Author
Ricardo Diaz
Do you know what your fiber is capable of? Cabling infrastructure is not only the foundation of your network and will continue being so, but it is also a key investment to serve your company’s needs for years to come. In the past, we thought of it as the pathway for voice, data and building administration systems. Today, we know it is capable of a lot more; such as providing an efficient nervous system for the indoor wireless network.
Whether you are assessing the requirements for a new fiber network or reconsidering what is within your reach with the existing one, do you know what would be your starting point? If it is already deployed, you could get a field tester and check its optical performance according to standards as well as the applications your fiber link or channel actually supports.
If you want to pursue that direction, it will take many hours of your time. There is a high probability that the fiber network was verified right after the installation. You may have tons of data on hand—type of fiber, link length or maybe even the number of connectors.
Do you think that you can use that data for anything else that occupies shelf space? Of course, you can. If you chose the right fiber vendor, you should already have a set of Fiber Performance Specifications documents detailing the supported configurations and distances. For example, you may need to determine if you can run 40G on OS2 fiber with two LCs and four MPOs. With the right solutions, the answer is yes—up to 4 miles/6.5 km. Many performance specification documents can be hundreds of pages long and include hundreds of tables.
Fortunately, there is better way to find out the applications that CommScope fiber supports. With our new Fiber Performance Calculator, you can enter the most common configurations of your premises and instantly know which Ethernet and Fibre Channel applications are supported (or not). You will also access the maximum distances for the links/channels (just in case you want to extend them). You can learn the answers to the following questions:
- Would you like to get data in your units (meters or feet)?
- Would you like to store the results for further review?
- Would you like to send the valuable data by email?
You can download the Fiber Performance Calculator from this page and experience a much simpler and faster way to have all the valuable data you need to better understand your fiber capabilities. If you have any questions about the Fiber Performance Calculator and how it may be able to help you, leave a comment below and I will be sure to respond.
