Berk-Tek Fiber Optic Cables Exceed OM4

November 13, 2009 – Berk-Tek, a leading provider of fiber optic cabling solutions, says that its fiber-optic cable family includes fiber grades that exceed the recently ratified TIA-492AAAD for OM4 specifications.

OM4 fiber is a 50-µm laser-optimized multimode fiber with extended bandwidth properties over the previous OM3. It is designed to enhance the system cost benefits enabled by 850-nm VCSELs for existing 1- and 10-Gbps applications, as well as future 40 and 100 Gbps systems. With an effective modal bandwidth (EMB) of 4700 MHz*km, OM4 fiber can reach a distance of 550 m for 10 Gbps (almost twice that of OM3).

Berk-Tek fiber-optic cables are available with two types of fibers that the company asserts meet or exceed the OM4 standards and have been available for more than five years. GIGAlite-10FB glass meets the standards, whereas the GIGAlite-10XB surpasses the standards with a bandwidth of 4900 MHz*km at 850 nm and a reach surpassing 600 m.

“Berk-Tek has offered the XB glass for years and some of its features were incorporated into the new OM4 document, even though the glass still exceeds the performance that has been recently standardized,” notes Mike Connaughton, RCDD, fiber optic product business manager for Berk-Tek. “The benefits associated with this additional performance include headroom and distance. As short-reach data centers and higher-performance computing applications grow, the additional headroom will become increasingly important. And, although the additional distance may not seem of great significance, it will support the majority of the remaining access-to-distribution and distribution-to-core links in large data centers,” he adds.

All of Berk-Tek’s fiber optic cables can be constructed with GIGAlite-FB or XB glass including interconnect, premise distribution, and armored fiber-optic cable versions.