[afnog] Fiber Optics For beginners

[Mark Tinka]

On Sunday, July 10, 2011 12:54:27 AM jacob miller wrote:

> Anyone with documentation or links with an introduction
> to fiber optic design and concepts.
> 
> Am a newbie to the area and want to understand the
> concept behind transmission,fiber optic topologies and
> need to know information in regards to design of metro
> fiber.

These are multiple areas you're talking about; you might 
need to be more specific unless you want to know about 
EVERYTHING :-).

Optical fibre is just a transport medium; much like copper, 
wireless, infra-red, e.t.c. That is a huge subject unto 
itself.

Applications that run atop fibre are also not less 
plentiful. To light the fibre, you have various 
technologies, e.g., SDH/SONET, DWDM, Ethernet, e.t.c.

Metro-E topologies have very little to do with fibre. Yes, 
fibre is most commonly-used to deploy Metro-E, but one could 
build a Metro-E network on copper or wireless alone if they 
were brave enough :-). That said, your topology can be 
influenced by whether you to choose to go with pre-lit fibre 
(lease) or whether you light it yourself (dark fibre).

I guess my point is, you might want to home in on what 
exactly you want to learn. However, learning about anyone of 
the applications of optic fibre will invariably lead toward 
learning about optic fibre itself, e.g., in trying to 
determine whether you need DWDM or not, you would decide to 
measure the quality of the fibre in terms of power loss 
(dBm), which would end up teaching you about the fibre 
itself. The quality of the fibre might also teach you about 
what kind of power you want to use to drive the fibre to 
compensate for its design inefficiency or age, if at all. So 
it all compliments each other.

Cheers,

Mark.
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