Category: Fiber Transceivers

Optical transceivers, Active Optic Cables, data center switches, and cable management in data centers.

How To Choose A Fiber Transceiver

Fiber transceiver used in the Ethernet cable cann’t be overwritten, you must use the fiber to extend transmission distance of the actual network environment, help fiber last-km line to connect to the metro and the outer layer of the network playa huge role. With fiber optic transceivers, also need to upgrade from copper to fiber optic, but lack of funds, manpower or time the user provides an inexpensive program.
In order to ensure fully compatible with the NICs, repeaters, hubs and switches and other network equipment of other manufacturers, fiber optic transceiver products must strictly comply with 10Base-T, 100Base-TX, 100Base-FX, IEEE802.3 and IEEE802.3u Ethernet standard. In addition, EMC anti-electromagnetic radiation shall comply with FCC Part15. Nowadays, the major domestic carriers are great efforts to build the residential network, campus and enterprise networks, so the amount of fiber-optic transceiver products are constantly improved to better meet the access network construction needs.
How to choose a fiber transceiver? Due to fiber converter is one of the LAN connection device, it is necessary to consider the mutual compatibility with the surrounding environment, and product stability, reliability, and vice versa: the prices were lower, cann’t get customer all like!
1. Whether to support full-duplex and half duplex?
Some chips on the market currently only use full-duplex environment, can not support half-duplex, such as the receipt of other brands of switches or HUB and it is using half-duplex mode, will cause serious conflict and loss.
2. Whether and other optical transceiver done connection test?
An increasing number of currently available fiber optic transceivers, transceivers, such as the mutual compatibility of different brands of transceivers in advance didn’t make the test will produce loss, the transfer time is too long, suddenly fast and slow phenomena such as.
3. Whether there is a safety device to prevent packet loss?
Some vendors in the manufacture of fiber optic transceivers, transceiver, in order to reduce costs, often the data transfer mode register, this approach is the biggest drawback is instability in the transmission, packet loss, and the best is to use the buffer line. can be safe and to avoid data loss.
4. Temperature adaptability?
Fiber optic transceivers, when used, will produce high fever, high temperature (not greater than 85C), fiber optic transceiver is working properly? Is very worthy of the factors that customers consider!
5. Whether conforming to the IEEE802.3u standard?
Such as fiber optic transceivers comply with IEEE802.3 standard, that the delay time control in 46bit, it means that the transmission distance of fiber-optic transceiver will be shortened if more than 46bit!

Check Your Fiber Optic Connectors Like A Professional Installer

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

What are Fiber Optic Inspection Microscopes?
Fiber optic inspection microscopes are used to inspect the end face of a optical connector or cleaved fiber.
Two types of fiber optic microscopes are popular on the market: fiber optic connector termination inspection and fiber patch panel ferrule inspection.
Magnification levels of fiber scope are available at 200X or 400X for single mode fiber applications, 100X low cost type for multimode applications. The latter is often included in many fiber optic termination tool kits.
What types of flaws or contamination can the microscope see?
With at least 200X magnification you can clearly see scratches, dig, dirt deposit, debris and other contamination on a fiber optic connector.
Desktop video fiber microscope
The typical desktop fiber optic video inspection microscope has a 9″ black and white monitor attached to the scope with a 4 feet video cable. So you can place the monitor where it is convenient. Because of its bulk volume, this type of fiber microscope is typically used in production environments and labs. Both 200X and 400X versions are available.
Portable optical fiber scope
This type of microscope with universal adapter is a versatile instrument to inspect fiber optic connectors. They can be used for both multimode and single mode applications. Connectors slide into scope adapter, providing ease of use with or without tripod. 8 degree angle adapter can be used for inspecting angled connectors such as FC/APC, SC/APC, etc. Both 200X and 400X versions are available.
Coaxial Illuminated handheld fiber inspection scope
These low cost microscopes are available in 200x or 400x magnification, and utilize white LED light to provide coaxial illumination to connector end-faces. This method of illumination produces high resolution detail of end face scratches, defects and contamination. It is provided with a universal 2.5mm adapter, with other common connector styles available. These are the natural choice for fiber installation contractors.
Ferrule inspection microscopes
All aforementioned four types of microscopes are for standalone fiber connector inspection. But what about the connectors already installed on patch panels and hardware devices? The ferrule inspection microscopes are the solution.
These video fiber optic microscopes include a handheld LCD display unit and a small, lightweight probe that contains a long-life LED light source and CCD video camera. The probe adapter tip mates with the connector and projects a crisp, clear image of microscopic debris and end-face damage on the LCD display.
Zoom levels of different optical fiber optic microscopes
* 100X
* 150X
* 200X
* 400X
Warnings
* Do not look into a fiber while the system laser is on
* Do not connect a fiberscope while the system laser is on
* Do not touch the end face of the fiber connector
* Lasers used in telecommunication systems are powerful enough to burn contaminants into the fiber end face. Always ensure the laser is turned off while performing the cleaning procedure.
Other special features of popular handheld fiber micrscopes
1. 100X magnification for viewing multimode connectors
2. Includes 2.5 mm connector “Universal Adapter” for FC, ST and SC style connectors
3. Oblique illumination provides good view of ferrule cleanliness and core condition
4. White LED illumination delivers long working life

The Future of Network Cabling: Fiber & Copper Together

With the technological advancements & increasing internet speed raises a question as to whether to use traditional copper as the physical interconnector or upgrade to fiber to support these higher speeds.
In this blog post, we are going to see the main difference and consequences of using both on the same platform.
Size And Space:
The main difference will be fluctuation in size and weight. Everyone has seen a traditional Cat5/Cat6 and a fiber cable. The clear difference here is that a duplex fiber optic cable provides 25 percent space savings and 50 percent weight savings over shielded bulk cat5e cable. Moreover, optical fiber cables are lighter, thinner, and more efficient than their copper counterparts. However, it is important to note that fiber cables are a bit more fragile and require special tools to terminate connections.
Transmission Speed:
Traditional Cat5 twisted pair copper cables support a transmission rate of 100 Megabits per second. On the same side, Cat 6 supports an impressive rate of 10 Gigabits per second up to a distance of 300 feet.
Whereas new fiber cables and new transmission protocols are booming each and every day. For mobile military platforms, fiber can support anywhere from 100Mbps up 10 Gbps. However, in data centers and service provider interconnects, fiber support the speed of 40, 50, 75, and 100 Gbps. And you can even see 400Gbps speed tested and implemented.
Signal Loss:
One of the major disadvantages of copper bulk ethernet cable is that they experience mass signal loss over long distances. If we look at the effective limit of a copper run, that is about 100 meters. Other distances longer than that require ethernet switch, ethernet extender or media converter that can basically link two runs of copper together. Another way is to terminate the copper run and add a link to a fiber connection for the additional distance.
On the other hand, fiber optic cables can run without significant signal loss over longer distances. As new technologies are constantly coming ahead, a single mode fiber can support up to 100 Gbps up to 10km without any significant signal loss.
EMI And Cross Talk:
Copper cabling is responsive to crosstalk and both radio frequency and EMI as it transfers an electrical signal. Cat6 Ethernet cables lessen the interference, but it does not escape it. The interference can be controlled with several measures which include an internal spline to separate the twisted pairs.
As the fiber optic cable doesn’t carry electricity but light, it is immune to the interference problem which can plague copper cabling.
Environmental Concerns:
Copper cables can potentially be a fire hazard in the long run. Because there is an electrical current passing through a plug which can wear over time. Whereas there is no electricity involved in the transmission of fiber optic signals, there is no concern of fire. Many users believe that fiber’s size and weight make it less resistant to the installation. But the fact is fiber is more durable with a higher tension limit than copper and stands up to environmental changes.
But why till date many of the platforms still use traditional bulk cat5e cable/cat 5 cables?
Till the date, fiber was an expensive cable. The overall economics of fiber has changed globally over the years; hence, the cost is becoming a less mitigation factor.
Fiber is sensitive metal. It reacts on twisting and kinking. It is a complex install. It changes rapidly with newer fibers, connectors and installation tools.
There is a huge installed base of copper, which is here to stay. Hence, many of them feel that the change of copper cables to fiber is optional.
A huge number of devices which need to connect still have only copper connector interfaces.
In the meantime, there are various ways to handle this situation. Many bulk ethernet cables and switches support the connection of copper as well as fiber. This way, devices connected with either physical medium will be able to communicate with each other. In such a scenario, physical media converters can act as a bridge between the two media offering a range of configurations which support fiber in/copper out or copper in/fiber out or many other configurations.
When it comes to big enterprises and data service providers, they have the way to replace copper with fiber in almost every new deployment. However, mobile and airborne platforms lag behind this evolution for many reasons. Speed requirements are not that much in demand, but field repairs and deployments are often harder. And finally, there comes the cost factor. We can expect to see the continued evolution from copper to fiber, but at a controlled pace. In the meantime, we can continue seeing the physical intermediary technologies that co-exist for many years to come.

Fiber Optic Patch Cables: Here’s All You Should Know

The basic definition of patch cables means an electronic cable which connects electronic devices. It allows the transmission of data between them. There are different types of patch cables in the market with fiber optic patch cables being one of the types. Other types include microphone, headphones, RCA, and ethernet.
Fiber optic patch cable, cord or often known as optical jumper, is a fiber cable terminated with fiber optic connectors (LC, SC, MTRJ, ST, and more) at each of their ends. These connectors allow the cord to stay connected to an optical switch or other computing devices. These cords are ideal for indoor use in server rooms, data centers, medical imaging, mechanical engineering, LAN applications, Cable TV networks, Telephone lines, and more.
If you are looking to buy fiber optic jumper for your system, first you should be aware of its types and functionalities. And then choose according to your requirements.
Let’s dive in!
Armored Fiber Patch Cord: It is stronger than the standard fiber patch cord containing all its features. Armored fiber patch cord is resistant to adults’ stepping and is anti-rodents. It is as flexible as a standard fiber optic patch cord.
Bend Insensitive Fiber Patch Cord: It is resistant to bend related damages. It contains a small cable bending radius and prevents additional bend damages by its inventive core design. And also because of its low macro-bending sensitivity. It supports data center, FTTH applications, and high-density cabling that have to be wrapped and adjusted in the tight corners.
Mode Conditioning Fiber Patch Cord: It is a duplex multimode fiber patch cord which has a small length of single mode fiber at the starting point of the transmission length. It is to solve technical issues involved when using single-mode equipment on the existing multimode cable plant. This type of cables’ major aim is to drive the distance of installed fiber plant beyond its original applications as well as to improve data signal quality.
Low Insertion Loss Fiber Patch Cable: It looks similar to common patch cable by its appearance. But its connectors at the ends contain relatively less insertion loss.
Uniboot Fiber Patch Cord: These cords terminate with specially designed LC uniboot connectors. This fiber patch cable unites two fiber in a single cable which delivers high better performance in the high-density cabling environment. It cuts down the cable count up to 50%. It represents the best fit for places where there’s a scarcity of place.
Switchable Fiber Patch Cord: It enables fast polarity change in the field without needing special tools or training. With a compact design, switchable fiber patch cord attributes to more efficient cable management in high-density environment.
And Here’s How To Choose The Right Fiber Optic Jumper:
Step 1: Choose The Right Connector Type
The ends of fiber optic patch cord contain different connectors including LC, SC, ST, FC, MPO, and MTP. Kindly note that these connectors are for different devices. If you want to connect similar ports type devices, use connectors with the same type of connectors on both ends such as LC-LC, SC-SC, MPO-MPO. If you want to connect different ports type devices, LC-SC, LC-ST, LC-FC cables might help.
Step 2: Consider The Mode
These patches are available in two types of modes: Single-mode and multimode. Single-mode patch cables are ideal for long distance data transmission. If you are looking for relatively shorter distances, multimode fiber optic patch cord could be an ideal choice.
Step 3: Simplex Or Duplex Cable?
Simplex means the fiber patch cable contains a single strand of glass or plastic fiber. It is generally used where only a single receive or transmit line is required between devices. Duplex means two fiber patch cables put side by side for common transceivers. Duplex cable type contains two strands of glass or plastic in comparison with the simplex cable.
Step 4: The Right Cable Length
These cables come in different length. Starting from 0.5m to 50m. It is of utmost importance to choose an appropriate length according to the distance between the devices you wish to connect.
Step 5: Connector Polish Type
There are two connectors available. APC and UPC. APC connectors are suitable for applications like FTTx, passive optical network and wavelength-division multiplexing. However, it is more expensive than UPC connector. For less sensitive digital system, UPC connects would be ideal.
Step 6: Choose The Cable Jacket Type
There are three jacket types: Polyvinyl chloride, Low smoke zero halogen, and Optical fiber nonconductive plenum.
PVC is ideal for horizontal runs from the wiring center.
LSZH is good to use between floors in commercial or residential buildings.
OFNP is good for vertical runs between floors and other applications.
Fiber products offer a wide selection of fiber optic jumpers with a variety of connectors, length, and cable types. The main thing is to consider your key requirement and choose the correct cable according to that to make the most out of it.

A custom configured solution for your cable management

How to Do Proper Cable Management
When you’re building or retrofitting your network infrastructure, you don’t always have the staff or resources to design your layout. Telect has a Custom Configured Solutions team with the expertise to design cable raceways and rack architecture.
This is the fifth in a Telect blog series, entitled The A-B-Cs of Cable Management. Application Engineer Jason Charette describes how a custom configured solution can save your company time and money.
Fiber optic cables often need to navigate through tight or awkward spaces, around corners and over ducts.
We’ve even had to route our CableLinks through a hole in the wall to connect an adjacent room.
Your optical fiber network needs to be logical and flexible. The increasing demand for more bandwidth, more capacity, faster speeds and lower latency is forcing us to consider growth and expansion. I’ve seen more than 570 fibers per run in one installation and I know — with the race to faster, bigger wireless service — that fiber counts are only going to keep going up.
That’s a lot of stress for network managers, especially when you know your company’s profit base hinges on your ability to scale your network.
When it comes to planning to densify your network, you need to ensure easy access to cable, clear identification and defined routing paths.
The right cable raceway design will help improve network performance, reduce energy costs, ease maintenance and lead to faster deployment during scaling efforts. Our end-to-end cable management solution, WaveTrax, accounts for the weight of the cable, bend-radius requirements, waterfall dropouts and other support methods that allow you to route cable without damage.
Do-it-yourself cable routing
If you’re roped into planning your cable pathway yourself, here a few tips to remember.
1. Be precise
Make sure you measure everything. When you’re accurate with your tape measure, you reduce the amount of waste and, in turn, cost.
2. Plan for later
Sure, measure for accuracy but make sure you have enough slack cable for maintenance and mining.
3. Stay true to the bend
Fiber cable is delicate and you have to ensure you’re paying attention to bend radius. Too far of a bend and you’re risking fractures and attenuation.
4. Keep the paths clear
You sometimes need quick access to cable. Keeping it on a defined route through your cable managers and vertical drops helps.
5. Don’t overfill
Overloading your trays can lead to excess weight and buckling. Too many fibers in your cable managers can clog up and give you a mess of spaghetti that makes identification and access nearly impossible.
6. Plan for growth
Allow for expansion with the fill capacity of Wavetrax. It’s easier to go one size up now then to have to retrofit later.
A better idea FOR CABLE MANAGEMENT
The Telect Custom Configured Solutions team has decades of experience in designing and building network infrastructure. We work hard to understand your network’s facility and how it’s probably unique to anything we’ve worked on before.
We take your specifications and develop a cable management solution with our WaveTrax and articulating CableLinks products. When you provide us with your floor plan, we create drawings on an overhead layout and a full Bill of Materials (BOM).
A solid cable pathway design can be the difference in your network running optimally and efficiently. It can help reduce the risk or duration of network downtime.
Instead of wondering where you went wrong when you can’t find cable or your network suffers, make sure it’s done right the first time.
Jason Charette and Brad Hawkins are Application Engineers at Telect. They have decades of experience designing cable management solutions for major telecommunications networks and enterprise data centers. There isn’t a hole in the wall they can’t find a solution for to make sure your fiber optic cable finds the right path.

How to Do Proper Cable Management

Until we have a reliable solution for wireless electricity, cables will always be necessary. Although it’s unfortunate, robots will have to remain wired… at least for the next couple of years.
So we have to deal with cables properly (especially the annoying ones, like the ones that go from the robot controller to the robot wrist). As a robotic device manufacturer, this is one of our top concerns in terms of reliability. Here’s how to do proper cable management on your robot.
What’s in a cable anyway?
Cables that link the robot tool to the robot controller generally have two functions: transmitting electricity, and establishing communications between the devices.
Within the cables are different wires that accomplish these two functions. There are usually two wires dedicated to electricity, a couple for communication, a bare wire, and a shield over all of them.
Each of these components has a crucial role to play in the robotic device.
Most industrial wirings are designed for static uses or for minor flexion – not for the amount of twisting that robots can perform. Since they weren’t built to turn 360 degrees here and another 180 degrees there, robotic applications raise the risk that one of the wires or the shield itself will break.
A broken wire or shield results in a loss of communication or a loss of current, which (usually) causes the robotic device to stop – obviously not something you want to have happen. That’s why you need to do cable management: to avoid breaking your cables.
The basics of cable management
The principle of cable management is to place cables in such a position that they go through as many cycles as the robot without breaking.
To achieve that, you must do two things:
Respect the natural curvature of the cable
Do not pinch the cable
There are three ways to approach cable management: general hardware, dedicated cable management products, or a custom setup.
General hardware
In the subsections below, we’ll cover the most common hardware solutions and some best practices.
Zip ties
Zip ties are a great solution, but only if they don’t pinch the wires. Squeezing a cable against the robot framing with a zip tie is a no-go. If you do use zip ties, make sure to use two of them: attach one to the robot frame, and use the other to make a loop for the cable to slide through.
Velcro
Out of all the solutions, velcro is probably the best value. You can get a couple of bands of velcro, fix them here and there, and you will have good cable management. Just make sure the cable always loops naturally and is never pinched, and you’re good to go.
Fabric sleeves
Some of our customers used fabric, such as neoprene, to create a sleeve around the robot frame for a sleek, elegant solution. Simply slide the cable through the sleeve so it stays in place while the robot is operating.  Again, as long as you keep a natural loop in the cable, you’ll be fine.
Although most robot cells are unique (i.e., non-standardized), we have observed the same cable management problems several times.
We ended up designing different fixtures that can be fitted onto the robot frame. Some are for clipping the cable to the fixture, and others are for sliding the cable through them.
Cables can pop out of cable loops if they get stuck on something; the advantage of clipping is that it prevents this problem. Follow this link to download the STEP file and 3D print it at your office.
Trust me when I say we’ve had pretty good results with these fixtures; we tested them in many crazy positions for a huge number of cycles!
No matter what cable management challenge you’re facing, I suggest approaching it with the same two priorities: natural cable curvature, and no pinching.
If you have further questions, our support team is here to help!