With the growing of the data center size as well as the complexity of cabling, and the fiber cables are light and space-saving, the cost of fiber is also dropping, so the need for fiber cables by new backbone equipment is increasing. The proportion of fiber cables in large data centers even reaches more than 70 percent, which is much higher than the copper. Well, will copper cables be entirely substituted by the fiber? Undoubtedly, the answer is “no”.
Why Copper Cable Will Still Be an Indispensable Part in Data Center?
Driven by the scale expansion of data center, the requirement for higher bandwidth is increasing. With the advantages of fast transmission speed and great bandwidth, fiber cables definitely occupy a larger share in data center, especially for backbone applications. However, the costs of fiber-to-the-desk (FTTD) system, fiber cable application environment, and maintenance are much higher than copper. So copper cables are still widely used in many applications, including wireless access, horizontal cabling, PoE technology, LED-based power system, digital camera, and sensor networks.
Since copper patch cord allows data transmission as well as electrical power supply, it can be used for Power over Ethernet (PoE) applications such as horizontal network transmission for voice transmission and in-building networks, and device end. Besides, Network cable still keeps making progress. With the advent of 25G and 40G patch cable standards (25G/40Gbase-T), copper cable is able to support a bandwidth of up to 2GHz.
The newly released TIA-568.2-D standard has added 28AWG patch cable in the normative annex. This will facilitate the development of 28AWG slim patch cable in high-density data center applications. TIA-568.2-D standard also has approved MPTL (Modular Plug Terminated Link), which is used particularly for high-performance cabling infrastructures using patch cables like Cat6a for wireless access points, CCTV cameras, etc. The MPTL enables the cable to be plugged directly into a device. This will promote the growth of patch cables. Therefore, the copper cable will still be an indispensable part in data center.
Copper technology will be continuously researched and expanded to cater for future demands. Copper cables are still promising in the applications of voice transmission, in-building networks, horizontal cabling, PoE, IoT, etc. Therefore, there is no doubt that copper cables will not be entirely replaced by the fiber, and you can choose copper cables without worries according to your demands.