Networks Europe Sept-Oct 2016 | Page 49

PRE-TEMINATED CABLING 49 2. TCO (total cost of ownership) Studies have demonstrated time after time that preterminated fibre presents a lower TCO to end users. While pre-term can carry a premium price, the resulting lower operational costs create a reduction in the overall TCO, ensuring pre-terminated fibre is now even more attractive than before. 3. Multi-fibre links In the data centre particularly, and now increasingly in enterprise backbone links, network engineers are deploying fibre that’s ready for 40Gb/s and even 100Gb/s during the installation’s lifespan. Where 10Gb/s fibre links require just one pair of OM3/4 fibres, 40Gb/s requires a link with either: 2, 8, 12, or 24 fibre connections. Most manufacturers are now producing multi-fibre solutions for OM4 fibre using MPO or MTP connectors, and the technology has advanced to allow both 40Gb/s and 100Gb/s to utilise the same multi-fibre connections into active equipment. It's generally thought that terminating MPO/MTP connectors on-site is risky and requires expensive equipment such as ribbon splicers. This itself is definitely producing a significant swing towards pre-termination of the patch cords and permanent links. Historically, fibre installers have always preferred to terminate on site. This was perceived as the lower cost and therefore higher profit approach, despite the requirement for highly trained fibre technicians and expensive equipment. And that’s also even after the inevitable re-works due to defective terminations and splices are resolved. However, there are a number of factors now making this traditional approach less acceptable. Let's take a look at them... 4. Loss budgets Loss-budgets at 40Gb/s and 100Gb/s are a fraction of those available at 1Gb/s and 10Gb/s. This drives specifiers and risk-averse data centre operators towards the certainty of performance obtained with factory terminated, tested and warranted fibre assemblies, and away from the inevitable variability of those terminated on site. 1. Short installation time-slots In data centres, in particular, where an increasing amount of fibre is being deployed, the pressure to expedite installations means there simply isn’t the time to make thousands of terminations at five minutes each. Therefore the greater the number of fibre connections, the more appealing pre-term becomes with a potential reduction in installation times of up to 75% over conventional methods. Market Trends After considering the points above, it will come as little surprise that close to 80% of fibre now deployed in data centres is pre-terminated. In addition, the same percentage of pre-terminated data centre fibre assembles use multi-mode fibre, as opposed to more expensive single-mode. If we looked back five to ten years, we would see that field termination accounted for more than 90% of all fibre www.networkseuropemagazine.com