OM4 50um Fiber Optic Cable - Networking at the SpeedaLite™ Unirise SpeedaLite™ 50 (OM4) fiber optic cables are fully tested and guaranteed for the lifetime. The 50 refers to the actual diameter size of the core itself – measured in microns. OM4 cable is recommended for premise applications like backbone, horizontal and intrabuilding connections. OM4 fiber optic cable can carry a 150 Gigabit ethernet signal up to 100 meters making it a popular choice among those who require a network that can handle a large amount of data at the SpeedaLite™.
What is a Fiber Optic Cable? In layman’s terms, a fiber optic jumper is a cable that has one or more glass optical fibers that carry data over light signals. The optical fiber cable is made of three primary parts, the core, cladding and buffer. The Core is the center of the glass optical fiber where the light is transmitted. The cladding is one or more layers of material that has a low refractive rate. This causes the light traveling through the cable to be confined to the core. The Buffer coating is a hard plastic coating on the outside of the fiber that protects the glass from moisture or damage. All three of these parts can be covered in an outer jacket that adds additional protection. Singlemode or Multimode? Singlemode the fiber optic cable allows only one type of light mode to be sent at a time. Multimode is the exact opposite – it allows multiple light modes. Multimode fiber has a larger light carrying core. It is usually used for short distance transmissions with LED based fiber optic equipment. Singlemode fiber optic cables have a small light carrying core of 8 to 10 microns in diameter. It’s used for long distance transmissions with laser diode based fiber optic transmission equipment. Multimode fiber will allow transmission distances of up to about 10 miles and will allow the use of inexpensive fiber optic transmitters. There will be bandwidth limitations of a few hundred MHz per km of length. Consequently, a 10 mile link will be limited to about 10 to 30 MHz For CCTV this will be fine but for high speed data transmission it may not be. Singlemode fiber optic cables, on the other hand, is useful for distances more than 10 miles but will need the use of single-mode transmitters (which use solid-state laser diodes). The higher cost of these optical emitters means that single-mode equipment can be anywhere from 2 to 4 times as expensive as multi-mode equipment.