Easy searching….Configurators and Selectors

Configurators and Selectors are interactive tools that make it even easier for you to get the solutions you need. Whether it’s cables, cabinets, or KVM, we provide simple to use guides that help make your decisions a snap.

CATx Cable Selector
Quickly find the exact CAT5/5e/6/6a/7 cable you need.

Custom Cable and Adapter Configurator
Design your custom cable or adapter and submit your request to our engineers for review. A Black Box representative will contact you, typically in 24 hours or less, to confirm your order.

KVM Switch Selector
Find the perfect ServSwitch™ KVM solution for your application.

Cabinet Configurator
Twenty seconds to configure, two days to ship. Build your ideal cabinet, configured to your specs and shipped in two business days.

Wallmount Cabinet Selector
Select wallmount features in the order of your priorities and get a list of matching cabinets.

Speed up hospital image transmissions with a 1-2-3 punch

Is your hospital using a PACS system? Although this way of digitally sending images eliminates the need to manually retrieve and transports files, your PACS system may not be performing as quickly as your organization needs. If these images are being transmitted to another facility in another town, state, or even country, the latency of your connection can cause the transfer to take FOREVER. And in emergency situations where there are life-or-death implications, this delay is unacceptable.

Many healthcare institutions with multiple locations have experienced slow DICOM transmission across their WAN links, and have looked for solutions to improve transmission speeds (usually due to the critical nature and timeliness of the transmissions). WAN acceleration or WAN optimization devices help speed up these transmissions. But are your devices packing the 1-2-3 punch that Black Box provides?

Enterprise Wireless: Two Models; Which One is Right for You?

The next generation of wireless technology is coming down the pike faster than ever thanks to the explosive growth in smartphone and tablet PC use.

Schools, hospitals, manufacturing facilities, retail organizations, hospitality and convention facilities, and many others, all find themselves with a pressing need to upgrade enterprise wireless systems while sidestepping the need to do a “forklift upgrade.”

How can you provide convenient, secure, wireless access, according to the latest standards, while still reigning in both costs and workload?

Two Paths to an 802.11n Wireless
Developers of the latest 802.11n wireless networks have come up with two different kinds of solutions:

1.  “Command and control”: a pyramid-style hub type of system. At the heart of these solutions is a brain called a “controller,” to which a network of access points (APs) connect, and from which they receive information. A controller is expensive—and the costs multiply as networks grow. Because all of a network’s traffic must flow through a controller, it can become a bottleneck.
2.  “Equal Partnership”: a network of equal partners. Individual APs work as peer-to-peer devices, configured in a self-aware “mesh arrangement” where they work together to improve speed and redundancy. Individually, they function much like the intelligent smart switching devices found in today’s wired networks: they sort and send data only where they’re needed. There is collaborative control. There are no bottlenecks and there is no single point of failure.

Why should I encrypt my data?

When news about e-mail marketer Epsilon’s data breach hit the streets, people were both surprised and concerned. How many other businesses out there have been using third party sites to handle their customer information? The reality is that…It’s a lot. Given the global size of networks out there today, companies are forced to utilize third party carriers. In doing so, these third party service vendors introduce additional vulnerabilities.

Even if third party vendors aren’t used, more and more organizations are using the Internet to send data to branch offices. Authentication is critical, but many companies don’t encrypt their data because it’s traveling on a “safe” MPLS network. Although MPLS networks provide more reliable connections than the Internet and aren’t as public, you can’t put all your eggs in the MPLS basket.

When vendors say MPLS is secure, what they mean is that the traffic is kept separate from other traffic. Separate data is not the same as data security, and separate traffic is even easier for hackers to attack. The vendor might have processes in place to prevent unauthorized data snooping, and tell you that their employees probably aren’t going to snoop either. In fact, your data probably won’t be stolen on an MPLS network, but you have no way of being sure and no way to tell if your data has been breached.

The only way to ensure data security over an MPLS network is by encrypting data as it travels across the WAN. This is accomplished through a traditional IPsec VPN. Although this approach is fairly simple to set up between only two points, when remote sites multiply, the number of tunnels increases exponentially. A tunnel is needed between each pair of sites, leading to administrative hassles every time a remote site is added. With growth comes the addition of personnel, router and re-structuring costs. Not to mention, a lag in network performance.

Power problems – the threat, the cause, and the effect on your network

When your organization experiences a power anomaly your first instinct is to probably find a dictionary. Surges, spikes, blackouts, brownouts, and any other “outs” might have you scratching your head. The reality is we live in a time of great technological innovation. Chances are, one of the below instances has happened to you. The most common types of disturbances are:

Sags
The Threat — A sag is a decline in the voltage level. Also known as “brownouts,” sags are the most common power problem.

The Cause — Sags can be caused… locally by the start-up demands of electrical devices such as motors, compressors, and elevators. Sags may also happen during periods of high electrical use, such as during a heat wave.

The Effect — Sags are often the cause of “unexplained” computer glitches such as system crashes, frozen keyboards, and data loss. Sags can also reduce the efficiency and lifespan of electrical motors.

Blackouts
The Threat — A blackout is a total loss of power.

The Cause — Blackouts are caused by excessive demand on the power grid, an act of nature such as lightning or an earthquake, or a human accident such as a car hitting a power pole or a backhoe digging in the wrong place.

The Effect — Of course a blackout brings everything to a complete stop. You also lose any unsaved data stored in RAM and may even lose the total contents of your hard drive.