Updated January 2019.This book is a complete guide to the design, installation, testing and operation of fiber optic networks. It was written with the assistance of many experienced Fiber Optic Association (FOA) instructors in fiber optics as a reference book for classes aimed at FOA CFOT certification as well as a basic reference for anyone working in the field of fiber optics. This book offers expansive coverage on the components and processes of fiber optics as used in all applications and installation practices. A complete curriculum for teaching fiber optics using this book as a text is available from FOA.

This textbook is a guide to outside plant fiber optic construction, basically the process of installing the fiber optic cable plant including the work necessary before the fiber optic techs begin splicing, terminating and testing the cable plant. This book was written by Joe Botha of Triple Play Fibre Optic Solutions in South Africa as a textbook for classes he teaches on construction. Joe, an FOA Master Instructor, created the course to fill a need for training OSP construction crews. The book covers topics which are rare in textbooks, practical solutions to designing and installing the fiber optic cable plant. It is an extremely valuable reference book for all owners, designers, supervisors and installers of fiber optic OSP networks.

Fiber optics is a transmission technique that uses electrical signals to modulate a light source and thereby produce an optical signal proportional to the electrical signal. These optical signals contain information that is transmitted via a glass waveguide to a light-sensitive receiver. Fiber optics has a distinct advantage over copper networks for some applications. The objective of this book is to explore monomode, as opposed to multimode, applications of fiber optics to local area networks (LANs), which have become a rather important aspect of this technology because of the ever-increasing growth of LANs. Monomode fiber optics requires the use of coherent light sources such as laser diodes, YAGs, and HeNe lasers, to name just a few. It has some distinct advantages over multimode that this text will investigate in a cursory manner. (The author's previous book on multimode fiber optics, Fiber Optic Design and Applications, published by Reston, would be helpful but not necessary to aug ment this text.) Monomode (or single-mode) fiber optics is the present direction of the state of-the-art because of its superior performance. Since a few problems existed that limited the growth of monomode technology at the time this book was being written, several sections of the text will be devoted to examining the shortcom ings as well as the performance advantages of this technology.