Things to Consider Before Purchasing Fiber Optic Jumpers

Fiber Optic Jumpers, also known as Fiber Patch Cords are the cables that connect network hardware or end devices to your cabling system. These cables terminate with MTRJ, LC, SC, or ST connectors at each end. The jumpers come in simplex and duplex types and can be selected depending on your network requirements. Here are some insights on Fiber Optic Jumpers and considerations you should make before buying them.

Simplex vs Duplex Jumpers

If you see Simplex Cables, you will notice a strand of glass enclosed in plastic. These cables are used when you need to do data transmission in one direction. When you need to establish connections within buildings or huge cable TV networks, they are a right choice.

Duplex cables, on the other hand, have two strands of fiber in a single cable. These are used for bidirectional transmission, between your device and cable. When one cable transmits signal, the other one receives it. You will observe Duplex cables being used at large workstations, servers, switches, and on networking hardware.

These cables are available in uniboot or zip cord construction. In uniboot, two fibers meet as a single connector at either of the ends which makes it difficult to maintain and expensive as compared to zipcord cables. Whereas in zipcord, the two fiber strands are fused but are easy to separate when you dig out receiver strand or transmission.

How to Choose Your Patch Cord?

Simplex fiber carries a single ray of light at once. The best part about it is you can completely rely on it for its potential to carry out long distance transmissions. As it doesn’t require a lot of material, it costs lesser than a duplex cable. Simplex Fiber Cords are used a lot for modern communications due to its excellent capacity which enables high transmission speed with more bandwidth.

Duplex Jumpers are good at keeping your data tidy and organized. As they ask for less number cables, it becomes easy to maintain them. Whether you should go for Simplex or Duplex jumpers depends on how complex your network is and what purposes does it fulfill.

Considerations to make while using Fiber Optic Jumpers

Before you start using Fiber Optic Jumpers, you should ensure that the wire light wavelength of transceiver module at the end of fiber optic jumper is identical. Which means the ends of optical fiber should match with the wavelength of light module. The best way to differentiate between the two is through colours of the optic module.

A short wave optical module has a multimode optical fiber which is orange in colour. Long wave module makes use of single mode optical fiber which is yellow in colour.

Protecting your Fiber Jumpers

It is okay to confirm the accuracy of data transmission. But do not bend the optical fiber jumpers too much as it might increase the light attenuation during the transmission process. You must guard the connector by using a protective material which will protect it from dust and pollution that cause damage to the coupling of optical fiber.

The fiber jumpers should be in accordance with ANSI/TIA/EIA and ISO/IEC as aspects like coupling stress, optical fiber tensile force, cable tension stress, vibration, moisture, durability, temperature variations are considered while making them.

Jennifer Truong is the owner of SF Cable, a california based online retailer of all kind of Computers, electronics, electrical accessories, networking accessories, cables, wires. Jennifer has extensive experience in the Electronics industry and blog.