A state of the art review of nonsilica based infrared fibers is presented. Two types of fiber materials have been investigated- crystals and glasses. Crystal fiber work appears to be focused on development of short haul CO <inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</inf> laser power delivering lines at 10.6 μm. The maximum delivering power of the CW CO <inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</inf> laser has reached up to about 100 W by the polycrystalline KRS-5 fiber. A number of glass fibers are being developed in fluorides, sulfides, and heavy metal oxides. The best optical attenuation of each glass fiber has been respectively reduced to 21 dB/km at 2.55 μm for ZrF <inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">4</inf> -based glass fiber with a core-clad structure, 78 dB/km at 2.4 μm for As-S unclad glass fiber, and 13 dB/km at 2.05 μm (70 dB/km at 2.40 μm) for GeO <inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</inf> -Sb <inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</inf> O <inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">3</inf> glass fiber with a core-clad structure. Recent progress of these infrared fibers offers great potential for new wavelength fiber links operating in the <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2-10\mu</tex> m region which have not been realized by silica-based fiber.