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Multimode fiber is widely used in office buildings and campus applications for transferring 10Mbps.
Multimode fiber reach has maxed out at up to 2km, and in today’s high bandwidth and high speed services such as 10G and 100G requirements, this distance has further reduced to 550m and 100m respectively, and even less.
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Types of Multimode Fiber
There are two main types of multimode fiber used today in the same network premises: 62.5µm (OM1), and 50µm (OM2), where µm refers to the diameter of the fiber core carrying the light signal.
Originally, OM2 fiber was widely used for both long and short reach applications, but was not sufficiently reliable for distances of 2km. In the 1980’s, after the introduction of single mode fiber, there was a shift towards multimode fiber in distances between 300m and 2km, distances that were prominent in office buildings and campus backbones. In 1985 OM1 multimode fiber was introduced, which could reach distances of up to 2km with 10Mb/s data rate.
In today’s high-bandwidth backbone protocols, even OM1 has become limited.
Growing distance and bandwidth requirements are driving enterprises and data centers to replace their existing multimode infrastructure and optical modules with high cost single mode solutions and cabling.
PacketLight offers a simple, cost-effective solution that enables enterprises and data centers to use their existing installed multimode fibers to transport more services at a higher rate, without upgrading their infrastructure.
The figure below shows PacketLight’s solution for aggregating multiple services common in data centers such as GbE, 10Gb Ethernet and Fibre Channel over existing multimode fiber. This solution utilizes DWDM or CWDM technology on the existing fiber, without replacing it.
Extending Multimode fiber
PacketLight’s CWDM and DWDM products enable customers with existing multimode fiber to maintain their infrastructure and maximize its utilization. The WDM solutions enable to extend multimode fiber capabilities beyond the 550m limitations of the OM1 multimode fiber to 2km or more, depending on fiber quality and service type.
PacketLight’s WDM equipment allows enterprises and data centers to multiplex more than one 10G or sub-10G service over the same multimode fiber infrastructure. The services that can be transferred are 10Gb Ethernet and sub-10G (including GbE and 1G/2G/4G/8G Fibre Channel protocols).
Extending multimode fiber capabilities enhances the network ROI and frees up valuable resources, saving significant operational expenses.
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