The Fiber Connection

Choosing Components for Premises Installations – from ‘the FOA’ - Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Premises cabling and outside plant cabling will coexist in the entrance facility or the equipment room where the two are connected. The choice of premises fiber optic components are affected by several factors, including the choice of communications equipment, physical routing of the cable plant and building codes and regulations. If the design is a corporate network (LAN), the design will probably include a fiber optic backbone connecting computer rooms to wiring closets. The wiring closets house switches that convert the fiber backbone to UTP copper for cable connected desktops and either copper or fiber to wireless access points. Some desktops,especially in engineering or design departments, may require fiber to thedesktop for its greater bandwidth. Extra cables or fibers may be needed for security systems (alarms, access systems or CCTV cameras) and building management systems also…

As in OSP design, consider the fiber choice first. Most premises networks use multimode fiber, but many users now install hybrid cables with single mode fibers for future expansion. The 62.5/125 micron fiber (OM1 fiber) that has been used for almost two decades has mostly been superceded by the new 50/125laser-optimized fiber (OM3 or OM4), as it offers substantial bandwidth/distance advantages…

Cable in premises applications is generally either distribution or breakout cable… Fiber count can be an issue, as backbone cables now have many fibers for current use, future expansion and spares, making distribution cables the more popular choice.

On all indoor cables, the cable must be rated as fire-retardant per the NEC,CEC or other building codes. In the NEC terminology, indoor cables aregenerally OFNR-rated (Riser) unless the cable in air-handling areas above ceilings, where OFNP (plenum) is needed…

Fiber optic connector choices are also changing. STs and even SCs are succumbing to the success of the smaller LC connector. Since most fast (gigabit and above) equipment uses LC connectors, using them in the cable plant means only one connector needs to be supported…

Premises fiber optic cables need to be run separately from copper cables to prevent crushing… Some applications may require installing fiber optic cables inside conduit, which requires care to minimize bends, provide intermediate pulls to limit pulling force or use fiber optic cable lubricants.

The hardware necessary for the installation will need to be chosen based on where the cables are terminated. Premises runs are generally point-to-point and are not spliced. Wherever possible, allow room for large radii in the patch panels or wall-mounted boxes to minimize stress on the fibers. Choose hardware that is easy to enter for moves, adds and changes but lockable to prevent intrusion.

In premises applications, it’s worth considering a pre-terminated system. These use backbone cables terminated in multifiber connectors and preterminated patchpanel modules. If the facility layout is properly designed, the cable manufacturer can work with you to create a “plug and play” system that needs non-site termination and the cost may be very competitive to a field-terminated system.

For the full article and much more useful fiberoptic information, visit the FOA’s design pages – click here

Fiber Cable, premises, LAN network, design

Cleaning Fiber Optic Connectors - Friday, March 30, 2012

Cleaning. Not exactly a hot, cutting edge topic – right? But, dirty connector end faces may very well be the biggest cause of failures in the field for fiber optic links today. This is a topic that many people in the industry spend a lot of time on – much of it behind the scenes. Companies continue to produce new cleaning products, update their cleaning procedures and invest in equipment to inspect connectors before installation.

Face it, in the case of a fiber optic link, cleanliness may indeed be next to Godliness! There was a webinar last month where USConec presented some interesting information about end face dirt and cleaning tools for connectors. We have heard of users rejecting product before doing loss testing because their initial test is a pass/fail visual inspection – probably more often failing from dirt than real scratches and marks. The FOA has a “Tech Topic” page devoted to this, along with links to more information. Corning posted a youtube video all about cleaning the end of a ferrule – and it is over 5 minutes long. Cisco has a document on their website entitled “Inspection and Cleaning Procedures for Fiber-Optic Connections” and it takes hitting my ‘page down’ button 33 times to get to the end. Now that is a lot of cleaning information!

USConec has recently introduced new connector cleaners – adding to their popular IBC Cleaners line. New units for cleaning duplex LCs, MTRJ, all single fiber connectors as well as TFOCA connectors. These can be used to clean connectors before mating and when already loaded into adapters.

In the end, this is an important topic and not something that should be an after-thought for anyone dealing with fiber connectors. Whether you terminate connectors, write specs for them, install them or use them in any way – make sure you have planned a way to clean them and everyone who handles them understands the importance of doing so. This means doing something every time you have to mate a connector pair. It’s important.

Referenced sites:

Cisco’s cleaning white paper

The FOA’s cleaning information

Connector cleaning video from Corning

fiber cleaning, fiber connectors, IBC cleaners, dirty connectors

Fiber Growth Evident on BICSI Exhibit Hall Floor - Thursday, March 01, 2012

Betsy Conroy, guest blogger

At the recent BICSI Winter Conference & Exhibition in Orlando, I spent three nights maneuvering up and down 10 rows, determined to visit the more than 160 exhibitor booths that featured virtually everything related to estimating, bidding, designing, installing and testing network infrastructures. The range of products was overwhelming and the crowds were promising—an overall attitude of optimism seemed to reign throughout the 86,000 BICSIlogo

square foot space. While copper-based infrastructure solutions were still represented, there seemed to be a lot more flaunting of fiber from cabling and connectivity manufacturers than ever before.

Of course Corning focused solely on fiber in their two exhibit booths—one devoted entirely to their bend-insensitive multimode fiber (BIMMF). Here you could sit and relax in a comfy living room setting and learn all about how their ClearCurve fiber supposedly withstands bends and delivers up to 10 times better macrobending performance than standards multimode fiber. This was no great surprise to me since they’ve been talking BIMMF for well over a year now.

Belden’s exhibit booth was a bit more surprising. Well known for their copper cabling solutions, most of Belden’s booth focused on their new FiberExpress Brilliance Field Connector and pre-terminated fiber solutions for the data center. Here, I was amazed as the ease of fiber field termination and watched as a prepared fiber was terminated in about 5 seconds. I enjoyed an informative discussion on pre-terminated fiber vs. field termination, and learned that despite the hype surrounding preterminated solutions, field termination remains the preferred method of choice. The general thought is that preterminated solutions will become more popular as data centers move towards 40 and 100 gigabit speeds, since those applications will require the MPO connectors currently used in preterminated solutions.

Belden wasn’t the only copper manufacturer focusing on fiber. At the Berk-tek booth, visitors got to check out the new OneReach POE extender system that combines fiber and copper to poe

deliver PoE beyond 100 meters. Other manufacturers were promoting passive optical network (PON), or passive optical LAN (POL), solutions. These point-to-multipoint fiber networks use a single strand of singlemode fiber that runs from a passive, unpowered optical splitter to an optical network terminal that serves multiple users. While this approach aims to reduce the amount of physical cable and active equipment, other exhibitors were not so keen on the idea, pointing out that POL technology does not support 10 gigabit transmission speeds and is not standards based. Considering the wide range of opinions being tossed around the exhibit hall floor, the debate surrounding POL technology seems likely to continue for quite some time.

Of course we can’t forget fiber testing. There was a bit of chatter surrounding a new OTDR being introduced by Fluke Networks, and one of their competitors went as far as asking me what I knew about it and if I had seen it. While it appears that Fluke did not introduce the new product at the BICSI conference, supposedly this redesigned OTDR is aimed directly towards enterprise data center fiber testing. We’ll find out more when it hits the streets in the coming weeks. Dirty fiber endface

While the latest fiber cabling, connectivity and testing solutions seemed to dominate much of the exhibit booth displays, there was one issue surrounding fiber that remained a top concern—fiber cleaning. It was pointed out to me time and time again, that improper cleaning of fiber in the field is still the number one cause of failures (example of dirty endface shown on the right). Yet, consensus was that the only resolution continues to be education.

While my feet ached from all the walking, and my brain swelled with the overload of information, one fact rang loud and clear at the BICSI Winter Conference & Exhibition—fiber is continuing to gain traction on copper in enterprise networks.

BICSI, fiber trends, BIMMF, Fiberoptics, PoE

Super WiFi. What is everyone talking about? - Friday, January 20, 2012

I was speaking with Jim Hayes at the FOA, about the possibility of posting some of the great information from their website or newsletter, on our blog now and then. While we were emailing back and forth, various topics came up for possible posts. The mention of super WiFi in one of Jim’s notes reminded me of a presentation that he did in New Zealand last year where he referenced this opportunity as part of an overview of new markets.

Then, I saw twitter post linked to this article “New Hanover County, N.C., First in Nation to Deploy ‘Super Wi-Fi’ Network” at govtech.com. Then I saw this in Technology Review published by MIT – “Will Super WI-FI Live up to its Name?” Why is it that you never hear about some things, but as soon as someone draws attention to it, it seems to be everywhere?

So, now that I have planted the seed with you - if you are interested in super Wi-Fi, take a look at these articles to learn more. If you are interested in the broader view of applications, technologies and trends that will create demand for fiber optic products, check out the FOA presentation linked here (http://www.thefoa.org/ZIP/FO2011.zip). Be sure to read the notes at the bottom of some of the slides – adds more useful information.

Super WiFi, WI-FI, fiber optics