Fibre Cable Connectors and Colours, Part One

by Stuart Berry January 30, 2017

In the world of fiber optics, there’s a standard color scheme to identify each and every type of fiber cable.

And then there are all of those connectors to choose from… ST, SC, LC, MTRJ…

Though you may have heard of them, it can be challenging to identify the difference between each type of connector.

We’re here to break it down. In the following tutorial, we’ll highlight some of the most common colors and connector types that you should be aware of.

If you’re going to deploy a new network system using fibre or would like to better organize your existing fiber cables, you might find this handy.

COLOURS

Traditionally, the following jacket colors have been used to define Single mode and Multimode fiber cables:

9/125 Single mode, Yellow

50/125 Multimode, Orange

aquamarine

50/125 (10 Gigabit Optimized), Aquamarine

slate

62.5/125 Multimode, Gray

More explanation on different fibre cable types:

Over time, the use of fibre has expanded in many applications and the need for different jacket colors has become a requirement for some customers. In today’s telecommunications networks you might also see different jacket colors used to denote different services or devices.

For example, if you have already allocated your traditional orange 50/125 cables to all of your high speed server connections, you can now add blue 50/125 fibre cables to denote WAN router connections.

By using colors to identify services/devices, troubleshooting is made easier, thereby decreasing network downtime.

L-com has also developed a line of red, blue, green and yellow jacketed fibre cables which make port and service locations easier to find in dense equipment racks.

Stuart Berry

Author

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