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If you have been in the business of data communication cabling for a while, you should have learned these two structured cabling standards: TIA/EIA-568–B and ISO/IEC 11801 2nd Edition. Now the question is: which standard should you follow? Though these two standards are quite silimar (ISO/IEC 11801 was based on ANSI/TIA/EIA-568–A), the ISO/IEC 11801 Standard was developed with cable commonly used in Europe and consequently contains some references more specific to European applications. Also, some terminology in the two documents is different. If you are designing a cabling system to be used in the United States or Canada, you should

Glass Fiber Glass fiber is the most common type of fiber available, with companies such as Corning and Siecor producing billions of meters per year. Common industry-standard glass fibers are differentiated by the diameter of the core: larger cores allow more modes to propagate; smaller cores allow fewer. Glass fiber is available in three common sizes: two multimode fibers and one single mode fiber. Multi-mode fibers have larger cores and allow many modes to travel through the fiber. The two standard sizes for multi-mode fiber are 62.5/125 mm, and 50/125 mm. The first number indicates the core diameter and the

Exactly how much pulling force should be used for fiber optic cable installation? Here is a brief answer. The pulling force must be kept below a designated limit for the specific cable being installed. For outside plant (OSP) fiber optic cables, the limit is usually 600 pounds. For indoor fiber optic cables and other types of cables, the limit is usually 300 pounds. The key point is – Keep the pulling force UNIFORM. Why is keeping pulling force uniform so critical? The short answer is that most fiber optic cables cannot handle high impact load. Fiber optic cable strength member is

Well, the short answer is YES for premises and local area networks. Single mode and multimode fibers have different network applications, because they have very different optical-performance attributes. In the design of premises and local area networks the decisive factor is the overall cost of all components. The large core of multimode fibers (50um or 62.5um) has distinct advantages: it enables low loss connection and facilitates fiber-to-fiber and fiber-to-transceiver alignment. This makes it best suited to premises and local area network applications. Premises and LAN networks include three major components: fibers, switch equipment and optical transceivers. Since switch equipment are independent of

The basic techniques for pulling fiber optic cable differs little from the approach used to pull copper or aluminum. However, fiber responds differently than copper or aluminum when pulled. Caution One: Avoid Measurement Error! The first step in pulling fiber optic cables is to measure and cut the material. Inaccurate measurements are a disaster in fiber cable installation. Fiber optic cable splices are way more critical than metal cable splicings. Minimum loss budget must be maintained in a fiber optic cable installation project. Thus, assumptions and guess work simply do not work. Caution Two: Do Not Exceed the Allowed Pulling