Nowadays, many cables use optical cables, because the stability of optical cables is strong, and the price is much cheaper than ordinary cables. But there are many friends who can't tell the difference between optical fiber and optical cable. They also have doubts about which one is faster. In fact, you can tell the difference as long as you know the meaning of optical fiber and optical cable. Let's take a look at the difference between optical fiber and optical cable.
Difference Between Optical Fiber and Optical Cable
Optical fiber is a thin and flexible medium that transmits light beams. Most optical fibers must be coated with several layers of protective structures before use, and the coated cable is called an optical cable. Therefore, the optical fiber is the core part of the optical cable, and the optical fiber constitutes the optical cable through the protection of some components and the auxiliary protective layer.
The protective structure of the outer layer of the optical fiber can prevent the damage of the optical fiber from the surrounding environment. Optical cables include optical fibers, buffer layers and cladding. Fiber optic and coaxial cables are similar, just without the mesh shield. At the center is the glass core where light travels.
Optical fibers are usually bundled and protected by a jacket. The fiber core is usually a double-layer concentric cylinder made of quartz glass with a small cross-sectional area, which is brittle and easy to break, so an external protective layer is required. So that's the difference between them.
Advantages of fiber optic cables
Optical fiber cable is a new generation of transmission medium. Compared with copper medium, optical fiber has greatly improved in terms of security, reliability and network performance. The bandwidth of optical fiber transmission greatly exceeds that of copper cable, and the maximum distance supported is more than two kilometers. Optical fiber cable has the advantages of good electromagnetic interference resistance, strong confidentiality, fast speed and large transmission capacity.
There are two different types of optical fibers that are more common at present, namely single-mode optical fiber and multi-mode optical fiber. Multimode fiber is generally used for network connections in the same office building or in relatively close areas.
Single-mode fiber, on the other hand, delivers higher quality data and longer distances, and is often used to connect networks between office buildings or more geographically dispersed networks. If the optical fiber cable is used as the network transmission medium, it is necessary to add equipment such as optical transceivers.
