Considerations when buying fibre cables?

nel

Hi Guys,

probably a stupid question. Im looking to purchase quite a few fibre cables and i was wondering the importance of the "micron" value's? i assume this is related to the core or cladding?

Basically ive checked our regular supplier and have been quoted at £75 ex vat for a LC LC 15m cable. However after a quick google i found i can order them off a website for £18 inc vat! thats quite a difference considering we'll be buying quite a few!

Th eonly difference between the two are the micron values. The cheaper ones are 50 / 125 micron and the ones from our supplier are 62.5 / 125 micron.

Is there any big difference between the two etc?

Thanks in advance for replying to my dumb ass question!!

astorrs

What are you connecting? LC-LC implies probably SAN... what are the tolerances required by the equipment? That is where you should be starting from. Find out the wavelength supported and whether it requires SM or MM cables.

nel

Its to connect some 3560 switches to our core 6500's. There in the same room.

Some servers connect to these and i was hoping these would be quite thick and protected because ive noticed some of our fibre cables are thicker than others etc.

t49

nel wrote: »

Its to connect some 3560 switches to our core 6500's. There in the same room.

Some servers connect to these and i was hoping these would be quite thick and protected because ive noticed some of our fibre cables are thicker than others etc.

Check if your fiber ports are singlemode or multimode.

50 and 62.5 fiber are multimode fiber

single mode fiber cores are 9/125.

Kaminsky

The main difference between 50 and 62.5 is bandwidth and longer cable runs with the 50. Some sources say 50 can handle upto 3 times the bandwidth of 62.5.

This is all pretty relative though when dealing with fibre. For patching within a room, standard 62.5 MM LC/SC fibres should be fine. Depends on whether you feel all of those cables are going to be hammered continously.