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Cabling for Industrial Application, Fiber Optics or Copper?

Since Industrial environments are noisy, easy to get dirty and often subject to extreme environmental condition. thus it is critical to choose the right media for your industrial cabling. When you do the cabling for industrial, make sure to have considering the 3H4W.

3H4W of industrial cabling

  1. How many machines and devices are connected?
  2. How about the cabling topology, P2P (point to point) or Structured Cabling?
  3. How long for the Cabling distance?
  4. What is the network bandwidth required, how about the bandwidth demand for the future?
  5. What is the environmental condition (vibration, temperature, water, dust, chemicals, etc)
  6. Will the cable installed near power cable or EMI sources?
  7. What other special connectivity issues that I need to be concerned about?

The advantage of using fiber in industrial environmental

  • Immune to factory floor EMI
  • Long transmission distance, over 100m which copper maximum supported now
  • Outdoor applications or between buildings
  • Inter-switch connectivity
  • Faster convergence (2-10x) for network resiliency • Easier to install (no pot/polish)

The advantages of using Copper Cable

  • More Durable/Rugged than Fiber Optic Cable
  • Cost effective media for short distance cabling
  • Use for runs equal to or shorter than 100 meters – when following TIA channel model
  • Support POE (Power over Ethernet)
Copper Network, Fiber Optic Network
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