Optical Fiber - CompTIA A+ 220-1201 - 3.2

If you walk into a data center, you'll find a great deal of equipment there that runs using optical fiber. Instead of using copper with electrical signals to transmit information from point A to point B, we send light through a fiber to transmit that same information. This means we don't have to worry about the

interference that you might get from other equipment or other radio frequency devices. This does make it a bit more difficult to monitor or put a tap into the connection. You do need specialized equipment if you're planning to use a fiber optic network. But unlike copper signals which tend to degrade over a short period, in some cases you can

extend fiber optics many kilometers without needing to regenerate that signal. And if you're working in an environment with a lot of industrial equipment or you're having to deal with a lot of interference, you could install fiber optic connections and not worry about any of those radio frequency interference sources. One challenge with fiber optics is that

there are many different types of fiber and many different types of connectors. And in this course, we'll look at the differences between all of these and help you understand where the right fiber is used in the right situation. Here's a nice cross-section of a fiber optic cable. You can see on one side we are sending a light through

the fiber. In this case, the light is being generated with an LED. In some cases, we use a laser to be able to transmit that light. This moves through the fiber optics on the core of that fiber. We refer to this as a high reflective index core and it is surrounded with a low reflective index