does anyone anything on fiber optics? I'm interested in learning more about this?

"does anyone anything on fiber optics? I'm interested in learning more about this?"

Fiber Optics is merely a strand of glass that is used to send signals by way of pulses of light.

What is it you want to know? How to splice it, terminate it, run it, commision carriers, home use, buisness use, telco use, what?

[This message has been edited by Roger (edited 01-31-2005).]

Check out this site for information. http://www.lennielightwave.com/pages/907192/index.htm

Took a BISCI short course years ago, and to date, I have pulled and terminated a total of ONE Multi-mode since.

Most of our jobs don't call for it, and if there is any on the job, it is often a back-bone done by someone else, or the carrier.

A while back the talk was that there was going to be "Fiber-to-the-desk". Turned out to be a crock... Who knows, maybe someday there will be. From what I understand, what killed the more extended use of fiber wasn't the fiber, but network equipment costs.

You can get a gigabit/second through a Cat5e cable. That requires only a single, low-cost IC and a single package of isolation transformers for termination. For a fiber, you need expensive transmitter and receiver modules to drive and terminate the fiber. Since you can already get a GBPS over cheap copper, there's really not much point to bringing a fiber to the desktop--a gigabit is already major overkill for 99+% of the applications out there. You can get all the bandwidth you need with copper, and it costs a whole lot less. So people use copper.


[This message has been edited by SolarPowered (edited 02-01-2005).]

This reminds me of a high school in Westchester,NY that I worked in about 3 years ago, the company I was working for was doing a cleanup of their telecom closets, the school was wired with copper and fiber to every classroom, about 5-6 locations in room. Every device was on copper and all of the fiber terminations have been sitting there unused with about an inch of dust on them, I don't see fiber being used to the desktop, mostly the bandwidth it holds is used for ethernet backbones or bandwidth intensive applications in data centers. Boy would I have loved to be the one to get the contract to install all that fiber in that high school, $$CHA-CHING$$

[This message has been edited by mkoloj (edited 02-01-2005).]

There have been some valid points made here. Fiber optic transmission is mostly the domain of telephone and CATV companies. Fiber to the desk so to speak is not likely to become reality in the near future, as CAT5E, soon CAT6 & 7, and WiFi will dominate LAN’s.

However your local CATV and telephone companies are in a huge race to get fiber optics to the curb or in your house. First one in wins a huge prize, bandwidth domination.

I am looking into fiber because I have to run a port of our router almost a 1000 feet from the hub. My understanding of cat 5 is it's good for about a 100. although the one I am using now is about a 130.

TW

Trainwire,
The copper solutions are good for 100 meters, that is 300 feet. If you are going 1000' feet, copper could get you to 900' if you had 2 intermediate closets (hubs - the maximum allowed) total. But I would highly recommend the fiber optic instead. If you are going between buildings fiber optics is the only reliable choice (I have seen to much equipment desroyed by passing cloud lightning even with data ports surge protected).

Shane

My understanding of cat 5 is it's good for about a 100 [feet].

I keep hearing that from people and I don't know where it came from. It's 100 METERS not feet. (100 meters equals 328 feet).

-Hal

My metric has never been good.... But Hal is correct. (328') It should be known that this includes the patch cords as well, and at lengths like that 22ga isn't a bad idea.

A multi-mode fiber pair will easily make that distance. (<1kM or 3280') However, if you haven't done this before, it may be more cost effective to sub it out. Mis-handling could make it a huge waste of time and money.

Another creative option is if you have phone service at both locations look into a fractional T-1 package, or even in-house T-1 carrier. Like if it were in a different building / campus situation. Even in the same building it can be more cost effective if using other features offered with package deals. Phone service at both, and an IP address for networking at each. With an in-house T-1/E-1 carrier as opposed to ethernet 10 baseTX you could run as long as you like, so long as you can get wire there. And it is more appropriate for a back-bone situation.

[This message has been edited by e57 (edited 02-10-2005).]

I have other information. Out here in California I work at a School District where we have portables and modular buildings droped as "Emergency" buildings. As each building has it's own ground and Ground isolation is required we interpreted the best solution is to run fiber as the backbone between each building. As the backbone it is quite easy and inexpensive.

I have for the last 2 years been terminating the fiber connections in house. There are generally 3 methods of terminating.

Hotmelt (Expensve and extreemly low loss less than .25db, fast connections with the proper training etc.)Probably cost prohibited until after 100-200 connections or splicing.

Physical (less than 1db loss avg), Usually glued to the conector and the end of the fiber is polished after cleaving the end and polising on a set of pads. Good quality connections are the result of paitence and practice.

Buffered conections (1.25-.5db loss avg). These are made by Seicor and are what I use 90% of the time. Connecitons are easy all that is done is clean, cleave, and clamp in the connector. The ends are prepolished and the Optical Matching Gel does the rest. I have found some tricks etc to fiber terminating (able to avg .7 db loss per set of terminations), but the best thing I can give as advice is to get 6 ft of multimode and play with it. Getting the feel of it is in my optionion 60% of the termination.

Also with the termination is the testing and verifying the DB loss of the conneciton.
Big FYI and as far and as I can find the unwritten law of loss is no more than 3db loss total from device to device.

I know most of the venders have training seminars, either online or in person through local merchants like Graybar, etc.