The Wrong Connection May Happen for 24core MPO/MTP Cabling

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Since the establishment of the
40GBASE-SR4 and 100GBASE-SR10 standards in 2010, many people regard 24-core
connection as an ideal network migration solution for data centers. Compared
with 12-core fiber optic cabling, the use of 24-core patch cords can save half
of the space and reduce the number of fiber optic cables required. As a result,
the number of fiber cable channels required is reduced accordingly, making the
data center easier to manage. Although the 24-core MTP/MPO fiber optic jumper
solution is being welcomed by most people, many people still don’t really
understand MPO/MTP connection. Below we briefly cite two error-prone concepts
about the 24-core MPO/MTP connection.

 

Point One in MPO/MTP Cabling

 

The new standard stipulates that the
number of fiber cores required for a 100G network connection will be reduced
compared to the 20-core fiber jumpers commonly used today. Therefore, many
people will think that 24 core connection is not necessary. At this stage, the
100GBASE-SR10 standard defined by IEEE802.3ba stipulates that 100G networks
must use 10-channel multimode optical fiber for transmission at 10Gb/s.
Compared with the previous standard, the number of channels used has been
reduced. From this point, we can see that network technology has indeed made
considerable progress.

 

At present, there is a new standard
about the use of 4-channel multi-mode fiber for transmission at 2.5Gb/s. This
standard only requires 8 fibers (four for sending data and the other four for
receiving data). It is the same as the current 4OGBASE-SR4 standard. This also
means that the 12-core MPO/MTP connector can support a single 100G channel.
However, it is very unreasonable to use a 12-core MPO/MTP connector for a
transmission channel that only requires 8-core optical fiber, because this will
cause the idle waste of the other 4 cores. Therefore, we usually choose another
solution to replace it, connecting a 24-core MTP connector with three 8-core
100G transmission channels on a jumper, so as to optimize resource allocation.
Connect three 8-core 100G transmission channels on each jumper, so that each
fiber can be used reasonably.

 

If the above example is not enough to
convince you, then let us look at another example. If you need to use the
4*2.5Gb/s transmission standard to support the transmission of 12 100G
channels, and if you choose a 12-core MPO/MTP connector, you will need 12 less
connectors and a total of 144 fiber cores. Although this can also achieve the
transmission effect we want, it will cause 33% of the optical fiber to be
wasted. However, the use of 24-core connectors can optimize resource allocation
to the greatest extent. Only four fiber jumpers (96 fibers in total) are
needed, and all cores can be used. In this way, the 12-core MPO/MTP connector
increases the investment cost, which is contrary to the design intent of the
data center infrastructure system.

 

Point Two in MPO/MTP Cabling

 

Some people believe that more fiber
cores will result in more insertion loss, so 24-core connectors are not as
cost-effective as 12-core connectors. Indeed, in the jumper deployment of the
data center, the insertion loss is a key parameter. In an optical fiber system,
if the insertion loss is small, the data transmitted is more accurate. For
example, the 40/100GbE standard defined by IEEE802.3ba stipulates that the
insertion loss of OM3 fiber must be controlled within 1.5db within a
transmission distance of 100M. If the insertion loss increases, then this means
that the data transmission distance will be shortened. However, with the
current trend of using distributed access/aggregation switches in data centers,
the backbone will be shortened. However, with the current trend of using
distributed access/aggregation switches in data centers to increase, the trend
of extending the backbone network by 100M has declined.

 

Some people mistakenly believe that more
fiber cores will lead to more insertion loss, and use the phenomenon that a
24-core connector has a loss of 0.5db to support this view. In fact, whether it
is a 12-core MPO/MTP connector or 24-core MPO/MTP connector, the loss specified
by the industry standard is not more than 0.5db. What’s more, if the correct
polishing technology is used, the performance of the 24-core MPO/MTP
connector and the 12-core MPO/MTP connector is almost the same.

 

The MPO/MTP connector provided by
fiber-mart.com is of low insertion loss, which is consistent with the insertion
loss of 12-core MPO/MTP components. Its components are in strict compliance
with the IEEE802.3ba standard, and the reduction in insertion loss enables data
transmission to be farther. This also shows that the number of cores cannot be
used as a criterion for considering the performance of the connector.