Cable installation

Edit online

Fiber optic cable is much smaller and lighter than bus-and-tag cable. Only one duplex fiber optic cable is required for information transfer. This allows a reduction in under-floor cable congestion, thereby simplifying installation, migration, and greatly reducing cable weight.

The cable plant must satisfy the industry standard specification to minimize connector reflections and maintain link loss budget specification. See Table 2.

It is highly recommended that the fiber optic link be thoroughly analyzed to ensure the cable plant specifications (total cable plant optical loss as well as connectors/splices return loss) are being met for that link length. For example, the Fibre Channel standard requires all connectors and splices to have a return loss greater than 26 dB as measured by the methods of IEC 61300-2-6.

The most common source of cable plant optical link problems is associated with the various connections and splices in the optical link. Dust, dirt, oil or defective connections may cause a problem with high speed channels, such as 8 Gbps, whereas, lower link data rates, such as 1, 2, or 4 Gbps may be unaffected.