Why Do We Need Different Categories of Cables?

by www.fiber-mart.com

Though fiber optic cabling is in full swing in recent years, it still can not take the place of the copper cabling completely. As one type of the copper cabling, Unshielded Twisted Pair (UTP) cable is most certainly by far the most popular cable around the world. Because UTP cables are used not only for networking but also for the in television, video, and telephone applications. When we talking UTP cables, we’ll likely come across Cat 5, Cat 5e, and Cat 6 cables with no clue as to what these designations mean. Why are they called as Cat with a number? Are these cables the tails of felines, and the number denotes how many of their nine lives remain? Of course, it is just a joke for the outsider. Cat here is short for “category”, and the number, such as 3, 5, 5e, 6 etc., refers to the generation of twisted pair Ethernet technology. Though it is said that the Cat 5 cable is the most popular of all UTP cables in use today, many new generation of UTP cables still come to the market. This cause us to think why we need different categories of cables?

 

From the above table, we can easily find that except Cat 1, the other categories of cables are designed for computer networking. For instance, Cat 2 is used mostly for token ring networks, supporting speeds up to 4 Mbps. For higher network speeds you must use Cat 4 or Cat 5 cable, but for 10 Mbps Cat 3 will suffice.

 

Actually, Cat 3, Cat 4 and Cat 5 cable are 4 pairs of twisted copper cables and Cat 5 has more twists per inch than Cat 3 therefore can run at higher speeds and greater lengths. The “twist” effect of each pair in the cables will cause any interference presented/picked up on one cable to be cancelled out by the cable’s partner which twists around the initial cable.

 

From Cat 5 cable, UTP cables began to be used in Ethernet application. And Cat 6 cable was originally designed to support gigabit Ethernet, although there are standards that will allow gigabit transmission over Cat 5 cable (here refers to Cat 5e). Though a Cat 5e cable infrastructure will safely accommodate the widely used 10 and 100 Mbps Ethernet protocols, 10BASE-T and 100BASE-T respectively, it may not satisfy the needs of the next Ethernet protocol, gigabit Ethernet (1000BASE-TX). Thus, Cat 6 Cable was developed to ensure 1000BASE-T performance as well as accommodate other protocols.

 

As for the 10 Gigabit Ethernet, Cat 7 cable came to the market. Cat 7 network cabling is used as a cabling infrastructure for 1000BASE-T (Gigabit Ethernet) and 10GBASE-T (10-Gigabit Ethernet) networks. Cat 7a is the enhanced version of Cat 7. It can perform up to frequencies of 1000 MHz and 40 Gbps.

 

Obviously, though fiber optic cable seems like the trend of future cabling, the development of copper cabling do not mean to stop. After seven generation of evolutions, Cat 8 cable was launched to the market in order to satisfy the 40G Ethernet (40GBASE-T). Cat 8 cable will contain four shielded twisted pairs and have a diameter about the same as Cat 6a and Cat 7a cables, but the bandwidth is specified to 2 GHz.

 

If you have read this far, you may clearly know why we need so many categories of cables. Of course, this does not mean that you should buy all of these cables home or you should use copper cabling instead of fiber optic cabling. Different categories of cables are with different characteristics and used for different applications. And copper cabling sometimes seems to be better than fiber optic cabling in short distance. You should choose the right cable according to your application and working environment.

 

fiber-mart is a professional manufacturer and supplier for network solutions, including fiber optic subsystems, components and copper network components. You could find all kinds of UTP cables or fiber optic patch cables, as well as a comprehensive solution of transceiver modules for different Ethernet protocols, such as 1000BASE-T SFP, 1000BASE-SX SFP, etc. For more information, please contact us directly by sending E-mail to sales@fiber-mart.com.

Best Practices for Handling Fiber Optic Cabling

Glass is very fragile. Evidence of this is in the plethora of options for shipping preparations and packing materials.

 

To ensure the product is in one piece upon delivery, lots of packing material is used with stickers added to the exterior of the box to alert people of the fragile contents inside.

 

Of course you know that fiber optic cables have glass in them, but it’s easy to be misled by the jacket surrounding the glass core; it would appear to be protected enough.

 

Don’t be fooled. You will need to handle this product with care. Here are some of the best practices for handling fiber optic cables.

 

Leave cable in a safe space

Leave your cable boxes in a safe place until your team is ready to use them. Don’t open, don’t unwrap. Err on the side of caution to avoid potentially damaging situations – like someone rolling a cabinet over it – crashing into it with a forklift  truck!

 

Keep the ends protected

When using the assembly, make sure to leave the protective end-caps on until you are ready to plug the cable into the patch panel or transceiver.

 

These caps protect the most sensitive part of the fiber assemblies. Once removed, the tiny core of the cable, the glass that runs through its center, is now exposed to the contaminants in the environment surrounding it.

 

Contaminants that find their way to these glass ends can cause the loss of light flow, which means less data passes through. To ensure you maintain a clean connection to the other fiber end piece, wait to remove those caps!

 

Don’t pinch the fiber

When handling fiber cable, never pinch or kink. While the glass inside is designed to be flexible, at a certain point it will snap, ruining your company’s expensive investment. Use Velcro to gather cables, never zip ties. Follow the manufacturer’s recommendations for bend radius and you’ll be fine.

What’s the Difference Between Fiber Optic Cabling and Others?

by www.fiber-mart.com

If you’re looking at high-speed internet options and find that fiber optic cable is available in your area, you may not understand the differences. fiber optic cablingAfter all, the cables look similar, and they install similarly from the lay-person’s perspective. Generally, that is where the similarities end.

 

Inside the Cable

Standard cable is known as coaxial cable. If you looked inside, you will find a central, copper core surrounded by insulation wrapped in twisted copper or metal wires before being covered in a plastic jacket. This is the same cable that comes into your house if you have cable television. It’s easy to run and shorten and connect to outlets and televisions. The cable is available in many different lengths and is nearly ubiquitous…plenty of homes have at least one coaxial cable sitting around.

 

Fiber optic cable, on the other hand, is built a bit differently, and high density fiber optic cables are very complex inside and can transmit a lot of data. High density fiber optic cables won’t come into your home, but if you have fiber optic internet, your home will connect to one of these cables. Fortunately, they work on the same principle…high density just has more protected cables inside, like lanes in a freeway.

 

The central core of a fiber optic cable is made of tiny strands of glass or plastic known as optical fibers. A single cable can have a few strands or as many as several hundred. Directly coating the strands is something known as cladding…which directs the signal down the strand to increase the distance of cabling that can be used before a repeater (a device that receives the signal on one end and retransmits it on the other to prevent data loss) is required. Then, just like coaxial cable, it contains insulation and a protective jacket.

 

The difference between these two cables is that one transmits an electromagnetic signal (coaxial) and one transmits light (generally LEDs or lasers).

 

What Does This Mean for the Consumer?

While standard, coaxial cable internet is available in nearly every urban and suburban area, fiber optics are just rolling out. It can be difficult to find a fiber optic internet provider if your city’s infrastructure or local cable provider hasn’t invested to have fiber optic cabling run to near your house.

 

Because fiber optics requires less repeaters and other equipment, and cost less to maintain, fiber optic cabling tends to cost less to the consumer than traditional cable internet does. Fiber optics are also much faster than traditional high speed internet because the optical threads have the capacity for greater bandwidth, and fiber optic cable weighs less because it requires less insulation and jacketing.

 

You can also feel good that fiber optics are more eco-friendly than traditional coaxial cables. Not only does it generate less heat at data centers to use fiber optic cable, but fiber optic cables require less insulation and jacketing, which often involve heavy metals, which can leach into the environment.

 

Fiber optics are also more secure than traditional coaxial cables. It’s more difficult to tap fiber optic cables because it requires special tools and receivers. Attempting to tap into the system is more likely to just disrupt the system, providing no benefit. Also important to note that information transmitted via pulses of light do not transmit electricity, which makes it harder to “listen” and intercept data from fiber optic cabling systems.

What’s the Difference Between Fiber Optic Cabling and Others?

by www.fiber-mart.com

If you’re looking at high-speed internet options and find that fiber optic cable is available in your area, you may not understand the differences. fiber optic cablingAfter all, the cables look similar, and they install similarly from the lay-person’s perspective. Generally, that is where the similarities end.

 

Inside the Cable

Standard cable is known as coaxial cable. If you looked inside, you will find a central, copper core surrounded by insulation wrapped in twisted copper or metal wires before being covered in a plastic jacket. This is the same cable that comes into your house if you have cable television. It’s easy to run and shorten and connect to outlets and televisions. The cable is available in many different lengths and is nearly ubiquitous…plenty of homes have at least one coaxial cable sitting around.

 

Fiber optic cable, on the other hand, is built a bit differently, and high density fiber optic cables are very complex inside and can transmit a lot of data. High density fiber optic cables won’t come into your home, but if you have fiber optic internet, your home will connect to one of these cables. Fortunately, they work on the same principle…high density just has more protected cables inside, like lanes in a freeway.

 

The central core of a fiber optic cable is made of tiny strands of glass or plastic known as optical fibers. A single cable can have a few strands or as many as several hundred. Directly coating the strands is something known as cladding…which directs the signal down the strand to increase the distance of cabling that can be used before a repeater (a device that receives the signal on one end and retransmits it on the other to prevent data loss) is required. Then, just like coaxial cable, it contains insulation and a protective jacket.

 

The difference between these two cables is that one transmits an electromagnetic signal (coaxial) and one transmits light (generally LEDs or lasers).

 

What Does This Mean for the Consumer?

While standard, coaxial cable internet is available in nearly every urban and suburban area, fiber optics are just rolling out. It can be difficult to find a fiber optic internet provider if your city’s infrastructure or local cable provider hasn’t invested to have fiber optic cabling run to near your house.

 

Because fiber optics requires less repeaters and other equipment, and cost less to maintain, fiber optic cabling tends to cost less to the consumer than traditional cable internet does. Fiber optics are also much faster than traditional high speed internet because the optical threads have the capacity for greater bandwidth, and fiber optic cable weighs less because it requires less insulation and jacketing.

 

You can also feel good that fiber optics are more eco-friendly than traditional coaxial cables. Not only does it generate less heat at data centers to use fiber optic cable, but fiber optic cables require less insulation and jacketing, which often involve heavy metals, which can leach into the environment.

 

Fiber optics are also more secure than traditional coaxial cables. It’s more difficult to tap fiber optic cables because it requires special tools and receivers. Attempting to tap into the system is more likely to just disrupt the system, providing no benefit. Also important to note that information transmitted via pulses of light do not transmit electricity, which makes it harder to “listen” and intercept data from fiber optic cabling systems.

WHAT ARE THE ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF FIBER OPTIC CABLING

by www.fiber-mart.com

Fiber optic cabling consists of strands of purified glass, or even plastic, rods that conduct specific wavelengths of light, analogous to the electrons carried along a Copper Cable. However, light traveling through glass or plastic is not susceptible to the same problems that metal conductors are; The electromagnetic radiation that results from current traveling through a wire is not present in optical conductors, and optical conductors can be made much smaller than metal ones.

 

Advantages of Fiber Optic Cabling

 

There are four advantages of fiber optic cabling, these advantages explain why fiber is becoming the preferred network cabling medium for high bandwidth, long-distance applications:

 

1. Immunity to Electromagnetic Interference (EMI)

 

All copper cable network media sharing a common problem: they are susceptible to electromagnetic interference (EMI), fiber optic cabling is immune to crosstalk because optical fiber does not conduct electricity and uses light signals in a glass fiber, rather than electrical signals along a metallic conductor to transmit data. So it cannot produce a magnetic field and thus is immune to EMI.

 

2. Higher Possible Data Rates

 

Because light is immune to interference, can be modulated at very high frequencies, and travels almost instantaneously to its destination, much higher data rates are possible with fiber optic cabling technologies than with traditional copper systems. Data rates far exceeding the gigabit per second (Gbps) range and higher are possible, and the latest IEEE standards body is working on 100Gbps fiber based applications over much longer distances than copper cabling. Multimode is preferred fiber optic type for 100-550 meters seen in LAN network, and since single mode fiber optic cables are capable of transmitting at these multi-gigabit data rates over very long distances, they are the preferred media for transcontinental and oceanic applications.

 

3. Longer Maximum Distances

 

Typical copper media data transmission by the distance limits the maximum length of less than 100 meters. Because they do not suffer from the electromagnetic interference problems of traditional copper cabling and because they do not use electrical signals that can dramatically reduce the long distance, single-mode fiber optic cables can span 75 kilometers (about 46.6 miles) without using signal-boosting repeaters.

 

4. Better Security

 

The Copper cable transmission media is susceptible to eavesdropping through taps. A tap (short for wiretap) is a device that punctures through the outer jacket of a copper cable and touches the inner conductor. The tap intercepts signals sent on a LAN and sends them to another (unwanted) location. Electromagnetic (EM) taps are similar devices, but rather than puncturing the cable,they use the cable’s magnetic fields, which are similar to the pattern of electrical signals. Because fiber optic cabling uses light instead of electrical signals, it is immune to most types of eavesdropping. Traditional taps won’t work because any intrusion on the cable will cause the light to be blocked and the connection simply won’t function. EM taps won’t work because no magnetic field is generated. Because of its immunity to traditional eavesdropping tactics, fiber optic cabling is used in networks that must remain secure, such as government and research networks.

 

Disadvantages of Fiber Optic Cabling

 

With all of its advantages, many people use fiber optic cabling. However, fiber optic cabling does have a couple of disadvantages:

 

1. Higher Cost

 

The higher cost of fiber optic cabling has little to do with the cable these days. Increases in available Fiber Optic Cable manufacturing capacity have lowered cable prices to levels comparable to high end UTP on a per-foot basis, and the cables are no harder to pull. Ethernet hubs, switches, routers, NICs, and patch cords for UTP are very inexpensive. A high quality UTP-based 10/100/1000 auto-sensing Ethernet NIC for a PC can be purchased for less than $25. A fiber optic NIC for a PC costs at least four times as much. Similar price differences exist for hubs, routers, and switches. For an IT manager who has several hundred workstations to deploy and support, that translates to megabucks and keeps UTP a viable solution. The cost of network electronics keeps the total system cost of fiber-based networks higher than UTP, and ultimately, it is preventing a mass stampede to fiber-to-the-desk.

 

2. Installation

 

The other main disadvantage of fiber optic cabling is that it can be more difficult to install. Copper cable ends simply need a mechanical connection, and those connections don’t have to be perfect. Fiber optic cable can be much trickier to make connections for mainly because of the nature of the glass or plastic core of the fiber cable. When you cut or cleave (in fiber optic terms) the fiber, the unpolished end consists of an irregular finish of glass that diffuses the light signal and prevents it form guiding into the receiver correctly. The end of the fiber must be polished and a special polishing tools to make it perfectly flat so that the light will shine through correctly.

The Top 5 structured fiber optic cabling faults

by www.fiber-mart.com

1. Cause: Intermittent faults – Unidentified intermittent faults are amongst the most common and damaging issues that affect structured cabling networks. Faulty patch leads and broken or malfunctioning outlets are typical causes of this frustrating and puzzling problem, but identifying the lead or outlet that’s misfiring can be a headache in itself.

Effect: Valuable resources are wasted.

2. Cause: Wi-Fi problems – Wi-Fi can present a host of challenges when installed incorrectly – from poor coverage to intermittent connectivity. Connecting multiple devices that use conflicting Wi-Fi standards is a common cause of many problems. Equally, the Wi-Fi devices themselves may be faulty or installed in the wrong position. If neither of these factors are the cause of your issues, check if you’ve connected new Wi-Fi devices with outdated cabling.

Effect: Workforce efficiency and productivity plummet.

3. Cause: Disorganization and disorder – Structured cabling networks often become disorderly over time as multiple firms are called in to install, maintain and repair them, resulting in a confused and jumbled system. A disorganized structured cabling network can also be the result of sloppy workmanship, where engineers haven’t taken enough care during the implementation process. Untidy patching, inaccurate labelling and poor record keeping are all warning signs that shouldn’t be ignored.

Effect: Unnecessary expenditure.

4. Cause: Mismatched cabling – Even if your infrastructure is built on one category of cable, if two different manufacturers have supplied different elements of your network, you may encounter problems. A structured cabling network that isn’t consistent end-to-end can cause electrical mismatching between components and although this can be difficult to spot, the effects are plain to see.

Effect: Costly network challenges.

5. Cause: A lack of network redundancy – Organizations need a backup cabling network and an uninterruptable power supply (UPS) to ensure connectivity and power remain consistent when the lights go out unexpectedly. This is especially true of critical links and services that underpin crucial business operations, for example the structured cabling network that supports a bank’s trading floor. Despite the importance of these systems, we find that many organizations don’t consider installing them until after an incident has taken place.

Effect: A catastrophic loss of service.