Optical fiber is a fiber made of glass or plastic. The optical fiber itself is very fragile and easy to break. And encapsulating the tiny fiber in a plastic jacket allows it to bend without breaking. The cable with the optical fiber wrapped in the protective jacket is the optical cable. Can the optical cable be bent at will?
Since the fiber is stress sensitive, bending the fiber can cause the optical signal to escape through the fiber cladding, and as the bend becomes sharper, the optical signal will leak more. Bending can also cause microcracks that can permanently damage the fiber. Adding to the trouble is that microbend points are difficult to find and require expensive test equipment, at least the jumpers must be cleaned or replaced. Fiber bending causes fiber attenuation. The amount of attenuation due to fiber bending increases as the bend radius decreases. The attenuation due to bending is greater at 1550 nm than at 1310 nm, and even greater at 1625 nm. Therefore, when installing fiber jumpers, especially in a high-density wiring environment, the jumper should not be bent beyond its acceptable bending radius.