Tips on Quick Fiber Termination
When building a broadband network over long distances, there is no doubt that fiber optic cabling is the best choice. It’s a cost-effective solution to help installers build a future-proof network infrastructure with higher bandwidth, greater reliability and farther transmission distance. But proper fiber termination is extremely important when installing a fiber optic network since the network will become unreliable if the termination is poorly made.
What Does Fiber Cable Termination Mean?
Fiber cable termination refers to the addition of connectors to a fiber optic cable, and the type of connectors could vary based on the type of cable and application. The fibers need to have connectors fitted before they can connect to a device or transceiver. Proper fiber termination enables the light wave signal to properly transmit data throughout your network. It highly reduces return (RL) and insertion loss (IL) in data transmission and helps deliver a better network performance at optimal speeds. Troubleshooting will be easier when the connectors are attached with care to prevent breakage and loosening.
Field Termination vs Factory Termination
Unlike Ethernet cables that natively come with a connector, fiber optic cables are not always pre-terminated. There are generally two methods used in the market for fiber termination: one is field termination and the other is factory/pre-termination. Professional fiber fusion, splicing or polishing are often required in the field termination to make a precise connection, while the per-terminated fiber cables arrive on-site with the connectors attached and ready to install.
Field termination is accomplished in the deployment site, also called on-site termination. The essence of the field termination is splicing (needed if long cable runs can’t be realized with one straight pull), which is further divided into fusion splicing and mechanical splicing. But to make a ‘permanent’ connection is quite expensive. In the field termination, you can customize the cable length with very little up-front planning time required, but it’s both labor and time-consuming, requires special tools and instruments and the quality largely depends on skill, experience, and components.
However, factory termination is a more cost-effective and reliable solution to make a quick and precise connection between two fibers. In the factory termination, the fiber optic cable is 100% factory-terminated, tested with a plug-and-play deployment before shipment, enabling fast and easy connection in a more budget-friendly way. They can be easily deployed and disassembled, cutting deployment time by 70%-80%. No special tools are needed for further processing. There will be lower chances of breakage and contamination on the fiber connectors, thereby reducing signal loss.
What is the Pre-terminated Fiber Cable?
The pre-terminated fiber cables are normally made at pre-defined lengths, and they are undeniable of higher quality and provide more reliable performance than their counterparts in mission-critical applications like video surveillance, which demands the highest level of accuracy. They are also a great choice for disaster recovery situations and temporary data communication setups, ideal for individuals and businesses to minimize potential downtime.
How Can You Benefit from Fastcabling Pre-terminated Fiber Optic Cables?
#1 Quick fiber connection with reduced installation costs
Fastcabling pre-terminated fiber optic cables offer you a hassle-free and reliable solution for realizing fiber termination in a budget-friendly way. As the cables are pre-terminated, no additional connectors or equipment are required during installation, which helps eliminate rework, signal testing, etc., ideal for applications that call for short deadlines in particular. In the field termination, you may have to spend at least $15,000 on a good fiber splicer to make a precise splice between two fibers, while the pre-terminated fiber optic cables arrive with the connectors installed and ready to use.
#2 High-performance data transmission for long-distance deployments
All fiber optic cables are pre-terminated in a clean environment with the least possible contamination on the connectors, which means the fiber termination is more precise and signal loss is greatly reduced to build a broadband network with greater reliability over long distances. Fastcabling has launched a series of high-quality pre-terminated fiber optic cables at different cable lengths (100m/300m/500m) to meet your specific needs. Besides, our pre-terminated fiber cables are wrapped with a rugged armored jacket to prevent transmission failures caused by bending, twisting, breakage, etc.
#3 Easy, convenient fiber connection with user-friendly designs
The pre-terminated fiber cables feature a simple plug-and-play design, equipped with factory polished and tested connectors ready for immediate installation, which is a perfect option for a point-to-point fiber connection. And the pulling eye design helps you save lots of time when installing fiber cables through conduits, ducts or risers. And it also protects the connectors of the fiber optic cables to prevent the cables from twisting during the installation. The fiber optic cable has two connectors per end marked with Connectors A and B to facilitate the point-to-point connection. Find how to build a P2P fiber network here.
How to Use Pre-terminated Fiber Optic Cables
Since most IP devices can only accept electrical signals, to convert the optical signals into the ones that network devices can receive, copper-to-fiber conversion is required.
Media Converters
The media converter is often utilized to create a connection between dissimilar media types (i.e. fiber optic cables and twisted pairs) by converting optical signals into electrical signals, and vice versa. It’s widely used in various scenarios from IP surveillance systems to access controls. The media converters often work in pairs for copper-to-fiber conversion to realize high-speed data transmission over long distances. Fastcabling has launched a Waterproof Industrial Hardened Grade Fiber PoE Media Converter that can deliver PoE directly to the edge devices like IP cameras with a maximum power output of 30W.
SFP Modules
An SFP module is a small modular transceiver that plugs into the SFP port on a network switch or media converter to facilitate the conversion of Ethernet signals into optical signals. The SFP modules are mainly classified based on their speed capabilities, such as 100BASE-T, 1000BASE-T and 10GBASE-T. Fastcabling has released several types of SFP modules: BiDi SFP fiber modules, 10G BiDi SFP+ fiber modules and single-mode SFP fiber modules to satisfy various needs. These SFP modules are specially designed to work with single-mode fibers with LC connectors. And we’ve launched an SFP RJ45 copper module to help you expand the Ethernet port on a fiber switch. Read more about SFP modules here.
Installation Tips
The following are some installation tips to help you deploy and manage the fiber optic cables in a more organized and efficient way.
How to Run the Pre-terminated Fiber Cables?
There are mainly two ways to run the fiber cables: aerial and underground. For aerial building, you’ll need to wire the aerial fiber optic cables between poles by being lashed to a wire rope messenger strand with a small gauge wire. But building new poles is costly and geographically challenging, which is only recommended for professional, large-scale network deployments. Conduit cabling is often used for underground cables.
How to manage and distribute fiber optic cables?
You can use the fiber cable caddy when securing, routing, and organizing connections. The cable caddy also prevents the cables from tangling on the job site. As the number of PDs increases, the distribution and management of fiber cables will become more difficult. So a fiber termination box is needed to manage the incoming and outgoing cables. For more information, please continue to read 101 Guidelines for Fiber Termination Box.
How to daisy-chain the pre-terminated cables?
Since running more fiber is costly and geographically restricted, you can save more by daisy-chaining. In daisy-chaining, each media converter needs two SFP slots, one for ‘upstream’ traffic connected to the fiber switch, and the other for ‘downstream’ connectivity to another media converter. If one media converter goes down, only the connected PD will be affected; but if the connection between the fiber switch and the media converter is broken, all devices in the chain will be affected.
