Cabling With High Density Push-Pull Tab Patch Cords

It is inevitable to plug fiber patch cables from the patch panels, switches or cassettes in today’s data center cabling. However, this simple movement becomes harder and harder nowadays. Why? Both the data rate of every optical fiber and the fiber counts being used are increased to support high data rate up to 40/100G or more. Thus, the cabling density increased largely with the deployment of 40/100G Ethernet network. Finger access to every patch cable that is loaded on the patch panel, switches or cassettes becomes difficult. Especially for these patch cables in the middle of the space.

For fiber patch cords attached with connectors like LC, things become more complex. Because this type of connectors are usually locked in the port with a latch on the connector body. If you want to plug out a patch cord with LC connectors, you should firstly unlock the connector from the port by clicking the latch with is with small size (shown in the following picture). Usually an external tool is used to unplug the specific connector in a high density cabling. It seems a problem doesn’t matter much in the whole cabling. However, during practical cabling, network engineer could be headache about this annoying problem. To find an easy and elegant way to solve this finger access problem, a new type of patch cords was invented, which is designed for high density cabling and is known as push-pull tab patch cords.

finger access for high-density cabling

What Is High Density Push-pull Tab Fiber Patch cable?

Compare with the traditional patch cords. This new type patch cord is attached with a connector with a push-pull tab, which can perfectly solve the fiber access problem in high density cabling. Except the additional tab for pushing and pull, these connectors don’t change much from the traditional ones that attached to patch cords. But this little change makes a great difference. The following is offering you the details about this novel product.

High density push-pull tab fiber patch cords are usually attached with LC or MPO connectors, as these two types of connector are currently the most popular in high density cabling like 40G, 100G, 120G or more. The following pictures shows the details of these two types of connectors with push-pull tab.

The one in the left of the following picture is an LC connector attached on push-pull tab patch cable. It’s of standard LC size. When the tab is pulled the LC connector would be unlocked from the port easily, cause the tab is linked to the latch of the LC connector. Once the LC connector is unlocked, the patch cords would be smoothly plugged out from the port and other patch cords around it by pulling the tab slightly. As for MPO connector with push-pull tab shown in the following picture on the right side. Finger access becomes easier. The tab can greatly simplify the use of MPO connectivity when manual access to the release slider and rear portion of the connector is restricted. In this way, easy insertion and extraction of MPO patch cords can be achieved.

push-pull tab patch cords connectors

Get More From Push-pull Tab Patch Cable

Is finger access the only advantage of push-pull tab patch cords. Definitely NO. The following illustrating will surely make you exciting about push-pull tab patch cable.

  • Flexibility and adjustability: it has been proved that push-pull tab can increase the cabling density by 30% to 50%, which can satisfy the future high density cabling requirements for 120G or more.
  • Reliability: To reach the specific connector you want, you might loosen or remove other connectors around it, which can highly increase the reliability of the network.
  • Cost-save and time-save: it is clear that with push-pull tab patch cords, cabling becomes easy and elegant with higher ROI.
Fiberstore Push-Pull Tab Fiber Patch Cable Solutions

If you are looking for a simple and easy high density patch cabling solution, push-pull tab patch cords provided by Fiberstore can satisfy your requirements. The following chart is the most common applications of push-pull tab patch cords for your references.

Application Patch Cords Cable Type Connectors on Both Ends
10G to 10G Cabling Duplex LC Push-pull Tab Patch Cord OM3/OM4/Single-mode Duplex LC Duplex LC
40G to 40G Cabling 12-fiber MPO Push-pull Tab Trunk Cable OM3/OM4/Single-mode MPO (male/female) MPO (male/female)
40G to 10G Cabling 12-fiber MPO to 8 LC Push-pull Tab Break out Cable OM3/OM4/Single-mode MPO (male/female) 4 Duplex LC
100G to 100G Cabling 24-fiber MPO Push-pull Tab Trunk Cable OM3/OM4/Single-mode MPO (male/female) MPO (male/female)

For more details and customized solution of push-pull tab patch cords, you can always access Fiberstore by FS.COM or emailing us at sales@fs.com