Optical Fiber Interoperability: Using Fiber Standards and Specifications to Ensure Reliable Network Performance

Tuesday, November 19th 2024 at 10 AM EDT

Standards for singlemode optical fiber are published by several different organizations, including the ITU, the IEC, the TIA and Telcordia.  Their documents contain an alphabet soup of abbreviations.  For example, the commonly used ITU G.657.A1 singlemode fiber can also be referred to as OS2, IEC 60793-2-50 B6_A1 and TIA-492CAAB.  On top of that, each Tier 1 fiber manufacturer markets several different singlemode products, which can lead to confusion about which fiber grades to specify and whether or not different fibers can be mixed in a network, 

In this Webinar, we will unpack different standards for optical fiber, explaining where different grades of singlemode fibers are used in the network and discussing different commercial optical fiber offers.  The presentation will focus on three critical parameters that affect performance:

• Attenuation controls the maximum reach of a network. 
• Maximum macrobending loss affects how much space is needed to terminate fibers.
• Mode field diameter impacts fusion splice loss, and is the root cause for “losers” and “gainers” seen in one-way OTDR traces.