A method of calculating an effective age of an active optical cable including a fiber optic cable, at least one optical transducer, a first memory, and a second memory includes, during regular intervals that are divided into regular subintervals and after each of the regular subintervals, sensing an operational parameter of the active optical cable and recording in the second memory a value corresponding to a sensed operational parameter; after each of the regular intervals, storing in the first memory the values recorded in the second memory; and calculating the effective age of the active optical cable based on the values stored in the first memory.