Are you satisfied with your network configuration? Or it no longer meets your requirement for more computing power and higher capacity? Do you consider expanding your system to large facilities, such as, using the advanced switches and fiber enclosures, which may cost a lot? In fact, there are several kinds of high density and cost effective infrastructures successively published and available in the market to address the problems you are encountering, for instance, high density patch cable, high density patch panel, high density fiber enclosure, etc. The detailed information of these three commonly used and high density solutions will be introduced in this post, which may be very useful for you to create more capacity for your network.
As the demand for higher speed network deployment increases day by day, the cabling density becomes higher and higher, which brings a big challenge to the traditional fiber patch cables. To face this case, high density patch cable, like MPO/MTP fiber patch cable, is designed for rigorous daily use, which is very different from SC fiber patch cable, LC fiber patch cable or other traditional fiber patch cables. This kind of cable features a smaller overall diameter that allows for better cable management by installing in the dense patch cord tray with less space. Except that, it facilitates the airflow to maintain consistent operating temperatures, which is capable of reducing or eliminating the possibility of failure or downtime.
As we all know, if there are many fiber patch cables in the same device or adjacent devices, it could be very difficult to install or manage the patch cables. But the high density patch cable designed with a flexible pull-tab is easily installed or removed, as shown in the following figure. This kind of cable greatly increases the cabling density and maintains connection reliability, which effectively avoids accidentally loosening surrounding connectors for cable management.
High density patch panel is the device to connect a fiber network feed (via multi-strand or MTP cable) and segment it into standard LC connections in order to interface with 10Gbps devices, which is comprised of a panel enclosure and modular cassettes. From the following figure, we can see an example of the high density patch panel with 12 LC duplex single-mode adapter.
As the most convenient solution to solve the limited capacity problem in data centers, it is able to connect different generations of devices like 10Gb, 40Gb, 100Gb devices in a easy, quick and flexible way. Meanwhile, it is very easy to install that don’t need additional tool to finish the connection, greatly reducing the time and labor required of field connector terminations. Besides, the network reconfiguration of high density patch panel is highly adjustable for the modular cassette system. In short, high density patch panel features highly flexibility, adjustability and reliability that offers data centers a very flexible, convenient and cost effective solution.
High density fiber enclosure is also developed for better cable management and maintenance by making full advantages of the space in data centers. In order to achieve the goal, it is designed with the functions of combining most of the fiber optic connections in the standard modules, giving solid protection for the data center links and greatly increasing the cabling density. The following figure shows an example of high density fiber enclosure for your reference.
At present, fiber enclosures are available in 1U, 2U, 3U, 4U. The 1U rack mount fiber enclosure is the most widely used one, while 4U or larger rack mount fiber enclosures also become popular to meet the ever-increasing need. By using these kinds of high density fiber enclosures, you have easy access to cable connection and management and create more capacity for your network. Meanwhile, it can also save a lot for installation and maintenance.
It can be concluded from this post that there are many kinds of high-density products available in the market that create more capacity for your network, which allow for better cable management, easier maintenance and other advantages. Except these common high-density solutions mentioned above, high speed interconnect optics, cable assemblies, cable management hardware and other high-density products also play important roles in meeting the challenge of higher density and capacity in data centers.
Fiber Optic Communication 