what is fiber

[halofreak]

My friend sayed 1 day that his family was getting fiber high speed internet
how high speed is it.
wat it is it.
how do i get it .
how much is it .

[jeffopus]

Its probably fiber optics, a very good transmission line but expensive compared to the phone lines alrerady in your house.

A fiber optic is a plastic line that transmits light pulses for the elctrical signal, very clean but the ends need to be very cleanly cut whensplicing them together. A technician has to do all work on them with special tools, hence the expense.

[WebCave]

Yes i think fiber is made of glass isant it some people say plastic others say glass do you know which one it is?

[halofreak]

thx for the info

[HTRN]

Here in CA. thier putting in fiber optic throughout the Valley where i live.

San Jose , the HEART of Cillicon Vally

[JackW]

Originally Posted by WebCave

Yes i think fiber is made of glass isant it some people say plastic others say glass do you know which one it is?

It can actually be either.

It's manufactured in two layers, an inner transmission core and the outer jacket, the only real requirement be that both have drastically different optical properties. Light is trapped in the inner core by some physics that I'll only summarize here, if you're interested in a technical discussion concerning fiber optics I'd be more than obliged, PM me.

Anyways, light is reflected off the outer jacket and continues to bounce around the inner core along the length of the cable, as long as the cable isn't too bent this works perfectly and allows transmission rates much greater then that of a copper cable per unit area.

The advantages of fiber optics are easy to see once you realize that EACH fiber allows light to be changed such that your bandwidth is over 40 Gb/s, and each allows for many different frequencies of light to pass through, which gives it phenomenal bandwidth for a very small cable.

When your friend told you he is getting fiber optics it's just a catch line that his ISP or phone company is using to make it sound high tech, it's still a copper cable that takes the signal from the street into his house and then into his computer. His bandwidth will probably be increased but that's about it.

Be wary of a trick ISPs like to pull, the may increase his download bandwidth to some absurdly high amount, but leave his upload bandwidth lacking. If your upload bandwidth isn't sufficiently high you'll max your connection out and never see the full amount of that download speed (a few exceptions exist to that, the UDP protocal for instance doesn't require you to ACK packets etc).

[slugbug]

Well apparently fiber is an important part of a well balanced diet

[Jason]

DAMN! Slugbug beat me to it.

Nice work JackW.

[kevnam]

I really want to switch to fibre optics, $87/month for 16mbs where as im currently paying $45 for 5mbs.

Unfortunately not available at my place yet. Darn Bell!

[pchangover]

Yeah Verizon FIOS is the most common around here, though I can't get it yet because I live out in the boondocks. They offer up to 30 mbs down/ 15 mbs up. I just saw that they had a plan for $65/month that was 15 down/ 15 up, which would be freakin sweet compared to my 1.5 down/ 768 up if I am lucky.