According to the classification methods of different fiber classification standards, the same fiber will have different names.

Classification by fiber material

According to the material of the optical fiber, the types of optical fibers can be divided into silica optical fibers and all-plastic optical fibers.

Silica fiber generally refers to an optical fiber composed of a doped silica core and a doped silica cladding. This fiber has very low loss and moderate dispersion. At present, the vast majority of communication fibers are silica fibers.

All-plastic optical fiber is a new type of optical fiber for communication, which is still in the development and trial stage. All-plastic fiber has the characteristics of large loss, thick core (100-600μm diameter), large numerical aperture (NA) (generally 0.3-0.5, which can be coupled with light sources with large spot) and low manufacturing cost. Currently, all-plastic optical fibers are suitable for shorter-length applications such as indoor computer networking and communications within ships.