Fanout Assemblies in 40G Interconnection

40G transmission is very common in the backbone network now. However, not all the devices and network are upgraded to 40G. To adapting the network between devices and network of different data rate. It is necessary to connection 40G devices to 10G devices for network interconnection. To solve this problem, fanout technology is be accepted and widely used in data center. Fanout products for interconnection is easy to understand. It’s kind of like the water pipeline in our building: water is transferred from the trunk pipeline in a building. Then trunk pipeline fans out into several pipelines that have smaller diameters to bring the water to every house. This post will introduce several Fanout products that are commonly used for 40G data center interconnection.

40G MPO Fanout Cables

The first fanout component is 40G MPO fanout cable, also called breakout cable or harness cable. MPO fanout cable is a multi-fiber optical cable with one end terminated with a male/female MPO connector and the other end attached with several LC connectors. Actually, there are various types of MPO fanout cables, according to connector type, cable length and cable type. But they all have the similar structure. Here will introduce three most popular MPO fanout cables according to the package type.

The first one to be introduced is also what most customer need. This cable is fan out into 12 fibers or 24 fibers. The above picture shows a typical 12-fiber MPO harness cable. The MPO connector of this fanout cable is linked to 6 duplex LC connectors, which is really useful for backbone cabling from 40G devices to 10G devices. The second one is a little bit smaller version of the former. The fibers are fanout directly from the MPO connectors. With small size, this kind of mini MPO harness cable can be easily put into patch panel and increase the cabling density largely and effectively.

The third to be introduced is a special one—MPO cassette. Literally, it looks like a cassette and looks very different from other MPO fanout cables. However, when you look inside the cassette, it has not much difference from other MPO fanout cables. MPO Cassette actually contains one or several mini MPO fanout cables in side the cassette, which is designed for those who want have everything in clean and tidy status. As it can be installed in a standard rack and the cables are all well protected. A 12-fiber MPO cassette usually has a 12-fiber mini MPO fanout cable in side the cassette, with a MPO connector on the backside and 12 LC connector in the front. For a 24-fiber MPO cassette, there could be a 24-fiber fanout cable or two 12-fiber cables inside. The following picture is a MPO cassette with two 12-fiber MPO fanout cable inside it, thus there are two MPO connector on its backside.

40G Fanout Direct Attach Cables

To decrease the 40G interconnection cost, Direct attach cable (DAC) is being widely used. There are also fanout versions of 40G DAC which support 40G to 10G cabling. These kind of 40G DAC usually have one QSFP+ connector on one end and four SFP+/XFP connectors or several LC connectors at the other end. For example, the following is 40G QSFP+ to 8 LC DAC. The QSFP+ connector of it can be used to plug in the 40G device which has QSFP+ port. On the other end, the four duplex LC connectors are used to separately connect four SFP+ transceivers , which are used to plug in 10G devices with SFP+ switched (shown in the following picture). If you used a 40G QSFP+ to 4 SFP+ DAC, this process would be easier, cause the SFP+ connector can be plugged into the SFP+ switch directly.

Conclusion

All in all, fanout technology plays an important role in the 40G data center for both connecting devices supporting different data rate and distribution. Most fanout products are factory pre-terminated. The installation and maintenance doesn’t need many skills. In Fiberstore, a variety of fanout products of high quality and reliability can be customized according to your application. If you are seeking for solutions for fanout product, please feel free to contact sales@fs.com for more details.

Source： http://www.fiber-optic-tutorial.com/fanout-assemblies-in-40g-interconnection.html

Cabling With High Density Push-Pull Tab Patch Cords

It is inevitable to plug fiber patch cables from the patch panels, switches or cassettes in today’s data center cabling. However, this simple movement becomes harder and harder nowadays. Why? Both the data rate of every optical fiber and the fiber counts being used are increased to support high data rate up to 40/100G or more. Thus, the cabling density increased largely with the deployment of 40/100G Ethernet network. Finger access to every patch cable that is loaded on the patch panel, switches or cassettes becomes difficult. Especially for these patch cables in the middle of the space.

For fiber patch cords attached with connectors like LC, things become more complex. Because this type of connectors are usually locked in the port with a latch on the connector body. If you want to plug out a patch cord with LC connectors, you should firstly unlock the connector from the port by clicking the latch with is with small size (shown in the following picture). Usually an external tool is used to unplug the specific connector in a high density cabling. It seems a problem doesn’t matter much in the whole cabling. However, during practical cabling, network engineer could be headache about this annoying problem. To find an easy and elegant way to solve this finger access problem, a new type of patch cords was invented, which is designed for high density cabling and is known as push-pull tab patch cords.

What Is High Density Push-pull Tab Fiber Patch cable?

Compare with the traditional patch cords. This new type patch cord is attached with a connector with a push-pull tab, which can perfectly solve the fiber access problem in high density cabling. Except the additional tab for pushing and pull, these connectors don’t change much from the traditional ones that attached to patch cords. But this little change makes a great difference. The following is offering you the details about this novel product.

High density push-pull tab fiber patch cords are usually attached with LC or MPO connectors, as these two types of connector are currently the most popular in high density cabling like 40G, 100G, 120G or more. The following pictures shows the details of these two types of connectors with push-pull tab.

The one in the left of the following picture is an LC connector attached on push-pull tab patch cable. It’s of standard LC size. When the tab is pulled the LC connector would be unlocked from the port easily, cause the tab is linked to the latch of the LC connector. Once the LC connector is unlocked, the patch cords would be smoothly plugged out from the port and other patch cords around it by pulling the tab slightly. As for MPO connector with push-pull tab shown in the following picture on the right side. Finger access becomes easier. The tab can greatly simplify the use of MPO connectivity when manual access to the release slider and rear portion of the connector is restricted. In this way, easy insertion and extraction of MPO patch cords can be achieved.

Get More From Push-pull Tab Patch Cable

Is finger access the only advantage of push-pull tab patch cords. Definitely NO. The following illustrating will surely make you exciting about push-pull tab patch cable.

• Flexibility and adjustability: it has been proved that push-pull tab can increase the cabling density by 30% to 50%, which can satisfy the future high density cabling requirements for 120G or more.
• Reliability: To reach the specific connector you want, you might loosen or remove other connectors around it, which can highly increase the reliability of the network.
• Cost-save and time-save: it is clear that with push-pull tab patch cords, cabling becomes easy and elegant with higher ROI.

Fiberstore Push-Pull Tab Fiber Patch Cable Solutions

If you are looking for a simple and easy high density patch cabling solution, push-pull tab patch cords provided by Fiberstore can satisfy your requirements. The following chart is the most common applications of push-pull tab patch cords for your references.

Application	Patch Cords	Cable Type	Connectors on Both Ends
10G to 10G Cabling	Duplex LC Push-pull Tab Patch Cord	OM3/OM4/Single-mode	Duplex LC	Duplex LC
40G to 40G Cabling	12-fiber MPO Push-pull Tab Trunk Cable	OM3/OM4/Single-mode	MPO (male/female)	MPO (male/female)
40G to 10G Cabling	12-fiber MPO to 8 LC Push-pull Tab Break out Cable	OM3/OM4/Single-mode	MPO (male/female)	4 Duplex LC
100G to 100G Cabling	24-fiber MPO Push-pull Tab Trunk Cable	OM3/OM4/Single-mode	MPO (male/female)	MPO (male/female)

For more details and customized solution of push-pull tab patch cords, you can always access Fiberstore by FS.COM or emailing us at sales@fs.com

Source: http://www.fiber-optic-tutorial.com/cabling-with-high-density-push-pull-tab-patch-cords.html