What’s the biggest cause of fibre comms failures?

Optical fibre links form the backbone of our digital communications but if care is not taken there is a vulnerability. The biggest cause of failing fibre optic links is dirt on connectors, and the biggest reason for this is that most people don’t appreciate the importance of fibre connector cleanliness.

A mating pair of fibre connectors transmit light from one to another by simply aligning the two connector end-faces and passing light from one to the other, rather like a hosepipe joint streaming water. Any contamination, even a single speck of dust, can block the transfer of light and cause a link failure. Even worse, by mating a dirty connector to several other connectors, contamination can distributed across many connectors.

The best way to prevent this happening is to never touch the end of a fibre connector and to keep dust caps on fibre cords when they are not in use. In the industry we have a saying, “Inspect before you connect”. However, this option is not usually available to users because they don’t have the necessary equipment.

At Lynx Networks we have portable test equipment that combines a microscope and a camera to view connector end-faces to indicate whether they need cleaning. Once we’re happy with the condition, we can save the image to prove all was well at that time.