With the development
of communication technology, there are more and more new products appear.
Passive Optical Network and Fiber Converter both are ways to
transmit electric data. Then, there comes to a question. Which one is better? Will
the PON system replace fiber media converter? So, this passage will divide into
four parts. The first part will explain what is Passive Optical Network. The
second part will explain what is Fiber Optical MediaConverter. The third part will compare the differences.
The last part will discuss which one is better.
What is Passive Optical Network
Passive Optical Network can be abbreviated to PON. PON refers
to does not contain any electronic devices and electronic power supply, and
does not need valuable active electronic equipment.
A passive optical
network (PON) includes an optical
line terminal installed at a central control station and a number of
supporting optical network units installed in a user site. PON has two types, one is Ethernet Passive Optical Networks (EPON) and another is Gigabit-capable Passive
Optical Networks (GPON). EPON has a larger market share at present, but it is
mainly limited to Asia market. GPON is adopted by most communication operators,
but whether it can catch up with EPON needs to be verified by the market. EPON
has rich commercial experiences, but there are certain standardization and
patents risk. EPON and GPON industry chains are very strong. Currently, EPON is
more widely used, but GPON has better development prospects. PON, a pure medium network, not only can avoid
electromagnetic interference and lightning effects of external equipment, but
also reduce the failure rate of lines and external equipment, improve system
reliability, and reduce maintenance costs.
What is Fiber Media Converter
Fiber optical media
converter receives electric signal, and then converts electric signal into
optical signal, or converts optical signal into electric signal. Actually, it
just likes a container which allows optical signal and electric signal to convert
internally. Without it, people would not be able to log on to the website and
go online. As we all know, people use electronic equipment to achieve
electronic communication in the past. However, there is a great limitation on
converting electric signal that it does not work on long-distance communication.
The appearance of fiber converter has greatly remedied this deficiency. Fiber
optical media converter has six types which are the single fiber converter, the
dual fiber converter and the single mode fiber converter and the multi-mode fiber
converter and the managed fiber converter and the unmanaged fiber converter.
The fiber converter has many features, such as rapid transmission, widely
temperature resistance range, low cost, easily maintain and so on. It can be
said that the emergence of fiber converter has made people’s communication a
milestone.
Comparision between PON and Fiber media converter
As two different
technology, the PON and Fiber media converter all have their unique advantages.
1. Fiber optical media converter access has been widely used in traditional engineering projects, which can provide high
network transmission bandwidth. All users share the bandwidth in PON system, the
single user have small bandwidth when all users work together.
2. PON has high utilization rate
of optical fiber resources. In PON system, many users share one fiber system. In
the fiber media converter, it is point to point application, every user need
its fiber resource. So the fiber media converter need more fiber cable based on
same users quantity.
3. The PON network
structure is complex, the fiber optical media converter network structure is
simple. It is very easy for construction of fiber media converter.
4. The capacity
expansion of PON is high, it is easy to add users after the PON network construction.
The expansion performance of fiber media converter is low, which need to do
construction again if you need to add users.
5. PON maitainance is complicated, PON system has strong management, which need more time to do
configuration. Fiber media converter also have management, but it is not complicated
as PON system, it is easy to manage and install.
Do
we need PON or fiber media converter?
Passive Optical Network
and Fiber Converter both have its own advantages. The characteristics of fiber media converter is information safety, the management and
maintenance are easy, but its management and expansion performance is weak. So it is only suitable for small application environment. The outstanding advantage of PON network is that it eliminates outdoor active
equipment, and all signal processing functions are completed in switches and user’
s
houses. Moreover, the upfront investment of this access mode is small, and most of
the funds have to be postponed until the user actually accesses it. Therefore, this
structure can serve home users economically.So it is suitable for large application
environment.
Conclusion
Facing the rapid growth of
the Internet, as a large-bandwidth transmission method with low deployment cost
and high flexibility. PON has been increasingly deployed in transmission access
networks around the world. The fiber optical media converter
will not be replaced completely because of its unique advantages, especially in
the small user number application.