Fibre Optic Installations

Fibre is traditionally used as backbones to overcome the distance and bandwidth limitations of copper cables. Most large corporate LANs use fibre backbones with copper cable to the desktop, however now it can be considered as a cost effective alternative to copper for desktop connectivity offering greater bandwidth potential, and hence future proofing for longer.

One disadvantage of copper is that as it continues to evolve to cope with increased demands, each successive advance results in higher performance but bulkier cable. These are more complex to install than its predecessor, which drives the costs up for labour and containment. Maximum distances supported, even for the latest incarnations, is still limited to just 100m.

This ease of installation and testing of fibre combined with cheaper raw material costs make for a cabling infrastructure often costing less than Cat5e/Cat6/Ca6a and providing far superior performance.

Common Fibre Cable Terms explained, in order of building penetration:

Backbone Links

These are multi core fibre links between a central comms rooms to distributed cabinets (also known as a hierarchical star architecture).

Collapsed Backbones

By using the extended distance and bandwidth capabilities of fibre optic cabling you can centralise the distribution of your entire network to a central point, thus eliminating the intermediate equipment rooms and creating a single star design. This concept is called a "collapsed backbone".

Fibre to the Office (FTTO)

Where the collapsed backbone extends into the office, local conversion from fibre to copper occurs providing low cost copper ports for user connectivity. This can be achieved either by using small workgroup switches and structured cabling, or by dado / floor mounted switches which users plug directly into via short copper patch cables.

Fibre to the Desk

The final evolution is fibre directly to the desktop, connecting active network users directly to the fibre cabling via NIC's or media converters. This centralised network provides the best scalability and benefits from easier network management.

The best price vs performance option?

For the majority of installations, an FTTO solution of fibre and copper would provide the optimum balance of performance and cost. This solution protects your investment in the cabling infrastructure and offers the most scalability for your cabling; simply upgrade the switches as technology and bandwidth requirements advance.

Please phone our office on 0844 846 0440 to arrange your FREE site survey today!