Oct 3 2006
HS Dataline one of the market leaders in the installation of Data Cabling has today announced its assessment of the latest developments in Fibre Optics.
Whereas the emergence of applications such as 10GBaseT have driven developments for copper cabling to focus on the need for improved transmission performance, the transmission requirements for fibre optics have been much more stable. 10 Gigabit fibre solutions have been available for some time and OM3 high bandwidth 50/125 multimode fibre is an industry standard offering.
Of course technology does not stand still, and whilst developments do progress to improve the capacity of fibre even further, optical technology development has focused much more on making fibre more acceptable and reducing cost. The fact that copper has closed the transmission gap and can deliver equivalent performance, over reasonable distances, but at a much-reduced cost has necessitated a re-think for the fibre business.
So where does fibre see it’s future and what developments are on the horizon?
Plastic Fantastic
Within the next few months we are going to enter a new era in the development of cabling systems as plastic optical fibre (POF) cables arrive on the market. By using a revolutionary new type of material, the limitations of previous POF products have been overcome and plastic cables that are capable of carrying IP traffic at gigabit speeds will become available.
POF combines the installation benefits of copper with the transmission advantages of glass. The big advantage of POF is that it overcomes the problems that can arise with glass fibre, which for certain types of application can prove to be too brittle and difficult to terminate. The new type of POF will be much easier to install. This, combined with the added flexibility of the cable, will mean installing POF in challenging locations will take much less time that it would to install conventional fibre or copper cables.
There are already a number of pilot installations in Europe and POF should be widely available soon.
Density Matters
One of the inherent benefits of fibre over copper has been the small size of the cables, enabling huge bandwidth to be installed in limited duct space. However this advantage has often been lost at the patch panel where historically a 1HU panel would accommodate 24 fibre connections (or 12 TX/RX channels), which compared less favourably with copper, which typically accommodates 24 channels in the same space.
The increase in growth of data centres has created demand for high bandwidth, very high density solutions and the advent of Small Form Factor (SFF) fibre connectors has helped redress the situation in the cabinet.
The drive for density has pushed the developments further and panels are now available which can terminate 96 fibres (or 48 channels) in 1HU, keeping fibre at the forefront of data centre infrastructure.
Pre-Termination
There are always occasions when it is a challenge to meet customer needs, in terms of performance and delivery timescales. The use of factory-produced pre-terminated cabling can provide a very convenient solution.
Assemblies can be produced off-site under carefully controlled conditions with connectors fitted at each end in a controlled environment. The result is reduced link loss budget compared to on-site termination meaning cables can be used over longer distances or, if required, more connections can be fitted on links. The pre-terminated cables are fully tested before being released and a full report is provided.
The assemblies can be manufactured to exact specifications with regard to length, type of fibre and connector, and type of breakout construction. They are then supplied with a re-usable pulling eye system at the end of the cable to protect the terminations while pulling the cable through ducts. Once installed, this is cut off and the terminated fibres are fed into a patch panel and connected to the couplers.
By handling the termination off-site, the on-site deployment time is considerably reduced making it ideal for situations where site access is restricted