Page 2 - Multi-Fiber MPO & MTP

MTP Fiber Cable introduction

An MTP cable is essentially a multi-strand fiber optic cable terminated with high performance MTP® or MTP Elite® connectors on one or multiple ends. Depending on application and compatibility, different styles  of MTP fiber cable assemblies can be identified and rudimentary categorized into: MTP trunk cables, MTP extension harnesses and MTP breakout cables featuring up to 24 fibers per connector and 144 fiber strands per assembly. The MTP fiber cable, basically being an improved MPO fiber cable, meets and exceeds all of the MPO specifications yet provides full compatibility with MPO equipment and accessories. In order to maintain performance, it is recommended to use similar components to avoid complications such as an MTP-MTP connection. Visit our MTP Fiber Connector guide for more information.

Advent of the MTP / MPO Connector

In today’s age of cloud computing and HD video streaming, the push for ever increasing bandwidth and ever decreasing footprint of communication equipment has been relentless. While fiber optic networks are inherently superior to copper in accommodating these requirements, they do pose specific challenges to the network infrastructure design and installation in particular.

A major challenge has been to effectively manage high-density fiber networks and facilitate a high volume of fiber connections between optical networking equipment and components within ever-tighter space constraints. For this purpose, the MPO connector format was developed and ultimately standardized by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) in 1996. Compared to the single and dual fiber LC and SC connectors, the multi-fiber MPO (multi-fiber push-on) design significantly reduces the amount of time, effort and space required to deploy fiber network technologies.

While the MPO connector has been an integral part of data center implementations ever since, improvements to the original design resulted in the MTP (Multi-fiber Termination Push-on) connector. To ensure seamless and even faster deployments, the MTP connector was the first MPO connector to be factory-engineered to appropriate cable lengths. This meant less skill requirements for installation, better quality assurance and simplification of future additions or changes to the optical infrastructure. Ground-breaking at the time but the innovations introduced by the MTP connector eventually became industry standard. The MTP® connector is still evolving and the most technologically advanced multi-fiber connector on the market today, rivaling loss rates that single-fiber connectors saw merely a few years ago!

While MTP cable connectors and adapters provide significant enhancements over MPO, they are fully backward compatible with generic MPO Cable connectors and seamlessly integrate into existing MPO network designs.