Cable Management Practices for Active Ethernet Architectures

Overview

Industry trends indicate that an active ethernet approach to Fiber-To-The-Home (FTTH) deployment is rapidly gaining popularity. There are several contributing factors, but one obvious reason is the desire for additional bandwidth to provide more features to the end customer. While there can be additional costs associated with this architecture, typically the labor cost for physically burying a 24-fiber outside plant (OSP) cable or an 864-fiber OSP cable in the ground is virtually the same. This paper addresses considerations for cabling and cable management between the Optical Distribution Frame (ODF) and the active electronics in the Central Office/HeadEnd (CO/HE) when deploying active ethernet. Since deployment scenarios typically differ, several connectivity and management options are presented, along with the advantages and disadvantages associated with each option.