A couple of years ago, several fiber manufacturers introduced
optical fibers that were much less sensitive to bending.
Normally, bending or stressing an optical fiber causes loss. In
normal use, optical fibers had to be handled carefully and not
be subjected to tight bends, kinks or pinching, which is a
problem around patch panels and transmission equipment. Bend-
insensitive (BI) fibers were introduced using radical
demonstrations. Fiber was kinked and knotted or even stapled to
wood with a staple gun, in violation of every rule that techs
have been taught about handling optical fiber for the entire
history of the industry. Some of us were disturbed by the demos,
as we were afraid poorly trained techs would use these
techniques on regular fiber with disastrous results. We also
worried that the higher stress on BI fiber would cause long-term
fiber failures. How was bend insensitivity achieved? Making
fibers less sensitive to bending was not difficult. Since the
lost light was coming out of the core and into th