Question Please, can you tell me the meaning of the following in full :  1. ST connector 2. SC connector 3. LC connector 4. FC connector and the like. Answer  Try this page for some answers! http://www.cablestogo.com/support/connector-guides/fiber-networking

Three questions regarding fibre optics?

Question How can a beam of light possibly carry information?  Answer  The one's and zero's of the binary data are converted to light pulses and sent down the fibre at very high frequencies. Question For every pulse of light that is sent down a fibre optic cable there is some light which is lost because it is  beyond critical angle and cannot be reflected. If part of this mode is lost then doesn't that mean the data  is sent as incomplete? How can the computer make sense of an incomplete signal? Could you explain  this situation. Answer  The data is sent as a stream of bits and so the amount of light that is lost merely reduces the strength of  the signal. The pulses of light that reach the other end will have lost some of their strength but they will  still be large enough to reassemble into bytes of information. Multi-mode transmission simply means that  the light travelling down the fibre will take multiple paths, it does not mean that each mode is transmitting  different data. Each pulse of light comprises all modes. Question Finally, I know that the time between transmitting each pulse must be enough so that the first pulse  completely arrives at the receiver before the second pulse does. What happens if two pulses do  crossover one another? Do they mix to create a different pulse, does the PC say transfer error, or the  screen freezes etc.? Answer  The pulses all travel at the same speed so it is not possible for one to overtake another. The main  reasons for errors in a fibre system are too much attenuation (reduction in signal strength), and  reflections or backscatter at poor connections which if large enough will interfere with the signal.

Fibre cable testing?

Question Could you please tell me what is used for fibre cable testing? Answer  An OTDR (Optical Time Domain Reflectrometer) is  commonly used to test fibre cables although for data  networks it is easier these days to use a fibre  certification tool. OTDR results can be difficult to interpret and involve  some mathematics, fibre certification tools simply tell  you what networks the fibre is good for, for example  10Base-FX and 1000-BaseSX etc.  For basic testing, a simple light source and power  meter can be used but this only gives a dB loss  reading and does not test for maximum bandwidth or  distance.