Fiber Couplers/Keystones - Do They Work?

[Rain]

Does anyone have experience with fiber couplers? I'm thinking about running a few fiber drops in my house, but if I do, I'll definitely want wall jacks instead of fiber sticking out of the wall/floor. A quick search resulted in these Monoprice keystones which seem to have these LC-LC couplers in them, but I just want to make sure a <$3 coupler is actually going to work well.

I plan on runing OM4, because it isn't that much more expensive than lesser quality stuff. The maximum run length will be <100ft and I'll only need one coupler/keystone per run. I plan on using Fiberstore's 300m 10Gb transceivers and their OM4 LC-LC patches.

Will I be able to push 10GbE over those cheap couplers? Can anyone recommend an alternative brand they've had good luck with?

 

[PigLover]

ypu - they work great. I use them to run 10Gbe fiber from my servers to my desk. No problems at all.

Like all fiber couplings, of course, you've got to pay attention to fiber type (Single-mode/Multi-Mode) and connector types (SC/LC/etc). Your entire run has to match up end to end.

Technically, you will be introducing a small connector loss with them (two extra connectors). But for short reach in the home youll never even notice an extra Db or two of loss.

 

[britinpdx]

But for short reach in the home youll never even notice an extra Db or two of loss.

I have a 50m "direct burial" rated (FWIW) LC-LC ready to bury in conduit to extend connectivity out to my barn, but I'm likely a few meters short for comfort, so I may need an LC-LC coupler for that "extra reach" (the coupler would only be used inside the buildings, not in conduit). Hopefully that is short enough a run that I won't see issues ?

 

[PigLover]

Should be fine at 50m even with short reach optics and a few couplers in the run. Most of the calcs for SR over MM assume you have patch panels in the path anyway (meaning the equivalent of at least four in-line couplers).

 

[mstone]

Very few significant production runs don't have couplers--nobody runs a single fiber from one server to another across a campus network, they use patch panels. There isn't much to them, they're basically just a tube with some kind of retention mechanism. In theory if you pay more you may get tighter tolerances and lower loss, or a higher grade/more durable construction, but for a short low-duty-cycle run like you're describing there's not going to be a difference.

 

[Rain]

Thanks guys! I knew there were fiber patch panels, but some of them are much more advanced with multi-strand trunks. I haven't personally seen many (if any) couplers in the few (albeit relatively small) production environments I've encountered so I wanted to make sure.

I shot Monoprice an email to see if they know if those keystones I linked are multimode. In the mean time, I'll look harder for a slight more "trusted" brand. @PigLover, do you happen to know what brand you're using and/or where you purchased them from?

 

[bds1904]

At work we use "keystone" SM SC APC couplers all the time. That's on 30kM runs average too . Nothing wrong with them as long as you buy from a reputable source.

The other thing we have started using is 3M Crimplok connectors on interior fiber runs. Very low insertion loss if the installer cleaves and polishes the connector appropriately.