The FOI-4011 and FOI-4012 both provide complete electrical isolation for unidirectional 10BASE-T Ethernet communications. The FOI-4011 can only receive data on its RJ-45, while the FOI-4012 can only transmit data out to its RJ-45 connector. Any data sent to the FOI-4012 RJ-45 will be ignored. Both units also have a switch that allow users to use either a straight or crossover cable for all LAN configurations.

The units can be used in areas of high electrical noise or in and out of RF shielded enclosures. The fiber optic cable is not susceptible to interference caused by impulse noise, crosstalk, or EMI. Privacy of communications is also enhanced because the fiber optic cable does not radiate any emissions.FiberPlex recommends “R” units for high security applications because the units have added filtering and shielding for RFI suppression.

In addition, fiber optic cable offers much longer transmission distances than copper wiring. Traditional 10BASE-T Cat5 cabling is limited to a maximum distance of 100m, but multimode optics on the units can extend the distance to 2km, while singlemode optics can further extend the distance to 20km. A typical link consists of an FOI-4011 at one end of the network transmitting optical signals to an FOI-4012 at the other end of the network with a single fiber optic cable between them.