MPO Fiber Optics cable details

Three polarity methods exist for MPO cables, provided by ANSI/TIA-568-C standard: A, B, and C types.

NOTE:

Hewlett Packard Enterprise uses B-type cabling.

In a Type B cable, all the fibers are reversed. This is accomplished by reversing the fiber orders in the connectors to achieve the following fiber/connector pairs:

  • Fiber 1 pairs with connector 12

  • Fiber 2 pairs with connector 11

  • Fiber 3 pairs with connector 10

  • Fiber 4 pairs with connector 9

  • Fiber 5 pairs with connector 8

  • Fiber 6 pairs with connector 7

  • Fiber 7 pairs with connector 6

  • Fiber 8 pairs with connector 5

  • Fiber 9 pairs with connector 4

  • Fiber 10 pairs with connector 3

  • Fiber 11 pairs with connector 2

  • Fiber 12 pairs with connector 1

A Type B cable is used with a 100G/40G parallel optics link, with a single cable connecting the transceivers.

HPE MPO cables have 8 or 12 fibers, with 8 used for 100Gbase-SR4 and 40Gbase-SR4 connections. Channels 1-4 are receiving at one side and need to be connected to channels 12-9 on the transmit side at the other end, and the other way around. RX-TX pairs are 1-12, 2-11, 3-10, and 4-9. Fibers 5-8 are not used.

MPO fibers