Three Factors That May Destroy Fiber Optic Cables

Fiber optic cable, which has become the essential component of nearly all modern computer and communications systems nowadays, has been deployed all over the world. Where there is a city, there are thousands of fiber optic cables connecting people to the networking systems. Without them, it’s hard get the information in real time. But there is a problem that once the fiber optic cable is damaged or cut, it may cause a big loss because of the network disruption. And we know that fiber optic cable is made up of pure glass, in some cases, it may be very fragile. This article gives you three factors that may destroy the cables.

Environment
The environment is the first thing you should take into consideration. Because in the extreme weather conditions, such as hurricanes, mud slides, flood and ice storms, ect., fiber optic cable would suffer great damage. If water enters, a splice enclosure can freeze, then this will crush the fiber strands and leave you with a costly network outage. Additionally, lightning is also a factor to destroy fiber cables. When lightning strikes the ground, it will search for the best conductor available, even if it’s underground. If that happens to be the armor or trace-wire of your fiber cable, then damage to the cable sheath and even the fiber itself is very likely.

Human’s Destruction
Here human refers to the people who steal the fiber. They cut the fiber thinking it has value and can be sold in pieces. The most classical event is that a 75 year-old woman in Georgia (country in Asia) was digging with her spade, looking for copper, which she wanted to sell for scrap, when she accidentally cut the fiber optic cable that provided internet to 90% of Armenia. It is ridiculous. It is fiber but not copper! In addition, people vandalize the fiber cable in other ways, e.g. for gun practice. This especially happens in the rough parts of town which makes the cable repair work become dangerous. Furthermore, land disputes which cause artificial malicious damage of fiber are also a fiber damage reason.

Animals Chew & Bite
We can try to reason with humans and publicize our buried fiber cable, but there is nothing we can do about the cable damage causing by animals. Squirrel, a furry little nut eater, seems to be deeply fond of fiber cable sheathing besides nuts. We even doubt that the cable manufacturers of using peanut oil in the sheathing. Since they have a life-long drive to gnaw, squirrel is often responsible for extensive damage to fiber optic cable. Even metal armored cable can get cut in two by this furry critter. In addition, undersea cables aren’t exempt from cuts. Because there is another kind of animal under ocean that is likely to bite cables. It is shark. Why shark would like to eat fiber cables? Effect by magnetic fields is one of the explanation at present. We have no idea how we can combat these wayward rodents. Now, only thing we can do is always looking for ways to improve.

Notes on the Use of Fiber Optic Cables
After mentioning three common factors that may do harm to fiber cables, there goes the basic information about the use of fiber cables and their related fiber optic transceivers.

Fiber cables are used as the transmission medium of fiber optic transceivers for high data-rate transmission in gigabit applications, with distance reaching from only several hundred meters on multi-mode fibers (MMFs) to 10km, 20km, 40km, 80km on single-mode fibers (SMFs). Take Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) applications for example, when 1000BASE-LX SFPs (eg. MGBLX1) work through SMFs, 10km link length is made possible; and 1000BASE-SX SFPs (eg. MA-SFP-1GB-SX) operates via OM2 (MMF), the possible distance reach is 550m. So when you choose fiber optic cables for fiber systems, it’s necessary to figure out what the distance reach is required first, and then you can deploy the right fiber cable type for different applications.