A Guide to Fiber Optic Splicing

Fiber Optic Splicing Basis

 

It is vital for any company or fiber optic technician involved in telecommunications to grasp knowledge of fiber optic splicing methods. Fiber optic splicing refers to joining two fiber optic cables together. It can result in lower light loss and back reflection. Two methods of fiber optic splicing are available: fusion splicing and mechanical splicing. Which technique best fits your economic and performance objectives? Keep reading the following statement and find the answer.

Fusion Splicing vs. Mechanical Splicing

 

Fusion splicing is an optical junction of two optical fibers by permanently welding them together with heat generated by an electronic arc (called arc fusion). It is the most widely used method of splicing because it provides least reflectance and lowest loss, as well as providing the strongest and most reliable joint between two fibers.

Fusion splicing steps:

1. Prepare the fiber: strip the protective coatings, jackets, tubes, strength members, and leave only the bare fiber showing. Pay attention to cleanliness.
2. Cleave the fiber: using a good fiber optic cleaver here is essential to a successful fusion splice. The cleaved end must be mirror-smooth and perpendicular to the fiber axis to obtain a proper splice.
3. Fuse the fiber: alignment and heating are the two steps within this step. Alignment can be automatic or manual depending upon the equipment you have. Once the fusion splicer unit are properly aligned, then you can use an electrical arc to melt the fibers and permanently weld the two fiber ends together.
4. Protect the fiber: protecting the fiber from bending and tensile forces will ensure the splice not break during normal handling. Using heat shrink tubing, silicone gel and/or mechanical crimp protectors will keep the splice protected from outside elements and breakage.

Aligning and holding in place by a self-contained assembly, a mechanical splice is a junction of two or more optical fibers. Not permanently joined, the fibers are just precisely held together so that light can pass from one to another.

Mechanical splicing steps:

1. Prepare the fiber: same with the step of fusion splicing.
2. Cleave the fiber: the process is identical to the cleaving for fusion splicing.
3. Mechanically join the fibers: simply position the fiber ends together inside the mechanical splice unit. The index matching gel inside the mechanical splice apparatus will help couple the light from one fiber end to the other.
4. Protect the fiber: the completed mechanical splice will provide its own protection for the splice.

Tips for Better Splicing

 

1. Clean your splicing tools thoroughly and frequently.
2. Operate and maintain your cleaver properly.
3. For fusion splicing, the fusion parameters must be adjusted minimally and methodically.

Which Method Is Better?

 

Cost and performance are the two deciding factors for choosing one method over the other. Mechanical splicing has a low initial investment ($1,000 - $2,000) but costs more per splice ($12-$40 each). Fusion splicing has lower cost per splice ($0.50 - $1.50 each) but higher initial investment ($15,000 - $50,000). As for the performance, fusion splicing produces lower loss and less back reflection than mechanical splicing. Fusion splices are primarily used with single-mode fiber, while mechanical splices work with both single-mode and multimode fiber.

Conclusion

 

To sum up, the two fiber optic splicing methods have its own advantages. Fusion splicing is invested for long haul single-mode networks, while mechanical splicing is used for shorter local cable runs. For better fiber optic splicing, besides the above splicing steps, high-quality fiber optic splicing tools are also essential, such as fusion splicers, fiber optic cleavers, etc. After all, good methods and excellent tools will produce the best performance.

Originally published: www.fiber-optic-components.com/a-guide-to-fiber-optic-splicing.html

How to Optimize Data Center?

When talking about optimizing data center, what you actually want to know is a paradigm shift to a more cost-effective approach to IT data services. Data center optimization is the process of programming and increasing the efficiency of an enterprise’s data center operations. It can help to save your money and time as well as make your technology infrastructure more efficient. Good data center optimization is the difference between sprawling data, compute, and infrastructure spread out across multiple servers and ideal tight clusters, ready to be acted on. But how to optimize your data center? This is a question. Keep reading this article, and then you will get an answer.

Consolidation

 

Servers, storage, network and management — software defined and expertly integrated to save time and money is the latest trend in the data center. Consolidation is able to maximize resources, reduce footprint and save money by optimizing your computing, data, workload, automation and orchestration efforts.

Virtualization

 

Virtualization is about maximizing returns with minimal resources. Release your data center from the confines of the physical and abstract it into a virtual environment, then compose these virtual assets into a solution that makes your business run better.

Data Monitoring and Management

 

It is possible to gain end-to-end visibility of your crucial business processes, application and infrastructure. By using an intuitive user interface, you can monitor and manage your organization’s IT from one dashboard, which makes it much more easier to control what is happening in the infrastructure. Full visibility refers to the ability to predict problem before happening, and then you can make the necessary changes to free up or add necessary resources. Instead of relying on your Help Desk as the first line of error reporting, know that it’s happening ahead of time and have the problem fixed before it becomes an issue.

Automation and Orchestration

 

Free up your knowledge workers from the burden of busy work by automating and orchestrating the most repetitive parts of your workload. Automation and orchestration can help to reduce human errors. Then you can get back to focusing on what really matters. Streamline your processes, and discard the irrelevant ones, potentially outsourcing entire workflows to a policy-based automation. Orchestrate your data center into simplicity and efficiency.

Cloud Workload Migration

 

Cloud workload migration can help to optimize resources and improve performance efficiency. You need to understand what workloads are best moved to the cloud and how to move them efficiently and safely.

Push Yourself as Hard as You Push Your Data

 

You can take your IT and business decisions to a higher level by using your data efficiently. Ask some tough questions that will help to make you more competitive and efficient, and then task your data professionals and IT department with providing the right answers. Finally, scale your questions so that you are pushing yourself and your data to new levels of operational efficiency.

From the above statement, have you got some ideas about how to get your data center optimized? FS.COM is a professional supplier of optical products, such as 10G SFP+, 40G/100G transceiver, etc. It is a wise choice to select data center products from Fiberstore to fill your data center operation system.

Originally published: www.fiber-optic-components.com/how-to-optimize-data-center.html

Why Is Fiber Cleaning Necessary?

At a BICSI Conference in 2008, JDSU stated, “Contamination is the number-one reason for troubleshooting optical networks.” For the long-term reliability of any network, fiber cleaning is critical and it is at the heart of the profitability of successful fiber deployment. This paper will introduce the necessity of fiber cleaning and then give two tips on fiber protection against dust contamination.

Four reasons for fiber cleaning are listed below:

Signal Failure

As you know, fiber optic networks work by carrying pulses of light between transmitters and receivers. Contamination and dirt will block the signal and lead to light loss, reducing power and efficiency. The amount of light loss shrinks correspondingly as links carry higher data rates, which makes cleaning even more essential. Dirty equipment can give rise to network failure or paralysis.

Equipment Failure

Dirt can cause permanent damage to the end-face, digging into the surface and creating pits that increase back reflection. Failures in the network caused by dirt can increase costs and install time because damaged equipment may need to be tracked down and replaced, which means more time on-site and greater expenditure. Both of the two will impact the overall budget for a deployment.

Angry Occupants

It is naturally going to enrage consumers and building owners by leaving a mess in a subscriber’s home or the common areas of an apartment building. They’d like to have the benefits of fiber broadband rather than the dirt or damage to their property when it is installed.

Adopting Proper Cleanliness Procedures

While it is easy to focus on more visible debris, dirt is most dangerous at a microscopic level, particularly when it comes to the end-faces of connectors. For example, simply touching the ferrules of a connector will deposit significant amounts of body oil onto the end face. Best practice for this issue is to use high-grade, completely lint-free wipes (aiming for clean room quality) and pure Isopropyl Alcohol (IPA).

On top of this, here are two areas to keep an especially close eye on:

Mating and Unmating

The actual process of mating and unmating connectors can also cause damage to the ceramic. Therefore, aim to minimize this plugging and unplugging as much as possible and ensure you inspect the two end-faces for dirt or debris that could be crushed between them. This can cause permanent damage, such as scratches, cracks or pits that will require re-termination, not just cleaning. Moreover, make sure you inspect any other equipment ports that the connector is being plugged into, as they can also harbour contamination.

Don’t Rely on Dust Caps

Many people may think that if you don’t take the dust cap off your factory terminated connector until you plug it in, it’ll keep dirt free. After all, it was packaged in a sterile factory environment. In fact, dust caps are preventing damage to the end-face, rather than stopping all contamination reaching the connector.

Fiberstore Fiber Cleaning Solution

As a professional supplier in the optical industry, Fiberstore has various high-quality and low-price fiber optic cleaning tools, such as fiber connector cleaner, optical connector cleaning cards, one click fiber optic cleaner for 1.25mm connectors, etc. These tools can help to ease or remove all kinds of dirty particles, such as dust, dripping and moist. Choosing any kind of fiber optic cleaning tools in Fiberstore will give you a surprise!

Article source: www.fiber-optic-components.com/why-is-fiber-cleaning-necessary.html

SFP+ Transceiver Testing – TWDPc Measurement

SFP+ transceiver is widely deployed in applications and becomes much more pervasive due to its smaller form factor, less power consumption and its increased port density compared with XFP transceiver. Each SFP+ transceiver houses an optical receiver and transmitter. One end of the transceiver is an optical connection complying with the 10GbE and 8GFC standards, while the other end is an SERDES framer interface (SFI) serial interconnect handling differential signals up to 10 Gbit/s. In order to keep a SFP+ transceiver achieving high performance, the engineers need to acquaint with the key challenges related to testing SFP+ transceiver. This article will first walk through the SFP+ testing challenges and then focus on one kind of testing measurement.

SFP+ Testing Challenges

• One obvious challenge is the increased port density and the testing time required with 48 or more ports per rack.
• Another challenge is moving seamlessly from a compliance environment to a debug environment.
• Yet another problem most designers face today relates to connectivity: how to get the signal out from the device under test (DUT) to an oscilloscope.
• Another challenge to prepare for is that the SFP+ specification calls out some measurements to be performed using a PRBS31 signal.
• Additionally, acquiring a record length of 200 million data points demands huge processing power and time.

TWDPc Measurement

TWDPc, short for transmitter waveform distortion penalty for copper, requires a special algorithm defined by the SFP+ specification. This test is defined as a measure of the deterministic dispersion penalty due to a particular transmitter with reference to the emulated multimode fibers and a well-characterized receiver.

The TWDPc script (of 802.3aq, 10GBASE-LRM) processes a PRBS9 pattern requiring at least 16 samples per unit interval. Out of concern for the large installed base of equivalent-time oscilloscopes with a record length of around 4000 samples, the requirement for 16 samples per unit interval was relaxed to seven samples per unit interval.

The relaxation of the requirement from 16 samples per unit interval to just seven samples per unit interval causes worst-case pessimism of 0.24 dB TWDPc over 30 measurements. For DUTs that already have a high TWDPc, 0.24 dB can be the difference between a pass or a fail result.

The TWDPc measurement for SFP+ host transmitter output specifications for copper requires more than 70 Gsamples/s to capture a minimum of seven samples per UI. Real-time oscilloscopes offering higher sampling rates of 100 Gsamples/s or greater have a much higher chance of providing accurate results for TWDPc compared to scopes that only offer lower sampling-rate options.

Across the board, it is important to map the SFP+ signal’s data-transfer rate to the proper oscilloscope bandwidth requirements to ensure accuracy in measurement and margin testing. With a 10.3125-Gbyte/s data-transfer rate and minimum rise time of 34 ps, a scope with a bandwidth of 16 GHz or higher is required to meet the minimum requirements for SFP+. As noted, sampling rate is also an important consideration for the TWDPc measurement.

Conclusion

Although SFP+ transceiver simplifies the functionality of the 10G optical module, it introduces some test and measurement challenges. TWDPc is a key test for SFP+ transceiver. It defines the differences (in dB) between a reference signal and noise ratio (SNR) and the equivalent SNR at the slicer input of a reference equalizer receiver for the measurement waveform after propagating through a stimulus channel. For SFP+ compliance testing, TWDPc is a required measurement.

Originally published: www.fiber-optic-components.com/sfp-transceiver-testing-twdpc-measurement.html

Data Center 10 Gigabit Ethernet Cabling Options

With the dramatic growth in data center throughput, the usage and demand for higher-performance servers, storage and interconnects have also increased. As a result, the expansion of higher speed Ethernet solutions, especially 10 and 40 Gigabit Ethernet has been ongoing. For 10 Gigabit Ethernet solution, selecting the appropriate 10-gigabit physical media is a challenge, because 10GbE is offered in two broad categories: optical and copper. This article will introduce both optical and copper cabling options for 10 Gigabit Ethernet.

Fiber Optic Cables

Two general types of fiber optic cables are available: single-mode fiber and multimode fiber.

Single-mode Fiber (SMF), typically with an optical core of approximately 9 μm (microns), has lower modal dispersion than multimode fiber. It is able to support distances of at least 10 kilometers, depending on transmission speed, transceivers and the buffer credits allocated in the switches.

Multimode Fiber (MMF), with an optical core of either 50 μm or 62.5 μm, can support distances up to 600 meters, depending on transmission speed and transceivers. 

When planning data center cabling requirements, be sure to consider that a service life of 15-20 years can be expected for fiber optic cabling. Thus the cable chosen should support legacy, current and emerging data rates.

10GBASE-SR — a port type for multimode fiber, 10GBASE-SR cable is the most common type for fiber optic 10GbE cable. It is able to support an SFP+ connector with an optical transceiver rated for 10GbE transmission speed. 10GBASE-SR cable is known as “short reach” fiber optic cable.

10GBASE-LR — a port type for single-mode fiber, 10GBASE-LR cable is the “long reach” fiber optic cable. It is able to support a link length of 10 kilometers.

OM3 and OM4 are multimode cables that are “laser optimized” and support 10GbE applications. The transmission distance can be up to 300 m and 400 m respectively.

Copper Cables

Common forms of 10GbE copper cables are as follows:

10GBASE-CR — the most common type of copper 10GbE cable, 10GBASE-CR cable uses an attached SFP+ connector and it is also known as a SFP+ Direct Attach Copper (DAC). This fits into the same form factor connector and housing as the fiber optic cables with SFP+ connectors. Many 10GbE switches accept cables with SFP+ connectors, which support both copper and fiber optic cables.

Passive and Active DAC — passive copper connections are common with many interfaces. As the transfer rates increase, passive copper does not provide the distance needed and takes up too much physical space. So the industry is moving towards an active copper type of interface for higher speed connections. Active copper connections include components that boost the signal, reduce the noise and work with smaller gauge cables, improving signal distance, cable flexibility and airflow.

10GBASE-T — 10GBASE-T cables are Cat6a (category 6 augmented). Supporting the higher frequencies required for 10GbE transmission, category 6a is required to reach the distance of 100 meters (330 feet). Cables must be certified to at least 500 MHz to ensure 10GBASE-T compliance. Cat 6 cables may work in 10GBASE-T deployments up to 55 meters (180 feet) depending on the quality of installation. Some 10GbE switches support 10GBASE-T (RJ45) connectors.

When to Use Different Type of 10GbE Cables

To summarize, currently the most common types of 10GbE cables use SFP+ connectors.

• For short distances, such as within a rack or to a nearby rack, use DAC with SFP+ connectors, also known as 10GBASE-CR.
• For mid-range distances, use laser optimized multimode fiber cables, either OM3 or OM4, with SFP+ connectors.
• For long-range distances, use single-mode fiber optic cables, also known as 10GBASE-LR. 

Originally published: www.fiber-optic-components.com/data-center-10-gigabit-ethernet-cabling-options.html

How to Achieve a Reliable, Affordable and Simple 10 Gigabit Ethernet Deployment?

10 Gigabit Ethernet, or 10GE and 10GbE, is a group of computer networking technologies for transmitting Ethernet frames at a rate of 10 gigabits per second. Nowadays, 10 Gigabit Ethernet is gaining broader deployments by the increasing bandwidth requirements and the growth of enterprise applications. But there is a question to be considered when deploying 10 Gigabit Ethernet — how to achieve a reliable, affordable and simple 10 Gigabit Ethernet deployment? The text below will tell the answer.

10 Gigabit Ethernet and the Server Edge: Better Efficiency

Server virtualization supports several applications and operating systems on a single server by defining multiple virtual machines on the server. Virtual machines grow and require larger amounts of storage than one physical server can provide. Storage area networks (SANs) or network attached storage (NAS) provide additional and dedicated storage for virtual machines. But connectivity between the servers and storage must be fast to avoid bottlenecks. 10 Gigabit Ethernet is able to provide fastest interconnectivity for virtualized environments.

10 Gigabit Ethernet SAN versus Fibre Channel: Simpler and More Cost-effective

The Internet Small Computer System Interface (iSCSI), an extension of SCSI protocol used for block transfers in most storage devices and Fibre Channel, is making 10 Gigabit Ethernet an attractive, alternative interconnect fabric for SAN applications. The iSCSI capabilities allow 10 Gigabit Ethernet to compare very favorably to Fibre Channel as a SAN interconnect fabric. 10GbE networking can reduce equipment and management costs as its components are less expensive than highly specialized Fibre Channel components and do not require a specialized skill set for installation and management.

10 Gigabit Ethernet and the Aggregation Layer: Reduce Bottlenecks

10 Gigabit Ethernet allows the aggregation layer to scale to meet the increasing demands of users and applications. It can help bring oversubscription ratios back in line with network-design best practices, and provides some important advantages over aggregating multiple Gigabit Ethernet link, such as less fiber usage, greater support for large streams and longer deployment lifetimes.

10 Gigabit Ethernet and Fiber Cabling Choices

For any fiber cable deployment, the types of fiber cable, 10 Gigabit Ethernet physical interface and optics module form factor need to be considered. Form factor options are interoperable as long as the 10 Gigabit Ethernet physical interface type is the same on both ends of the fiber link.

10 Gigabit Ethernet and Copper Cabling Choices

Currently, three different copper cabling technologies for 10 Gigabit Ethernet are available. 10GBASE-CX4 was the first 10 Gigabit Ethernet copper standard. CX4 was relatively economical and allowed for very low latency. Its disadvantage was a too-large form factor for high density port counts in aggregation switches. SFP+ direct attach cables (DAC) connect directly into an SFP+ housing. It has become the connectivity of choice for servers and storage devices in a rack due to its low latency, small form factor and reasonable cost. 10GBASE-T is able to run 10 Gigabit Ethernet over CAT6a and CAT7 copper cabling up to 100 meters, but it needs technology improvements to lower its cost, power consumption and latency.

10 Gigabit Ethernet and the SFP+ Makeover: Direct Attach Cables are convenient for Short Runs

SFP+ direct attach cables integrate SFP+ connectors with a copper cable into a low-latency, energy-efficient, and low-cost solution. Direct attach cables are currently the best cabling option for short 10 Gigabit Ethernet connections.

10 Gigabit Ethernet and Link Aggregation Offers Redundancy and Resiliency

The Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) standard defines a way of bundling several physical ports over one logical channel. From a deployment standpoint, it is far easier to implement a distributed LACP solution with stackable switches that allow link aggregation across the stack. In this configuration, the stack acts as a single logical switch and link aggregation is seamless.

10 Gigabit Ethernet and Top-of-Rack Best Practice

The diagram below shows a stackable 10 Gigabit Ethernet ToR switching solution enabling cost-effective SAN connectivity for servers and network storage. In addition to better performance, LACP functionality provides better availability and redundancy for servers and storage. Moreover, it provides failover protection if one physical link goes down, while iSCSI traffic load balancing ensures greater transmission throughput with lower latency.

10 Gigabit Ethernet and Distribution Layer Best Practice

The diagram below shows Gigabit access switches with 10 Gigabit uplinks and stackable 10 Gigabit aggregation switches. At the edge, stacks of access switches are virtualized into a single switch, reducing configuration and management overhead.

To achieve a reliable, affordable and simple 10 Gigabit Ethernet deployment, the factors stated above need to be considered. Fiberstore SFP+ transceivers and SFP+ direct attach cables are ideal for cost-sensitive organizations considering 10 Gigabit Ethernet applications and they help growing companies support rising bandwidth requirements, new applications, and the demands of a fast-paced business environment.

Fiberstore Passive Optical Components Solution

Passive optical components market is propelled by the accelerating bandwidth requirements coupled with the growth of passive optical network (PON). Usage of passive optical components to obtain energy efficient network solutions is gaining popularity. This article will introduce some Fiberstore passive optical components.

Optical Attenuators: an optical attenuator is a device that is used to reduce the power level of an optical signal. Optical attenuators are commonly used in fiber optic communications, either to test power level margins by temporarily adding a calibrated amount of signal loss, or installed permanently to properly match transmitter and receiver levels.

Optical Circulator: an optical circulator is a multi-port (minimum three ports) non-reciprocal passive component. The function of an optical circulator is similar to that of a microwave circulator — to transmit a light wave from one port to the next sequential port with a maximum intensity, but at the same time to block any light transmission from one port to the previous port.

Fiber Collimator: a fiber collimator is a device for collimating the light coming from a fiber, or for launching collimated light into the fiber. It is used to expand and collimate the output light at the fiber end, or to couple light beams between two fibers. Both single-mode fiber collimators and multimode fiber collimators are available.

Optical Isolator: an optical isolator is a passive optical component that allows light to propagate in only one direction. Optical isolators are typically used to protect light sources from back reflections or signals that can cause instabilities and damage. The operation of optical isolators depends on the Faraday effect, which is used in the main component, the Faraday rotator.

Fiber Optic Sensor: a fiber optic sensor is a sensor that uses optical fiber either as the sensing element (intrinsic sensors), or as a means of relaying signals from a remote sensor to the electronics that process the signals (extrinsic sensors). Fiber optic sensors are immune to electromagnetic interference, and do not conduct electricity so they can be used in places where there is high voltage electricity or flammable material such as jet fuel.

Pump Combiner: a pump combiner is a passive optical component built based on fused biconical taper (FBT) technique. Pump combiners are widely used in fiber laser, fiber amplifier, high power EDFA, biomedical and sensor system etc. Three types of pump combiners are available: Nx1 Multimode Pump Combiner, (N+1)x1 Multimode Pump and Signal Combiner, PM(N+1)x1 PM Pump and Signal Combiner.

Polarization Components: polarization is the state of the e-vector orientation. Polarization components are used to isolate and transmit a single state of polarized light while absorbing, reflecting, and deviating light with the orthogonal state of polarization. Polarization components can be utilized in high power optical amplifiers and optical transmission system, test and measurement.

Fiberstore has all of the above passive optical components with high quality and reasonable price. You can select excellent passive optical components or other optical products for your network at www.fs.com.

Article source: www.fiber-optic-components.com/fiberstore-passive-optical-components-solution.html