Cabling Solutions: Multimode & Singlemode Fibers

Multimode & Singlemode fiber are the two types of fiber in common use. Both fibers are 125 microns in outside diameter - a micron is one one-millionth of a meter and 125 microns is 0.005 inches- a bit larger than the typical human hair. Multimode fiber has light traveling in the core in many rays, called modes. It has a bigger core (almost always 62.5 microns, but sometimes 50 microns ) and is used with LED sources at wavelengths of 850 and 1300 nm (see below!) for slower local area networks (LANs) and lasers at 850 and 1310 nm for networks running at gigabits per second or more. Singlemode fiber has a much smaller core, only about 9 microns, so that the light travels in only one ray. It is used for telephony and CATV with laser sources at 1300 and 1550 nm. Plastic Optical Fiber (POF) is large core ( about 1mm) fiber that can only be used for short, low speed networks.

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