Fiber Fanout cable

Breakout-style (or fanout-style) fiberoptic cable, often referred to as just "breakout cable", is basically several jacketed simplex fibers packaged individually inside one jacket. This differs from distribution style cable, in which several tight-buffered fibers are bundled together within the same jacket. The design of the breakout-style cable adds strength to the cable for ruggedised drops, although it does make it larger and more expensive than distribution-style cable. Breakout cable is suitable for short riser and plenum applications and also for use in conduits, where a very simple cable run is planned to avoid the use of any splice box or spliced fibre pigtail.

Because each fiber is individually reinforced, you can divide the cable into individual fiber lines. Each simplex cable within the outer jacket may be broken out and then continue as patch cables, for example in a Fibre To The Desk application in an office building. This enables connector termination without requiring special junctions, and can reduce or eliminate the need for fiberoptic patch panels or an ODF. Breakout cable requires terminations to be done with simple connectors, which may be preferred for some situations. A more common solution today is the use of a Fanout kit that essentially adds a jacket to the very fine strands of other cable types.

July 12, 2011

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