October 18, 2018
The Most Common Uses of Fiber Optic Cables
- Fiber in Computer Networking
Fiber optic cables have revolutionized the telecommunications industry. Using fiber optic cables, telecommunications links realize much higher data rates over much greater distances with lower loss.
As a result of these advantages, fiber optic communications systems are widely employed for applications ranging from major telecommunications backbone infrastructure to Ethernet systems, broadband distribution, and general data networking. This article will introduce the most common uses of fiber optic cables.
Optical fiber can be used as a medium for computer networking, because it is flexible and can be bundled as cables. Compared with electrical cables, light transmission through the fiber has lower attenuation over long distance communications.
For short-distance, such as FTTH or FTTO, fiber optic cables can save space in cable ducts. A single fiber can carry much more data than electrical cables such as Cat5 Ethernet cable, which typically runs at 100 Mbit/s or 1 Gbit/s speeds.
Besides, fiber is immune to electrical interference. There is no cross-talk between signals in different cables. For these reasons, optical fiber cables have more advantages in computer networking over the electrical cables.