ITU has developed some standardized fiber characteristics

 Other Elements of Fiber Cable Specifications

Various elements are often encountered n the nomenclature and specifications of fiber cables:

ITU has developed some standardized fiber characteristics like “G.651.1”; their mentioning implies that such specifications should be fulfilled.

Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI) is a standard concerning LAN fiber cables, which however with its quite limited transmission speed of 100 Mbit/s has become obsolete due to the improved availability of advanced copper cables.

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There can be additional classifications like OM1, OM2, OM3, OM4 and OM5 for graded-index fibers, which concern the residual level of intermodal dispersion. That limits the transmission bandwidth (or the bandwidth–distance product) of the cable.

 High performance is achieved e.g. with OM4 50/125-μm laser-optimized fibers, having a very precisely controlled refractive index profile.

Sometimes, the maximum achievable bandwidth–distance product is specified (in units of MHz·km).

Specs like “50/125 microns” indicate the core and cladding diameter. Large values of the core diameter – tens of microns – generally indicate multimode fibers.