Author: Fiber-MART.COM

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Pulling Fiber Optic Cable – Tips and How To Advice

by http://www.fiber-mart.com

Pulling fiber optic cable takes a lot of preparation. Without the right tools and knowledge, you can have a big mess on your hands.We’ll go over some of the common steps to get you ready to make the pull.
1) Measure twice cut once:
First and foremost, get the correct measurement. An easy way to do this would be to fish some pull string through your conduit. Make sure to follow the exact path the fiber will take, end to end. Once your string is all the way through, attach a heavier rope to the end, pull it all the way back and measure your string. Leave the rope in place, you will be using this to pull your fiber through later. (Tip: Always add at least 15ft to the final number. It may cost a little more, but can save you a lot of time and headache if you come up a few feet short. It is also a lot easier to work with the cable if you have some slack, vs a cable that barely reaches).
2) Plan your Run:
Buildings- Although it is not necessary to run the fiber through innerduct, many people prefer this to keep it clean and professional looking. If you prefer not to use innerduct, try to keep your pulls as straight as possible. Pulling diagonal is OK, but it will make for a neater appearance if your fiber is running parallel. Get it done right the first time. If someone is unhappy with the appearance, it will take much longer to correct, or re-pull the fiber. (Tip: Never pull around corners, even if you have a helper. You should always pull out the excess fiber to the corner, laying it down in a figure 8 pattern as your doing it. Then flip the whole bundle over and continue to pull on the other side).
Conduits- It is important to plan ahead, especially if your planning on pulling the fiber through underground conduit. Just like measuring the fiber, it’s very important to get this done right the first time. A general rule of thumb is to use a 1.5″ to 2″ conduit for the fiber pull. If your running long distances, or using a thick armored fiber, you may want to increase the size to 4″. It may also be a good idea to plan ahead and install a second conduit if you plan on future expansion. (Tip: Minimize the number of bends in your run. The fewer bends there are, the easier the pull will go. If you can’t get around it, install junction boxes. Also make sure to protect the fiber by putting plastic bushings on the end of the conduit).
3) Which Jacket is Right?
Outdoor – Outdoor fiber is used for all outdoor applications (except direct burial). It is flooded with a water resistant gel, which means it can be run in buried conduit. But that also means there is a 50ft limit to being run indoors due to Fire and Safety codes. For direct burial applications, we suggest you use an armored fiber. If you need to suspend the fiber for arial applications, you can buy the fiber with a messenger attached, or buy it separately and and attach it yourself.
Indoor – For indoor applications, you need to use a Plenum rated fiber. Plenum fiber complies with all Fire and Safety codes.
Indoor/Outdoor – For applications you need to run the fiber indoors and outdoors, you should use an indoor/outdoor rated fiber. This fiber can be run in underground conduit, and doesn’t have the 50ft limitation for indoor use. A great all around fiber.
4) Pulling the Fiber:
Communication is Key
Pulling fiber almost always requires at least 2 people, so communication is very important. Most fiber runs are a few hundred feet or more, so yelling back and forth isn’t an option. What to do? Walkie Talkies can be a great way to keep in touch with the guy at the other end of the cable. Get some with wrist straps or a belt clip so you don’t have to constantly pick it up off the ground.
Lube it Up
Make sure you properly lube the fiber during the entire run. You will want to start off with a generous coat on the pulling eye and mesh. It would be a good idea to stop from time to time and apply more lube to the fiber as you pull. Always use lubricant that is designed for cable pulling, not just anything off the shelf. If you use the wrong type of lube, it may damage the jacket of your fiber, or other cables around it. It can also clog up the conduit once it dries. Cable pulling lube is designed to resist freezing and clogging.
Use the Right Rope
We recommend using a 1/4″ to 1/2″ thick pull rope, not pull string. You want to minimize the amount of stretching during your pull and string isn’t very good at doing that. Stretching can make pulling your fiber very unstable.
Pulling Eye Removal
Never use a knife or blade to remove the pulling eye. This can damage the jacket of the fiber, or worse, the fiber itself. Always use a pair of electrician scissors.
Stay up to Code
Honesty is the best policy. The NEC requires that cables used in premises, both commercial and residential, be “listed for the purpose” by a Nationally Recognized Test Laboratory (NRTL, pronounced “nurtle”).Always obey all fire and building codes. Never try to cheat the system just to save a buck, especially when peoples lives are at risk. If plenum rated fiber is required, use plenum rated fiber. It’s the right thing to do.
5) Pre-Terminated Fiber Optic Cable
The greatest thing to happen since sliced bread. Pre-terminated fiber optic cable assemblies save you time and headache. No need for expensive tools. No need for testing. Our pre-terminated fiber comes to you on a wooden spool, with the connectors already assembled on the fiber. We have the connectors staggered by 1/2″ to make it easier to pull through conduit or innerduct. The pulling eye is very strong and wont break on you. Test results are included. It doesn’t get any easier than this.

How To Decide What Goes Into A Fiber Prep Kit

Kit configuration starts with our marketing department, our staff of engineers and our sales team. Usually it’s the sales team up first explaining the need for a kit for a specific customer or they had an inspiration or a germ of an idea from a tech in the field saying he wished he had a selection of tools in an all-in-one kit. Ideas can originate just about anywhere. All suggestions are evaluated, and one of the first questions posed is there a market for this kit and will anyone care (translation, will anyone buy it)?
Kevin Costner starred in the movie, Field of Dreams. And a voice over kept saying, “if you build it they will come.” We ask, if you build it will the customers come. In the case of fiber prep tools and the need for a kit our marketing department conducted extensive research and found such a need, and with the breadth of line, fiber-mart Tools was positioned to fill it.
Because fiber is ubiquitous and more and more is being installed every day, the need for the proper tools for installation and maintenance continues to grow; therefore, the need for fiber prep tools continues to grow. So, the question then becomes, what goes into a fiber prep kit?
fiber-mart Tools has a number of Fiber Prep Kits in the line including the TK-120 Fiber Prep Kit and the TK-150 Fiber Prep Kit with Connector Cleaner, Fiber Cleaver & Visual Fault Locator. The TK-150 features all of the same tools as the TK-120 plus the VFL-150 Visual Fault Locator, FCC-250 Fiber Connector Cleaner and the FC-220 Fiber Cleaver. These kits have been on the market for a little over a year and can already be found in use around the world. But who decided what to put in the kits and how was that decision made?
Looking at the tools contained in the TK-120 and the function of each explains how and why they were chosen. To start there are three cable stripping tools, the CST-1900 Round Cable Stripper, CSR-1575 Cable Strip & Ring Tool, and the FOD-2000 Fiber Optic Drop Cable Slitter. These tools allow you to open cable jackets and buffer tubes to gain access to the fiber.
Along the same line is the MS-6 Mid Span Slitter. This patent pending tool allows the tech to gain access to a fiber mid span for either a repair or connectorizing a fiber.
Every kit needs a fiber stripper and fiber-mart Tools manufactures the JIC-375 Fiber Optic Stripper Three Hole…THE tool for stripping fiber optic cable. And if you are exposing the inner workings of the cable you are bound to encounter Kevlar – a very tough material. A standard scissor would last a week before breaking so you need the JIC-186 Ergonomic Fiber Optic Kevlar Cutter…a tough resilient scissor specifically designed to deal with materials as tough as Kevlar.
Rounding out the kit you need a flashlight like the FL-2000, a screwdriver like the SD-61 Multi Bit Screwdriver for opening panel boxes, FW-5 fiber wipes for cleaning the fiber and a couple of pliers. We included the JIC-2288 Diagonal Cutter Pliers for use as the name implies – for cutting cables, and the JIC-842 Telecom Long Nose Pliers for grabbing or pulling cables. Now add the rugged H-90 21 Pocket Tool Case and you have the perfect kit…and that is the genesis of the fiber Prep kit.

Difference bewteen Transceiver and Transmitter

A transmitter can either be a separate piece of electronic equipment or an integrated circuit (IC) within another electronic device. A transmitter generates a radio frequency current applied to the antenna, which in turn radiates radio waves for communication, radar and navigational purposes. The information that is provided to the transmitter is in the form of an electronic signal. This includes audio from a microphone, video from a TV camera, or a digital signal for wireless networking devices. The electronics for a transmitter are simple. They convert an incoming pulse (voltage) into a precise current pulse to drive the source. Different transmitter has different functions. Take the optical transmitter as an example, it consists of the following components: optical source, electrical pulse generator and optical modulator. And the role of it is to convert the electrical signal into optical form, and launch the resulting optical signal into the optical fiber.
A transceiver is a device made up of both a receiver and transmitter (the name “transceiver” is actually short for transmitter-receiver) and these two gadgets are in a single module. When no circuitry is common between transmit and receive functions, the device is a transmitter-receiver.
Transceivers can be found in radio technology, telephony as well as Ethernet in which transceivers are called Medium Attachment Units (MAUs) in IEEE 802.3 documents and were widely used in 10BASE2 and 10BASE5 Ethernet networks. Fiber-optic gigabit, 10 Gigabit Ethernet, 40 Gigabit Ethernet, and 100 Gigabit Ethernet utilize transceivers known as GBIC, SFP, SFP+, QSFP, XFP, XAUI, CXP, and CFP, among which Cisco SFP is the most popular one. In addition, 1000BASE-T SFP, 10GBASE-T SFP+ and 1000BASE-T copper SFP we mentioned before are all transceivers.
Transceiver vs Transmitter
From the above information, we can know that the transmitter can only be used to transmit signals, while the transceiver can both transmit and receive signals. However, many view transceivers as a compromise in terms of performance, functionality, portability and flexibility and if they had any practical value it would be in mobile and portable applications. Transceivers sacrificed some features and performance to gain the smaller size/weight and cost.
As for the portability, a transceiver just needs the space of one module, but functions as two different modules. It is easy to be taken on the go. Separate transmitter is not as convenient in some circumstances as it is probably heavier, and takes up more room. But they are advantageous because each could benefit from its own design, without compromising in areas such as I-F frequency choice, conversion frequencies, and audio stages and they are easier to build and work on.
As far as the price is concerned, in most cases, a separate transmitter consumes more power. And the price of a single transceiver is much lower than that of a transmitter plus a receiver.Using a common frequency generation/tuning scheme, power supply and other components, it costs less to manufacture a transceiver than a separate transmitter and receiver.As to how to choose from them, the answer depends on your application.
Conclusion
You may find many transmitters in you life, like the TV remote control. Although transceiver is not commonly noticed around you, it is actually commonly applied to many places. We can say that it is invisible but versatile. I sincerely hope that this article will help you understand the difference: transceiver vs transmitter, only then, can you use them in the right way.

Fiber Splice Tray and Fiber Enclosure

In the cabinet, we may find many devices and gadgets, such as fiber patch panel, fiber splice tray, fiber enclosure, adapter panel and zip ties which are all little but critical components for cable management. Fiber patch panel, the one we have cued for a lot of times, will give way to fiber splice tray and fiber enclosure, the two subjects that we will introduce today.
Fiber Splice Tray Unveil
As we all know, it is usually unavoidable to match splice fiber optic cables with fiber pigtails in data center, which not only demands lower space requirement but also allows a better network performance compared with other fiber optic termination methods.
Fiber splice tray, very popular in data center and server room, is a plate to store the fiber cables and splices and prevent them from becoming damaged or being misplaced. Splice trays are necessary for holding and protecting individual fusion splices or mechanical splices. One of the important factors of fiber splice tray is the fiber count that it can hold. Most fiber splice tray can hold up to 24 fiber splices. 12-fiber splice trays are the most commonly used fiber splice tray in fiber optic network.
A Closer Look At Fiber Enclosure
It is a box that contains the devices to connect various fiber optic cables. Fiber enclosures can be classified into two configurations, namely rack mount fiber enclosure and wall mount fiber enclosure. And the rack mount fiber enclosure can be further categorized by its height and the design. We have 1U, 2U and 4U choices. The rack mount enclosures come in two flavors. One is the slide-out variety , and the other incorporates a removable lid which requires the user to remove the whole enclosure from the rack to gain internal access.
How The Two Coordinate?
Owning solely a fiber splice tray is far more enough. It should be equipped with a device to provide a safe and easy-to-manage environment for fiber splices. Apart from fiber optic splice closure, fiber distribution box and fiber optic enclosure, we can adopt the fiber enclosure displayed today. Fiber splice tray can be installed in fiber enclosure.
Here takes the example of fiber splice tray used in FHD fiber enclosure of FS.COM as shown in the following picture. It is a 96-fiber enclosure which has four 24-fiber adapter on the front panel. This 1U fiber enclosure can hold up four 24-fiber splice tray to provide the space for 96 fiber optic splices.
Conclusion
As optical fibers are sensitive to pulling, bending and crushing forces, fiber splice tray and fiber enclosure serve as double protections which are used to provide a safe routing and easy-to-manage environment for the fragile optical fiber splices. Attention! Bare fibers without protection tubes should never be exposed outside of a splice tray. It’s our pleasure to provide you with the best solutions.

Do you know Fiber Optical Transponders?

As we know, transponder is important in optical fiber communications, it is the element that sends and receives the optical signal from a fiber. A transponder is typically characterized by its data and the maximum distance the signal can travel.
Functions of a Fiber Optical Transponder includes:
Electrical and optical signals conversion
Serialzation and deserialization
Control and monitoring
Applications of Fiber Optical Transponder
Multi-rate, bidirectional fiber transponders convert short-reach 10gb/s and 40 gb/s optical signals to long-reach, single-mode dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) optical interfaces.
The modules can be used to enable DWDM applications such as fiber relief, wavelength services, and Metro optical DWDM access overtay on existing optical infrastructure.
Supporting dense wavelength multiplexing schemes, fiber optic transponders can expand the useable bandwidth of a single optical fiber to over 300 Gb/s.
Transponders also provide a standard line interface for multiple protocols through replaceable 10G small form-factor pluggable (XFP) client-side optics.
The data rate and typical protocols transported include synchronous optical network/synchronous digital hierarchy (SONET/SDH) (OC-192 SR1), Gigabit Ethernet (10GBaseS and 10GBaseL), 10G Fibre Channel (10 GFC) and SONET G.709 forward error correction (FEC)(10.709 Gb/s).
Fiber optic transponder modules can also support 3R operation (reshape, retime, regenerate) at supported rates.
Often, fiber optic transponders are used to for testing interoperability and compatibility. Typical tests and measurements include litter performance, receiver sensitivity as a function of bit error rate (BER), and transmission performance based on path penalty.Some fiber optic transponders are also used to perform transmitter eye measurements.
fiber-mart.com Provides Optical Transponders Solution
Let’s image that the architecture that can not support automated reconfigureability. Connectivity is provided via a manual Fibre Optic Patch Panel, a patch panel where equipment within an office is connected via fiber cables to one side (typically in the back), and where short patch cables are used on the other side (typically in the front) to manually interconnect the equipment as desired.  There is a point that Fibre Optic Patch Panel, people usually different ports patch panel , for example, 6, 8, 12, 24 port fiber patch panel and they according to different connectors to choose different patch panel, such as LC patch panel,  LC patch panel,  MTP patch panel…
optical network
The traffic that is being added to or dropped from the optical layer at this node is termed add/drop traffic, the traffic that is transmitting the mode is called through traffic. Regardless of the traffic type, note that all of the traffic entering and exiting the node is processed by a WDM transponder. In the course of converting between a WDM-compatible optical signal and a client optical signal, the transponder processes the signal in the electrical domain. Thus, all traffic enters the node in the optical domain, is converted to the electrical domain, and is returned to the optical domain. This architecture, where all traffic undergoes optical electrical (OEO) conversion, is referred to as the OEO architecture.

Differences between EPON and GPON

PON is the abbreviation of passive optical network, which only uses fiber and passive components like fiber splitter and combiner. EPON （Ethernet PON) and GPON (Gigabit PON) are the most important versions of passive optical networks, widely used for Internet access, voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), and digital TV delivery in metropolitan areas. Today we are going to talk about the differences between EPON and GPON.
Technology Comparison of EPON and GPON
EPON is based on the Ethernet standard 802.3 that can support the speed of 1.25 Gbit/s in both the downstream and upstream directions. It is well-known as the solution for the “first mile” optical access network. While GPON, based on Gigabit technology, is designated as ITU-T G.983 which can provide for 622 Mbit/s downstream and 155 Mbit/s upstream. GPON is an important approach to enable full service access network. Its requirements were set force by the Full Service Access Network (FASN) group, which was later adopted by ITU-T as the G.984.x standards–an addition to ITU-T recommendation, G.983, which details broadband PON (BPON).
As the parts of PON, they have something in common. For example, they both can be accepted as international standards, cover the same network topology methods and FTTx applications, and use WDM (wavelength-division multiplexing) with the same optical frequencies as each other with a third party wavelength; and provide triple-play, Internet Protocol TV (IPTV) and cable TV (CATV) video services.
Costs Comparison
No matter in a GPON or in an EPON, the optical line terminal (OLT), optical network unit (ONU) and optical distribution network (ODN) are the indispensable parts, which are the decisive factor of the costs of GPON and EPON deployments.
The cost of OLT and ONT is influenced by the ASIC (application specific integrated circuit) and optic module. Recently, the chipsets of GPON are mostly based on FPGA (field-programmable gate array), which is more expensive than the EPON MAC layer ASIC. On the other hand, the optic module’s price of GPON is also higher than EPON’s. When GPON reaches deployment stage, the estimated cost of a GPON OLT is 1.5 to 2 times higher than an EPON OLT, and the estimated cost of a GPON ONT will be 1.2 to 1.5 times higher than an EPON ONT.
We all know that the ODN is made up of fiber cable, cabinet, optical splitter, connector, and etc. In the case of transmitting signals to the same number of users, the cost of EPON and GPON would be the same.
Summary
Nowadays, since many experts have different opinions on EPON and GPON. Thus, there is no absolute answer to determine which is better. But one thing is clear: PON, which possesses the low cost of passive components, has made great strides driven by the growing demand for faster Internet service and more video. Also, fiber deployments will continue expanding at the expense of copper, as consumer demands for “triple-play” (video, voice and data) grow.