in the campus environment described previously. Here a short single-mode cable is used to connect the switch port to the mode converter, where the latter regenerates the received pulse and transmits it onto the existing multimode fiber-optic cable. In addition to single-mode/multimode converters, most devices are also capable of performing a reverse conversion. Thus, you can also con- sider the use of a single-mode/multimode converter as a multimode/single-mode converter. Features When selecting a fiber-optic converter, there are several features to con- sider. Those features include the type of optical cable that the converter interfaces, the wavelengths supported for input and output, the loss bud- get at a particular wavelength, and the obtainable transmission distance. In addition, you need to consider the optical connector or connectors supported by the converter. Comparing Converters In addition to the above-mentioned fiber-optic converter, it should be apparent from reading the chapter covering fiber in the LAN that a Single- Multimode Figure 8.10 Fiber-Optic Using a single- Fiber Cable mode/multimode Single-Mode converter. Transceiver Converter Chapter Eight second type of converter exists. Thus, in the remainder of this chapter we will compare and contrast the use of the two types of fiber-optic converters. The converter described in this section represents an optical mode converter. As discussed in this section, this type of converter converts single-mode fiber to multimode and vice versa, and the rationale for its use is its ability to drive the optical signal a sufficient distance beyond the direct use of a particular medium. If we remember our discussion of fiber-optic converters in Chapter 5, we noted that they converted an electrical signal into an optical signal. However, we also noted that their primary role was as a mechanism to extend transmission dis- tance. Thus, the primary difference between the optical mode convert- er discussed in this section and the media converter discussed in Chapter 