Connectors for optic cable are very different from copper and coaxial due to the nature of the transmitted signal. The male part of the connection is called “connector”, while female – “receptacle” or “adapter”. For the connections with bandwidth over 10 Gbps two fibers are used – one for sending and one for receiving. If the bandwidth is over 40 Gbps, the multimode cable need to be used which might have up to 24 fibers. Connectors differ by the type of the optic cable. The single strand fiber uses simplex connector, two strand fiber – duplex connector, and more than two strands fiber requires array connector. Simplex connectors should maintain polarity of the signal in the optic cable. This is why it is important to color-code the connectors.

The list of connectors is below:

• MPO array connector

• LC connector

• Duplex LC connector, widely used in SFP modules

• SC fiber-optic connector, widely used in dual fiber fiber optic media converters

• Duplex SC fiber-optic connector

• ST fiber-optic connector, still used for example in video over fiber range of products

• Duplex ST fiber-optic connector

• FDDI fiber-optic connector

• FC fiber-optic connector, can be seen in regular fiber optic media converters as well as in video over fiber