be, I don't know, $12, $15, $1800 per person. Then you got to fly them there, then you got to put them in a hotel and then you got to feed them. That's going to be an expensive option, right, lots of cost there.

Speaker 1: 17:10

So option two is you can have Bixie do and I think they call it a suitcase class, right, a suitcase class, so they will actually come to your office to teach your technicians. Now I have no idea what that cost is. I would imagine it's at least the base cost of the class plus travel and expenses for the instructors and whatever profit for Bixie. That's called a suitcase class. The third option is this is the option that when I used to work for Hingles McCoy that we did. The third option is become an ATF, an authorized training facility, an ATF. Now, to become an authorized training facility, you got to put in an application, you got to send at least one person down to become a certified trainer.

Speaker 1: 17:58

They take what's called the TE350 class, or at least I think it's called the TE350. It's been a while. And then what they do is they teach you the class and then you got to teach the class back to the instructors and there's some modeling stuff and then, when you pass that class, now your instructor is allowed to actually teach the Bixie curriculum. Okay, now that's the first step For that option. Now you also have to build out your Bixie lab, because Bixie is very particular about the size, how it's set up, the number of people that you can have in that room, because they're trying to maintain a quality training program. Now I know when we built our Bixie lab when I worked for Hingles, it cost us $15,000 to build the lab. That accounts the labor and the materials and all that other stuff. You might be able to do it cheaper if you get some vendors to donate some product, but remember, though, it's got to be vendor-neutral, so you can't just use all of one manufacturer. It's got to be vendor-neutral.

Speaker 1: 19:01

And when it comes to the Bixie ATF license, there's two options here. You can get what's called the proprietary license, or you can get what's called their general agreement. Proprietary agreement or general agreement. Sorry, I got that wrong. So the proprietary agreement means you can only teach your staff. You can only teach your staff. So you would schedule the class, you would notify Bixie that you're teaching the class, so that way, if they want to come out and audit you, they can and they will audit you. They will come out at least in the very, very beginning, to certify you, to see you actually in action, and then they reserve the right to audit you at any given time. So you notify them and you got that proprietary agreement. You're teaching your own people and then you get done. So that's a really good way because now you can keep doing that and there's some clout that goes with that.

Speaker 1: 19:47

If you are a Bixie ATF and you put that on your jobs when you're submitting for proposals and stuff, I'm telling you, customers love that and I know that from personal experience. So then the other license is called a general agreement. Now the general agreement means that you can train any qualified individual, any qualified individual. So you can train. If somebody were to all of a sudden when you become a Bixie certified installer, they could come to you and you could train them and you could charge to pay them. Some people think, oh, check, that's an additional revenue source. Could be, absolutely could be.

Speaker 1: 20:23

Now, what I have found of being a trainer of many people over the years cause for those who don't know me, I'm a. My day job, I'm a trainer and I've been training. Well, my whole entire life I've been a trainer. I'm always teaching people, but I'm actually being paid to teach people now and for the last 10 years I've taught probably I don't know two, actually 11 years 1500 to 2000 people a year times 11 years, you do the math. I've taught a lot of people and one of the things I find to be a constant true statement is if you're a contractor and you got an ATF and you are training people and you have the general agreement, other contractors are not going to send their guys to your office for you to train Because now you got that technician for eight hours a day, five days a week and they're afraid that you're going to steal them. So that doesn't happen too often. So you know you won't find you won't get too many customers that way. But there are a lot of people in distribution, like the gray bars, the Accutex and some other people they're in distribution. They will create a big C lab at their sales office and then they'll come in. Now you're in a neutral environment and you don't have to worry about somebody stealing your customers, stealing your customers.

Speaker 1: 21:40

Now let's talk about pricing. So if you're going to go down the ATF route, you're going to want to reach out to Christopher Hobbs at Bigsy. If you want to go down that having the Bigsy suitcase thing, you're going to want to reach out to Nelson Cologne Both great guys. I know them both. I've met them. Both Nelson and I are really good friends on Facebook and LinkedIn and all this stuff. Those are the people you don't want to talk to when you actually do your pricing, because I have no idea no idea period what that cost is going to be Because, like I said, it's been a long time since I've done that.

Speaker 1: 22:15

So the next question is I got and this one came in from TikTok and so again I got bull down on that to make it short. But basically he says Chuck, I want to buy a G-PON OLTC plus transceiver and also a B plus transceiver. If they are equal, why do I need both? Why do I need both? You know, I tell you all the time I know a lot about our industry, but I don't know everything about our industry. I had to reach out for some helpers. The expert had to go to the experts to get the answer to this question, because Chuck doesn't know. I've never done G-Pond. So I reached out to some friends of mine on LinkedIn and I got some answers for you.

Speaker 1: 22:56

So when you actually look, I'm pulling up my notes for those who are seeing, so you see a change of light there. I'm looking at my notes here. So when you look at those two, they both operate at 1490 and 1310, right? They both use encapsulating SFP types and their port rates are both 2.49 gigabit per second for transmit and 1.24 gigabyte for the receive. Now, where the difference comes between the B plus and the C plus is in the transmit and receive powers, right? So the B plus it can only it puts out 1.5 dBm minimum output optical power, where the C plus puts out 3 dB. Okay, so it's actually twice as strong, right? So then the maximum output power is 5.dbm for the B plus and 7.dbm for the C plus. For the receiver sensitivity, it's negative 28 dBm on the B plus and negative 32 for the dBm. So the C plus is it's more sensitive, so it can pick up the signals better and it's a stronger output. But everything else is pretty much almost identical between those two. So that goes to answer your question, right?

Speaker 1: 24:09

There we go, alrighty, and now another question, and then I'll go up to the chat box and see what questions are there, alrighty? So this question comes from Brian via email. Brian, via email. Brian wants to know what is the best way to test a wireless access point terminated with a mod-end connector. Now, before I answer this question. I gotta give a plug. I gotta give a plug. Go check out my buddy, steve. He's in the room tonight.

Speaker 1: 24:40

Tech Talk with Steve. He's doing a show on this March 1st. I highly suggest you attend it, because Chuck will be attending it, and if I think it's enough for me to attend it, then you should be attending it as well. So if you're not already following Tech Talk with Steve, you should be, and you definitely wanna be watching that. So I'm only gonna give you the brief answer. I guarantee you Steve's gonna be typing in way deeper than I will. So let's talk.

Speaker 1: 25:06

So what happened in this particular scenario was somebody ran a category 6A cable from the horizontal cross-connect in the telecom room to a wireless access point in the ceiling and, instead of putting a keystone jack on the end of it and a patch cord, they crimped an APHC or RJ45 mod-end connector and plugged that in. Now, when you think about your testers, they got permanent link heads and they got channel heads. We can't use the permanent link heads, so it leaves you the channel heads. But here's the problem the channel head the measurement starts on the other side of the mod-end connector. So the thing that you most likely messed up. You're not even measuring. You're not even measuring, so you have to use what's called a patch cord adapter, a patch cord adapter. They look similar to channel heads, but the patch cord adapter, the measurement starts in front of that mod-end connector in front of it. So you gotta use that patch cord adapter. And on top of that you gotta make sure that you use the right category rated adapter for that. So if it's a wireless access point, it's most likely a category 6A cable. So you gotta use the category 6A patch cord adapter, the category 6A patch cord adapter. If you run an MPT out to like an industrial sensor, an access device, and you use CAT 5E, you gotta use a CAT 5E patch cord adapter, cat 5E patch cord adapter. So there you go. So let's go ahead and close that.

Speaker 1: 26:45

That was all the questions I had for tonight. Let's go check the chat box. Now I apologize because I haven't been keeping up with the chat box because, well, you know lots of stuff. Yeah, because I am a one-band show, so I'm doing all this kind of fun stuff. So let me see, anthony says here the Big C installer, installer training course, virtual class central 25, 12, 10 AM. So very good, there is.

Speaker 1: 27:11

Somebody put up the link for that as well. I'll make sure I put that in there. Tel-aid is an authorized training facility. I looked them up. Big C has a spot on their page where you can look up by state and find what ATFs are in your state. There's none in Florida. There's absolutely none in Florida, which really, really sucks. But you know, maybe that's a business opportunity for somebody.

Speaker 1: 27:32

If I had the money, I'd do it. If I did, if I had the money, I would absolutely do it. Let me see. Let me see. I'm trying to see if we have any. Well, fiberflip Fiber is on here through Facebook now. Fun fact Nordel's automated assistant voice is Nancy Nordel. I didn't know that. I didn't know that. Very cool, let me see. Okay, that was the only question. I have any other questions? So again, make sure you visit the QR code, okay, and make sure that you go buy me a cup of coffee. I'll send you a sticker. If you want to schedule 15 minutes with Chuck Bowser, rcdd, you can do that through there as well. You can send me an email. Check out all my social media accounts. 629,. Pizza should be getting here any minute. Until next time. Everybody, remember, knowledge is power. See you next Thursday night. Take care.

Speaker 2: 28:23

That's it for this episode of today's podcast. We hope you were able to learn something. Make sure to subscribe so you don't miss out on future content. Also, leave a rating so we can help even more people learn about telecommunications. Until next time, be safe.