Fiber Patch Cords and Copper Cables
1. What are the differences between fiber optic jumpers and copper wires?
Optical fiber and copper wire are two common data center transmission media. Both have anti-interference and good confidentiality. So what is the difference between optical fiber and copper wire? The difference between the two is mainly reflected in the following four aspects:
1. Transmission distance
Generally speaking, the transmission distance of copper wire does not exceed 100m, while the maximum transmission distance of optical fiber can reach 100km (single-mode fiber), far exceeding the transmission distance of copper wire.
2. Transmission rate
At present, the maximum transmission rate of copper wire can reach 40Gbps (such as Category 8 network cable, DAC passive copper cable), while the maximum transmission rate of optical fiber can reach 100Gbps (such as OM4 optical fiber jumper), far exceeding that of copper wire.
3. Maintenance and management
Operations such as the production of crystal heads for copper wires and the port connection of equipment are very simple, while operations such as cutting and welding of optical fibers and equipment connection have higher requirements and are more complicated to operate.
4. Price cost
In the case of the same length of optical fiber and copper wire, the price of optical fiber is generally 5-6 times the price of copper wire, and the price of optical fiber plug-in equipment (such as fiber optic coupler, etc.) is also much higher than that of copper wire, so in In terms of price cost, the price cost of optical fiber is much higher than that of copper wire.
2. What is the delay of fiber optic jumpers and copper wires?
1. Optical fiber jumper
Because optical fiber is currently used in many applications, let's take a look at the delay of optical fiber first.
Little knowledge of physics, the speed of light in a vacuum is 3*10 to the 8th power of meters per second, and under air conditions, the speed of light will be even slower. Therefore, when an optical signal propagates in a fiber optic link, there are five steps to wait: the conversion of an electrical signal to an optical signal produces two; the passage of an optical signal through an optical fiber produces one; the conversion of an optical signal to an electrical signal produces two.
2. Copper wire
The signal quality of copper wire is not as good as that of optical fiber, especially in long-distance transmission, the signal is easily interrupted by the surrounding environment. The longer the distance, the more serious the attenuation. It often leads to client loss, page error, and slow user opening speed.
3. Delay comparison between optical fiber jumper and copper wire
The delay difference between optical fiber and copper wire Theoretically, the signal transmission speed is faster in copper wire, but under long-distance requirements, there is less demand for signal processing and repetition, the delay of optical fiber will be lower, and copper wire is vulnerable to external interference. The interference, the loss is large, and the delay is also large.
In fact, we don't use delay to describe fiber optics and communication networks. They are all described in terms of distance and speed. Different distances and speeds have different delays. For example, it takes 8ms to serialize a 150-byte data packet on a 1.5Mbps link, but only 1.2us on a 10Gbps link, and the delay will be less at high speeds.
As for the difference between fiber optic patch cords and copper wires, I would like to see that the friends here already have a certain understanding of this. In fact, the delay difference between fiber jumpers and copper wires is affected by speed and distance. In the selection of fiber jumpers and copper wires, if the distance is short, we can choose copper wires as the transmission medium. It will be much lower than that of fiber optic jumpers. On the contrary, if it is for long-distance transmission, we can choose optical fiber as the transmission medium, and its performance will be more stable.
