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Pigtail & Patch Cord

Overview The first thing to settle on this page is which of the two assemblies is being discussed, because in the market the two names are used loosely and they are not interchangeable. A pigtail is a single fibre with a connector on one end and bare fibre on the other. It is spliced onto the cable, and its purpose is to turn a cable into a connector — the joint is made inside a box, and what comes out of the box is something that can be plugged in. A patch cord has a connector on both ends. Nothing is spliced; it plugs into something at each end. It is the assembly that joins two pieces of equipment that have already been terminated, and it is expected to be removed and replaced during the life of the network. The consequence of confusing them is practical. Order a patch cord for a job that needs a pigtail and you are splicing into a connector you have already paid to fit; order a pigtail for a job that needs a patch cord and you have nothing to plug in. Most of the questions this page receives are really this one question, so it is answered first. Both assemblies come down to the same thing in the end: a fibre, a ferrule, and the quality of the contact between them. The connector is where an optical network is most likely to lose signal or to reflect it back, so the connector — not the cable — is what the specification is really about.