Each fiber carries a portion of the total data in parallel with the others. In traditional serial optical communication, data is transmitted over a single fiber optic cable, one bit after another, in a serial fashion. For example, if you have a 10 Gbps serial connection, every bit of data follows the previous bit. Using laser-optimized multimode fiber (LOMMF), serial optics can cost-effectively support speeds up to 10G. Parallel optics differs from traditional duplex fiber optic serial communication in that data is simultaneously transmitted and received over. An MTP /MPO connector generally contains 4+4 OCTO, 12, 16, 24 or 32 fibers and can be used for parallel optical applications such as Infiniband with data rates up to 120 Gb/s, as well as for Ethernet protocols with 40/100/200/400 Gb/s over OM3 and OM4 multimode fibers. Both duplex and parallel cabling are options for network upgrades.
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