Is the copper based infrastructure broadband ISP’s service better than the others?
Question by kaypeekps: Is the copper based infrastructure broadband ISP’s service better than the others?
Broadband service providers are using copper based infrastructure or the ones like fibre optics etc. Could someone please clarify which is better? Many are betting that copper based infrastructure is the best
Best answer:
Answer by dancingdog777
They’ll be losing their money then! Copper can only handle speeds up to 5 or 6 mbps whereas fibre optics can handle speeds up to 300 mbps.
What do you think? Answer below!
um, well the other answers seem to have lots of good information but I skimmed through and didn’t happen to see anyone correctly state any major facts pertaining to your question.
Any who go with fiber, someone said there is “less” interference with fiber, but I’m going to tell your right now that there is ZERO interference from noise because waves can’t affect light. The only thing that can hinder the signal is by attenuation and distortion. Fiber is capable of much MUCH higher speeds then copper. I noticed one guy made the info on speed between the two confusing and redundant. ISP’s generally use 1,200 pair copper cables in suburban areas whilst they can also run large bundles of fiber which would out perform the copper by many times even though fiber is a serial connection. It would take a monster of a copper cable to match what fiber is capable. Plus copper cables are basically antennas for every radio wave imaginable.
I forgot to mention that the problems with annuation and antennuation from distortion has been solved with amplyfing repeaters.
I also forgot to mention that fiber is naturally faster then copper because it is truely at light speed while in copper the current is opposed by the coppers resistance which also makes copper energy unifficiant
Copper was used starting with the first telephone wires invented by Graham Bell. It takes nano-meter adjusted highly reflective materials, and precise laser beams in order to transmit data via fiber optics.
It’s obvious, with the above knowledge, that the extra effort, money and technology must be worth it. And it really is. A good fiber optics network can work at speeds up to 6x of those using copper-based wires, and over much longer distances. ( without repeating )
Why would so many bet on copper infrastructure? Fiber optics use light beams, and we all know that light is the fastest there is. Copper wires use electric field, which travels slower than light ( duuh ) and is, as such, slower by default. When you add the fact that the fiber optics cable is comprised of hundreds if not thousands of individual fibers, you further multiply the difference.
Summary :
No, definitely not. It is against common sense, even for a layman.
Best of luck!
The main advantage of fibre optic is that long distances cables have a lot less of a signal reduction = signal to noise ration is higher = faster broadband.
With copper cables the broadband quality/ speed is down to the length of the cable (distance from the exchange) and the thickness of the copper cable (thicker the better).
Fiber optic technology is far better, providing the ISP has the spare bandwidth for a good speed (Some ISP’s hugely oversell the bandwidth space, so during busy internet usage times broadband speed can be very slow, as they all fight for the limited space, ISP’s cut down the broadband speed to cram in all the connection (Known as Traffic Shaping)).
DancingDog777 (above answer) is kinda correct, but current improvements in ADSL technology allow speeds up to 25Mb on copper cables. If very thick cables were used (like the power cables carrying our mains electricity) we could see very fast speeds.
E.g if current phone cables have 0.5mm copper cores and mains power cables have 2.5mm copper cores, the resistance in the 2.5mm copper cable would be the same as a 0.5mm cable in a building only 1/16th of the distance from the exchange.
So speeds on copper could be a lot faster for every one if the thicker power cables were used to carry (via modulated signal) our broadband internet signals.
Yes light is faster then electrons in speed, but a wider bandwidth will carry larger packets of data at any time.
E.g. A cable carrying 100mb per second at the speed of light and another cable carrying 200mb per second at half the speed will effectively be the same data rate. So Bandwidth is just as importaint as speed.
So when a ISP is using Traffic shaping, they are cutting down the bandwidth (not the speed).
Its possible with ADSL2 technology to have speeds on power cables up to 100Mb, the big advantage of using power cables is that the cables are already connected to our homes.
Our Government (UK) as set a target of only 2Mb for everyone by 2012. While Korea Government has set a target of 1Gb speed by 2012.
Conceptually fiber-optic can handle faster speeds for transmission than copper can. That said not all fiber connections are used to provide speeds that are faster than copper, here is an example. Lets say that fiber can transmit 1,000 mb/sec and copper can transmit 100 mb/sec. The ISP may offer you a 5 mb/sec connection with fiber and another ISP may offer you a 10 mb/sec connection with copper. The difference is in how the utilize each media. Granted there are certainly big technical differences in the two technologies but I believe that you were referring to speed.
fibre optic delivers faster speed