Patent ID: 9746631
Date: 2017-08-29
CPC Classifications: G02B

Claim:
1. An optical patch panel, comprising: a rack mount housing having a plurality of walls arranged to carry optical connectors to couple optical cables; a plurality of trunk connectors carried by a first wall of the rack mount housing, the trunk connectors having at least 40 Gbps (gigabits per second) capacity and being connectable to an optical trunk line entering the rack mount housing; a plurality of duplex fiber connectors arranged in a second wall of the rack mount housing, the duplex fiber connectors being operable to couple with downstream networking equipment, the duplex fiber connectors being arranged in clusters, each cluster presenting a group of four pairs of duplex fiber connectors having at least 10 Gbps capacity per pair; a plurality of optical fibers within the rack mount housing connecting the duplex fiber connectors in a given cluster to a corresponding trunk connector; and wherein each of the plurality of trunk connectors has a lateral position in the first wall relative to the rack mount housing, and wherein the cluster of the duplex fiber connectors to which any one of the trunk connectors is coupled is positioned at substantially the same lateral position in the second wall as the trunk connector to provide a mapping within the rack mount housing.