Optical transceivers need to work with fiber jumpers. Multi-mode transceivers are connected to multi-mode fibers, and single-mode transceivers are connected to single-mode fibers. The main multi-mode fibers are OM1, OM2, OM3, OM4 and OM5 and OM3 is the most widely used one among them.
What are the differences between from OM1 to OM5?
We can compare them from effective mode bandwidth and full injection bandwidth.
*the effective mode bandwidth of OM2 is 950 MHz•km and the full injection bandwidth is 700 MHz•km;
*the effective mode bandwidth of OM3 is 2000 MHz•km and the full injection bandwidth is 1500 MHz•km;
*the effective mode bandwidth of OM4 is 4700 MHz•km and full injection bandwidth is 4700 MHz•km.
The performance will be greatly improved from OM1 to OM5 multi-mode fiber.
Since OM1 and OM2 fibers cannot support data rates of 25Gbps and 40Gbps, OM3 and OM4 are the main choices for multi-mode fibers that support 25G, 40G and 100G Ethernet. As the demand of bandwidth increase, the cost of optical fiber which supports the next-generation Ethernet speed migration is also getting higher and higher. In this case, OM5 fiber was born to expand the advantages of multi-mode fiber in the data center.
At present, the mainstream multi-mode fiber is still OM3 fiber, with the advantages of wide application range, long transmission distance and low price.
