Nowadays, many manufacturers produce fiber media converters, and the usage of fiber media converters products is also increasing to meet the needs of access network construction better. Let me introduce to you the main types of fiber media converters. Let’s have a look!
By speed
It can be divided into single 10M, 100M, 1000M, and 10G fiber media converters, 10/100M adaptive, and 10/100/1000M adaptive fiber media converters. Most of the single 10M, 100M, and 1000M media converters products work at the physical layer and the media converters products that work at this layer forward data in bits.
This forwarding method has the advantages of fast forwarding speed and low delay and is suitable for use on links with a fixed rate. The 10/100M and 10/100/1000M fiber media converters work at the data link layer and use a store-and-forward mechanism so that the forwarding mechanism must read its source MAC address and destination MAC address for each received data packet. address and data payload and the data packet is forwarded only after the CRC cyclic redundancy check is completed.
The benefits of store-and-forward can prevent some erroneous frames from being propagated in the network, occupying valuable network resources, and can also prevent packet loss due to network congestion. When the data link is saturated, store-and-forward can fail. The forwarded data is first placed in the media converter’s buffer and then forwarded when the network is idle. This not only reduces the possibility of data conflict but also ensures the reliability of data transmission, so 10/100M, and 10/100/1000M fiber media converters are suitable for working on links with variable rates.
By work method
As mentioned above, it can be divided into fiber media converters working at the physical layer and fiber media converters working at the data link layer.
By structure
It can be divided into desktop (stand-alone) fiber media converters and rack-mounted fiber media converters. Desktop fiber media converters are suitable for single-user use (and built-in power media converters and external power media converters), such as meeting the uplink of a single switch in the corridor. Rack-type fiber media converters are suitable for multi-user aggregation. For example, the central computer room of a community must meet the uplink of all switches in the community. The use of racks is convenient for unified management and unified power supply of all modular fiber media converters. The optical transceiver rack is a 16-slot product, that is, a maximum of 16 modular optical media converters can be inserted into one rack.
By fiber
It can be divided into multi-mode fiber media converters and single-mode fiber media converters. Due to the different optical fibers used, the distances that the media converters can transmit are also different. The general transmission distance of multi-mode media converters is between 2 kilometers and 5 kilometers, while the coverage of single-mode media converters can range from 20 kilometers to 120 kilometers. It should be pointed out that due to the different transmission distances, the transmitting power, receiving sensitivity, and wavelength of the optical fiber media converter itself will also be different. For example, the transmit power of a 5-kilometer fiber optic media converter is generally between -20 and -14db, the receiving sensitivity is -30db, and the wavelength of 1310nm is used; while the transmit power of a 120-kilometer fiber media converter is mostly between -3 and 0dB, and the receiving sensitivity is between -3 and 0dB. Less than -36dB, using a wavelength of 1550nm.
According to the number of fibers
It can be divided into single-fiber optical fiber media converters and dual-fiber optical fiber media converters. As the name implies, single-fiber equipment can save half of the optical fiber, that is, data reception and transmission can be realized on one optical fiber, which is very suitable in places where optical fiber resources are scarce. This type of product adopts wavelength division multiplexing technology, and the wavelengths used are mostly 1310nm and 1550nm for short-distance transmission (0-60KM) and 1490nm and 1550nm for long-distance transmission (60KM-120km). With the increasing use of single-fiber optical media converters, the products have become mature and stable.
By power
It can be divided into a built-in power supply and an external power supply. Among them, the built-in switching power supply is a carrier-grade power supply, while the external transformer power supply is mostly used in civil equipment. The advantage of the former is that it can support ultra-wide power supply voltage, better achieve voltage regulation, filtering, and equipment power protection, and reduce external failure points caused by mechanical contact; the latter has the advantage of small size and easy-to-use 14-slot machine. The rack is centrally managed and inexpensive. In addition, according to the type of equipment power supply voltage, there are AC 220V, 110V, 60V; DC -48V, 24V, etc.
By network management
It can be divided into managed fiber media converters and unmanaged fiber media converters. With the development of the network in the direction of operation and management, most operators hope that all the devices in their network can be managed remotely. Optical fiber media converters, like switches and routers, are also gradually developing in this direction. For network-managed fiber media converters, it can also be subdivided into central office-side network management and user-side network management. The optical fiber media converters that can be managed at the central office are mainly rack-mounted products, and mostly adopt a master-slave management structure, that is, a master network management module can connect many slave network management modules in series, and each slave network management module periodically polls the sub-rack where it is located. The status information of all optical media converters is submitted to the main network management module. On the one hand, the main network management module needs to poll the network management information on its own rack;
Well, the above is a detailed introduction to the types of media converters, I hope it can be helpful to you.
