(BOUGHT) US commscope custom fiber cables, UPDATED: report on outdoor fiber

[tinfoil3d]

Hello guys.
I need your help here, I'm in a need of custom burial-rated fiber trunks, and tried to get into contact with couple of listed Commscope partners in the US but none of them came back. Not sure why. I need only 4 cables maybe that's why? But there's no other option as far as I looked.
I know for certain that @Patrick bought some fiber trunks, presumably that was Commscope, that would really help.
In particular I'm looking to get 2 x FJXMPMPDH and 2 x FJWMPMPDH (that's 48-strand trunk cables, 4x MPO12 unpinned(F) on each side, OM4 and OS2 respectively), 200ft
I remember Patrick said fs quote was like times higher. And I've tried local reseller in Japan that quoted me double the known price for another unrelated commscope product that is openly quoted as half that on multiple US websites. So I'd expect fiber trunk to also be cheaper than what they quoted me.
Help very appreciated.

 

[JediAcolyte]

!watching

PS I make conduit for Commscope so I have a vested interest in this... just no power

 

[tinfoil3d]

So a little update. Either it's resellers not interested in such a small order or whatever, I'll break some numbers here. OM4 is quoted from a single reseller to be above 5k, and OS2 is above 3k. My seemingly little order is still shooting through 10k without shipping. Maybe they deal with 5 or more zero-orders only idk.
There are at least two other US-based vendors, one is lanshack.com aka quicktrex(i've already placed an order with them for MPO24 cassetes last year) the other one is RLH industries, RLH Industries, Inc. | Fiber Optic Link they do various MPO and fanout assemblies at much more attractive prices.
So I'll instead go ahead and place an orders for two different cable types at these two vendors, and also I'll update this thread with my fiber experiences.
Besides OM4 from RLH and OS2 from lanshack I'd bury in some NON-rated, regular riser OM3 and OS2 MPO trunks. And maybe some more indoor-only stuff. I'll put them on a brand new genuine cisco or arista transceivers and will collect monitoring and speed test data from those over the year to see if one really needs a rated cable. I suspect you do if you're in a harsh climate like I am, with -20C or below and a snow cover. Anyway I'm planning to make this data available as the time permits. I won't rely on that fiber but it would be nice to have some extra fiber for super cheap. After all, outdoor burial-rated multistrand trunks are expensive, even at the cheapest places. One can buy an indoor MPO trunk for around 10 times cheaper for the similar length and fiber count for outdoor burial rated.

 

[tinfoil3d]

Quick update, pulled the LANshack cable today, opened it up to find 4x MPO12 APC instead of 2x MPO24 in every single spec sheet, invoice and discussion.
Idk if they'll just send me 8 cassetes and rack mount cases for these for free, but if your time is valuable, avoid.
I'm utterly shocked. How is it possible to treat 2xmpo24 as 4xmpo12 is beyond my understanding, if every single piece of order says 2x24.

 

[tinfoil3d]

I also have the RLH cable, it was expensive(1280 USD for 48 fibers, 160 ft of outdoor-rated burial-rated). It's OM4 simplex breakout, at first glance there are no issues with that but I haven't really tested signal strength yet.
This one is super sturdy, very hard to bend, probably indestructable unless crushed with excavator.
I didn't have time to order OS2 trunk but got a very cheap corning pre-cut OM3 that someone was selling on ebay for 30 bucks per ~230ft. It's long and not suitable for high speed comm(10-40g at most?). And it's standard indoor-rated. I have that direct buried at just ~10cm. Let's see how that survives. Specs tell us it shouldn't work because it's cold. I'll try to get around testing and monitoring that in the coming weeks.
I'm very interested to see the optical monitoring data trends over time, correlated with outdoor temps.

 

[tinfoil3d]

Another quick update from LANshack, got a message within 20 hours of my notice that they indeed made a mistake and tracing down on the issue, in the meantime they'll send me a more standard 2xMPO12 APC - 6 LC duplex cassetes to make up for the trouble. Those are not the standard LGX type but their proprietary SHD form factor, and they'll fit the trays I bought from them last year.
So, make your choice. They are cheap, they specialize on fiber cables but you may occasionally encounter something like this. If you're not buying it for business they have the best choice of fiber components, and easy to order. Initially I found lanshack because I was hunting down a MPO24 APC to 12 duplex LC breakout cassete(because I bought HPE premierflex MPO24 OS2 trunk), only chinese manufacturer had it available on ebay and they were US manufacturer with a price few dollars above chinese. I went with them.

If indoor cable is what you need, you're probably better off with RLH in my opinion, they also have a cheap order forms for indoor-rated OM3/4 trunks.

Both US manufacturers.

 

[tinfoil3d]

Got replacement cassetes delivered to me(from lanshack/quicktrex) via UPS (no customs fees), works now.
I'm very busy here but will work to make a publicly available monitoring data for the indoor-rated OM3 cable in the coming weeks. I'm actually only using that one at the moment, with no issues.
Will need to put an always-online boxes on both sides, just got some used cisco sfp+ transceivers, while not new they should do the trick for laser power monitoring. Maybe I'll swap those once I get a new ones but not planning on getting any now. And I'll be releasing charts with outdoor temperature and laser power during this year as it goes from -20 C to +30 C and above here. But don't be too optimistic, some rodents or foxes can mistake it for food any day.

 

[tinfoil3d]

I never got to set up a monitoring on the indoor-rated OM3 trunk cable, however I can report I'm still using it with no issues after almost full year of it hanging outdoors, exposed to elements and sun and rodents potentially. So far so good. This was a commscope OM3 MPO 12-fiber cable I got off ebay for peanuts.
So all in all, I think if you additionally cover the exposed part with something like the insulation used for HVAC systems, you may very well be able to use indoor-rated fiber outdoors, directly buried, for years to come. My setup went through temperatures ranging from -30C to +35C ambient. The exposed part that is. Cable itself is buried at like 30cm depth IIRC