What makes fiber optic faster than copper?
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- čas přidán 16. 03. 2020
- Have you ever wondered why fiber optic cables are faster than copper wires?
The answer is an interesting and complicated one that has to do with the history of how these cables and wires came to be. Both copper and fiber optic cables have been used so far for electrical wiring and telecommunication purposes.
After the invention of fiber optic wires, it was preferred instead of copper with its data or electric transmission capability almost at the speed of light.
Watch the video to find out more.
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#engineering #fiberopticcable #copperwire #datatransmission - Věda a technologie
I've really learned how to plug cables in after this video.
LMAO
The quality of the cables is unmatched by your ISP's greediness.
greed -> greedy
greedy -> greediness
greediness -> greedinessy
Copper - Long live resistance
Fiber - there is light in end of the tunnel
Fibre optics apparently appeared in the early 70s. Initially we played with solid glass rods coated in another glass which caused light to reflect back inside. Over years they became thinner and flexible which increased their potential uses. Amazing how things have developed. Today I have a box across the street which connects to my home with copper, but even months after new cables and connectors were installed, there is no sign of a FO cable coming across the street. Progress is not always fast.
The signal doesn't travel in the copper wire, it travels in the magnetic field around the copper wire... One can't do the same with fiber optics... I have 1 Gbit/s connection using 1960s copper wire that isn't even rated Cat-2. No current ISP does even try to fix the cables if they break... It would cost a lot more than running new cables for whole neighbourhood...
Outside plant (OSP) copper cable is not rated as a Cat-type cable. It is known as an engineered cable that maintains the same mutual capacitance between all pairs in the cable, as well as all pairs and the shield, from a 6 pair to 1800 pair (and higher). Not a good comparison to Cat-X cable.
I find myself unable to adequately articulate just how wrong and misleading this video is.
Kindly explain please.
@@thehonestman2288
Sure. No problem.
1. Signal propagation through both copper and fiber are very close to the speed of light. There is some confusion that can happen if you don't clarify that you're comparing the speed of signal vs the speed of electrons, because the actual electrons move surprisingly slowly. The signal speed itself is pretty close when comparing copper to fiber, though in neither case will it travel at ~ 299,780kps, which is the speed of light in a vacuum. Regardless, and pretending that signal attenuation isn't a thing for either medium so that we can leave repeaters out of the discussion; a signal will still travel around the equatorial diameter of the earth in a bit over 1/10th of a second. (About 0.13 seconds at 300,000kps)
Yes, 1/10th of a second is a long time in terms of computer speeds, but about the maximum distance you're going to get out of fiber without a repeater is 100km; which means we're now talking about 0.0003 seconds. (Three 10,000ths) And that's for long-haul backbone applications, none of which are actually going to go to maximum length because running at maximum capacity/distance is not how you build a reliable network.
This is analogous to Trailer Towing Capacities various Tow Vehicles. If you're pulling a 3,500 pound trailer on a regular basis, you can use a half-ton pickup and a Class III hitch (5,000lb capacity) without needing to worry about it. If your Trailer weighs 5,000 pounds, you're going to want to step up to a 3/4 or 1 Ton pickup and at least a Class IV hitch.
2. The video made no distinction between Plastic or Glass fiber, Single-Mode/Multi-Mode or Simplex/Duplex. They also didn't go into pathway diameters (ex; 9nm, 50nm, 62.5nm) or different signal frequencies (ex; 800nm, 1300nm, 1550nm). There are also differences in bandwidth capacities, signaling, laser types and many other factors.
3. The speed/bandwidth of a given connection is controlled by the network interface. Yes, I oversimplified that. For instance, I did not get into the different kinds of light sources. (LED, FP, DFB, VCSEL) I did not get into it because a 100meg, 1gig or 10gig network connection is going to be a 100meg, 1gig or 10gig connection regardless of the media. This is going to be true whether your data is traveling over a residential RIP network, an MPLS-VPN connection to a service provider, or a connection between BGP speakers.
4. Fiber & Copper both have their application specific places in networks. However, this video was so far into the theoretical for all practical purposes left the REAL world entirely behind. Two examples:
a) As a PRACTICAL matter, you're not going to get a meaningful improvement in upload/download speeds beyond Cat-5 (100meg) network cabling, even if you have an ISP connection that advertises a 1gig connection speed. Why? Because the remote server you're connecting to is unlikely to be sending or receiving at anything close to those speeds. There are exceptions, but they are uncommon and for very good reasons. Even in your own LAN, whether home or business, unless you are routinely transmitting very large files (10gb and up), you won't get a meaningful benefit beyond 1gig connection speeds and that's easily handled by Cat5e or Cat6 cabling.
b) The most common application for Fiber connections is one that even most network engineers don't think about unless they do a lot of infrastructure work, and that is Fiber as a lightning break. The most common network equipment failure problem is electrical overloads thanks to power surges, especially lightning strikes to above-ground physical plant (think telephone poles) or even ground strikes that are too close to underground plant. Your networking equipment is almost certainly going to have SOME kind of surge-protection on the electrical side, but a lightning strike can travel down your copper ISP connection as well. Even if you have a copper connection from the pole to the POP in your network closet, running Fiber from the POP to your 1st piece of network equipment can save you a lot of money. Even an obsolete core switch like a 6509 is likely to cost $5-10k for a refurbished bare chassis. When I was part of a team that maintained a large mid-western school district network, a good storm could easily wipe out a dozen or two access level switches in an individual school. We used Fiber from POP to the distribution switches (mostly Cisco 4503's) and also from that switch to the individual access level switches. That gave the most expensive item in the closet an electrical isolation from both the pop and the other switches.
@@EchoTangoSuitcase Thanks for such detailed explaination
You’re welcome.
@@EchoTangoSuitcaselol u wrote article on this what is its summary 😆👍
Modulating light carries much more information than any copper or other alloy wire can.
The copper doesn't carry the information, it's the insulation around the copper... it's basically a very long antenna (or lightning rod)... you don't even need to connect the both ends to the devices, it just works... Aluminium foil around the copper wire restricts outside interference and signal leak from the copper.
@@Monni95 how can it be an antenna if the signal doesn't have a sub carrier and a carrier
@@hhhgfdd8265 @Monni95 Sorry, that is incorrect. Electricity flows at the outer edge of copper (called the skin effect). The foil (shield) protects against EMI if properly drained. Data on copper is not electrical, so to speak, it is frequency. This is why when certifying Categorized cables, they are tested to a frequency, not voltage states. Cat 6 is capable of 250MHz, whereas Cat 5e is at 100MHz. If you have xDSL providing your broadband the ADSL2+ operates at 25kHz to 2.2MHz and VDSL2 25kHz to 30Mhz. It's a pretty cool technology.
OOK (On-Off-Keying) is only good to 40Gb. To get faster speeds 100G, 400G, etc. They use a true modulation scheme ( DPSK - Dual Polarization, Phase Shift Keying), basically QAM.
It would be more pleasant to watch if you didn't Flash the images so fast
*Traditional copper wires transmit electrical currents, while fibre optic technology sends pulses of light generated by a light emitting diode or laser along optical fibres. ... And this is the key difference - fibre optic cables have much higher bandwidths than copper cables*
Speed of electromagnetic impulse in the copper is a little bit lower than light in the fiber.
We should count electric and magnetic constants!
Networking over copper wire doesn't send electricity, it sends analog signal like a radio or old telephone... Like with most analog signals, there is interference from overlapping frequencies and outside devices... That's why they added aluminium foil around the copper wires. When you talk about switch from analog to digital (either radio or TV), it's actually just difference in how the information is encoded or modulated, it's still analog signal on the wire. When people say "digital" the frequency band of the signal is narrower than when people say "analog".
As someone who works in IT, I still can't comprehend how fast everything happens. Literally less than a second, from DNS lookups to encapsulating and decapsulating --and considering the end receiver is on the other side of the planet. DNS is just one protocol, there are other things attached to the data packets, such as IP addressing and tags. How da hell does this happen in less than 1 second, across the world? It's still hard to believe up to this day.
Interesting engineering.
Please don't don't flash so many images.Its difficult to concentrate.
0:29 That wire wrapper is a VERY cool device. Even though fiber optic is not susceptible to EMI like copper, it unfortunately is still susceptible to backhoes. I can hardly wait until FO is cheap enough for home networks (gigabit).
lol u can easily go gigabit already with copper. but you have to use better cable than the crappy UTP installer user AND u have to change the switch to a gigabit switch.
Going fiber for gigabit at home is pretty silly: the distance is so short and the badwitch u need so small that's pointless.
Plus fiber wires can't do sharp 90 degree turn, u have to redo the pipes; last but not least fiber today it's drastically cheaper than 10 years ago, but still expensive compared to copper LAN due the devices are needed to be used.
For example a crimping tool for copper it's barely 10 euro, a decent economic set for fiber it's around 230 euro. just the tool ( no plug no optic termination etc).
What u should think is stay on copper , invest in a good managed switch 10 gigabit and then 1 gigabit line for each device; fun part u can be as fast as u like on your LAN, but how much u pay for your ISP? and what is the real bandwitch for down\up from u to the internet? that's the real bottleneck
@@riccardoz2953 Great info, thanks. Starting to replace our switches with gigabit. But our ISP is only 80mbps (SB 100mbps) :-(
When I worked on a FOC backbone we called those backhoes cable locators. Once time in a place where it was above ground on poles a dump truck that just dumped a load caught the cable with his raised dump bed.
@@riccardoz2953 Fiber can have a bend radius 10 times the diameter in a static environment. A 3mm, two-strand indoor cable would have a radius of 1.18". 1/2" EMT minimum radii is 12.5"
fiber is cheaper than copper wire.
The expensive part is transmitter&reciever. But while time passes, it gets cheaper and cheaper
Yup. Higher upfront cost, lower long term maintenance
This video is a true example for the idiom beating round the bush. Not sure if it genuinely answers the primary question.
I need more info on the latency/bandwidth limit of Single Mode fiber optics
The Index of Refraction is the speed of light in fiber vs. in a vacuum. Single-mode fiber has an IOR of ~1.477 @1550nm which means it is moving in the fiber at roughly 132,857 miles per second, so I don't think fiber latency is an issue. The conversion from Optical to Electrical (OE) and Electrical to Optical (EO), switching, and routing is where latency comes into play. As far as bandwidth (theoretical) at 160 dense wave division channels carrying 400G per channel would be roughly 64Tb. But I assume you are a gamer, and gaming uses small data frames, so the latency comes in processing those.
another BIG difference is safety. You CAN be electrocuted by copper wire. You can NOT be electrocuted by fiber.
Light doesn't have resistance.... Electricity does.
permittivity of free space and relative permittivity or dielectric constant is the optical equivalent of electrical resistance.
it's the way different fields interact with immediate surroundings and the Higgs Fields determines the maximum observed speed ( or velocities and energies ).
within the definitions of the universe steal energy from Higgs Fields to accelerate FTL, faster than space, faster than time ( different kind of warp phenomenon ), or use the same effect to utilise quantum mechanics and general relativity ( EPR & ER bridges ).
outside the definitions of the universe, there are unlimited tiers of multiverses and multiverse topologies ( brane s ) to steal energy from.
Indeed
The glass in the fiberoptic cable does have resistance but not nearly as much as copper. It has a velocity factor of 0.67 meaning speed of light times (x) 0.67. Because the speed of light is measured in a vacuum while fiberoptic signals goes through a medium
@@nathanbombardo The glass (and everything light goes through) has an Index of Refraction; for typical fiber, it's ~1.477 (meaning light moves 1.4 times faster in a vacuum than through the material), which slows the speed vs. resistance, which limits the flow of electrons. The fiber does have a backscatter co-efficient added during the manufacturing process, which causes attenuation ~.3dB/km.
i'm a retired telephone frameman/copper cable splicer/testing tech. fiber faster than copper? fiber need a t-carrier system in order for it to work. t-carrier is basically a binary encrypted analog signal. the first T-1's used sf/ami coding and later esf/b8zs when i left in 2007. check out DSx Beer Analogy for more info.
Hello. I really liked your video!👍Can I use your content with translation in my language on my page?
Nice explanation sir. Wwell and good.
Awesome! Love it. Thank you.
0:16 Is it really appropriate to refer to 1825 (invention of electromagnet) or 1832 (telegraph) as hundreds of years ago?
In india they are putting fiber optics wire in every village and city.
Sources?
@@NativeVsColonial i live in a small village and yes its true
@@ShumailSarim Are you serious or just trolling? O.o
@@NativeVsColonial i am serious
And what for? In India there are probably 500.000.000 people who are very poor. They need fiber optics in their villages?
They should make them proper canalisation, cold and warm water,
proper houses so they don't have to live like dogs.
fiber optic requires special training when handling it and copper does not the only training you will need is how to put the wires on a port
Using copper requires training too... At my first training my superior wondered why their copper network went down during peak hours... Did take me about 10 seconds to figure out why... I just did run ping on one PC on extremity of the network and the network went down... They basically had to tear down all walls on two-story building to fix the issue... The root cause was that they connected all the PCs in same port instead of using all the available ports.
@@Monni95in terms of handling and installation fiber requeries special traing on tools and equpment unlike copper you can improvise for other tools like cutters
In the IT world (local area networking), there is a requirement for termination and installation training to get the best performance out of the copper. If you move into the carrier world, copper maintenance requires very specific training so you can deal with resistive and capacitive issues, noise metallic, signal loss, inductance, EMI, insertion loss testing, and other fun stuff.
Okay, this video in a nutshell: so fiber optics are faster because they have more bandwidth. Which is actually a definition of "faster". But the actual question of WHY do they have more bandwidth is not answered. I'm sorry, but brr goes the thumbs-down button!
A non-expert guess would be probably because of low number of frequency that copper can handle due to inductance (a property of conductive metals that makes them resist CHANGE in electrical current in its body). But fiber optics operate on light, which can handle much higher frequency than copper because it does not have inductance limitation.
This is my guess as someone who has some moderate level of knowledge in electronics, and should not be taken as an expert opinion.
fiber has more bandwidth because they can carry higher frequencies compared to copper. the higher the frequencies the higher the bandwidth.
@@jakepancake7446 that is an incomplete answer, because there is no explanation about why one can handle more frequency than the other one.
Here's my best assumption: Fiber can be faster because the 1's and 0's that computers read are represented by a light on (1) or off (zero) and the faster you can send those 1's and 0's, the faster the computer gets that string of 1's and 0's to decode it for whatever it is like movie, song, image, etc. Since fiber uses flashing lights, I'm guessing, its easier to flash a light much more quickly and easier to decode 1's and 0's out of it, versus a load of pulses from a copper wire which is harder to decode if you send so many pulses in a short amount of time.
@@davidortega383 the higher the frequency in copper the higher its attenuation or signal loss relative to its distance because electrical signal is susceptible to loss of signal (noise) compared when transmitting light signal in fiber wherein fiber is not susceptible to any electromagnetic interference (noise)
Still doesn’t explain why optical fibres support a higher frequency range, yeah they don’t suffer from inductive and capacitive losses, but they still have attenuation, normal glass the attenuation is minimal only for a small range of wavelengths around 1500nm, also the more frequency components your pulse have the worse the dispersion performance is, as the refractive index and effective speed of materials are a function of the light frequency which causes material and waveguide dispersion. I’m sure engineers have figured out ways to work around these but you didn’t explain it at all.
Nice question. First material and waveguide dispersion (Chromatic Dispersion). A pulse of light at 1550nm has a "linewidth" exp: 1500nm to 1600nm (this range is for simplicity) with a central wave at 1550nm. Each wavelength has its own IOR (index of refraction or speed). so we have 100 wavelengths moving at different speeds. The glass has its own IOR (the speed at which light can move through it). This creates dispersion, faster wavelengths catch up to slow wavelengths. This is calculable and can be corrected in longer fiber runs. The second part, frequency range, attenuation in general purpose single-mode fiber (G.652D) is .4dB/km @1310nm and .3dB @1550nm. Circuits up to 40Gb can use On Off Keying to represent 1 or 0. For higher speeds 40Gb - 400Gb they basically use phase and amplitude modulation of the same wavelength (QAM). This is the Baud rate vs. the Bit rate. This is 400Gb on a single wavelength (or frequency). Where we get more capacity is by using multiple wavelengths (don't confuse linewidth) in Dense Wave Division Multiplexing (DWDM), typically running 40 channels (virtual fibers) on the same strand. These channels use very narrow lasers and as an example would be spaced at .2nm, so 1550nm, 1552nm, 1554nm. Each carrying 400Gb.
I hope this helps.
Export tha WAV version I mean use tha fiber-optic cable
thank you
And what does it plug into at the end? A copper sfp module LOL.
Yes because circuits are going to deal with electrical signals and not light pulses!
Gimme da fiber. Pennsylvania. PLEEEEEEEEEEZZZZZEEE
Hundreds of years ago? The telegraph was invented less than 200 years ago.
yeah 200 years is called as hundreds of years ago
@@nathanbombardo Generally hundreds of years ago implies something more than 200 years, not less.
types online for fiber optic cables sets သုံးကြတယ်
Resistence is futile!
Very useful
The biggest diff: Fiber moves photons and Cooper moves electrons! photons move on light speed, electrons cant... For this we have a new branch called photonics, which is what will sustain quantum computing, we are already working on photon-based chips and even the first internet prototype is already in testing...
doesnt matter. They both move at 2/3 the speed of light. The throughput is higher. the photons do not move at light speed.
Actually the electricity travels in the electric and magnetic fields surrounding the copper wire. In theory those could travel at light speed without the wire (wireless signals) but bound to the medium they travel slower (that's however a oversimplification).
As Benne MY pointed out both travel at about 2/3 the speed of light.
Also Photonics is far from a "new branch" fiber optics is a part of photonics and it has been around since the 1960s.
Photoelectric chips are basically how the fiber converters work having fully photon based computers is a concept that was already in the 2000s if not earlier so "already having prototypes" is a bit optimistic.
What makes fiber optics faster than copper wire?
That is the most stupid question I have heard for a long time.
Answer: It is the light.
I would go with the capacity
bottom line is copper is expensive, sand or plastic from which the make the fiber optic cable is cheap.
Fiber is made of synthetic glass SiO2 (Silicon dioxide)
I just like the music
Light. End of answer
So generalized
doesn’t explain much info
Fiber can handle load way better than copper
WHY????
No, I don't wonder, nothing is faster than light. Copper wire is very slow compared to the speed of light.
Electricity moves at ~75% the speed of light (VOP - Velocity of Propagation)
Ehh light?
I prefer copper optics....itl catch on
right
Speed of light silly! lol (186,282 mi/sec give or take)
fiber optic uses light right??
light is the fastest so it's faster
Yes , that's why its super FAST !!
Speed of light in a vacuum is constant, however the speed of light in a medium like glass is slower than the speed in vacuum.
Both electricity in a cable and light in a fiber travel at about 2/3 the speed of light.
World running out of copper so it can be better option as it is easily available
Copper cable is better
Gotta have stash of copper and other precious metals before end of the world comes... I remember having about 360 kg of 1st grade copper before I asked a friend to take it to junk yard... I still have a stash or old copper cables and CPU modules (for gold), but I gave away most of my old memory modules.
fiber splice god
To get to know more about this, watch this out czcams.com/video/1nZo3cLI44g/video.html
လူမှုကွန်ယက်တွေက fiber optic cable
ကြောင့် သုံးရ
Allindia Andra pradesh Rajahmundry
Physics.
Mashaallah !!
@@NativeVsColonial Astagfirullah !!
@@NativeVsColonial btw this type of comment is not encouraged. 🙁🙁
fiber optic cables ကြောင့် world က ရွာနဲ့တူသွား
The narrator sounds like Morgan Freeman and Liam Neeson at the sane time
Hello everybody my name is welcome
Who's coming
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I can't stand this guy's voice , the way he talks is unbearable
Why is your voice like that? your like crying.... 😂😂
Is this a bot?
its all over we back in days of Noah!!! Fireeeeeeeeeeeeeeee !!!! it will be by my beautiful Heavenly Father Almighty The Most High for the evil and the wicked and the chidren of disobedience to my beautiful Heavenly Father Almighty The Most High as they became wise they became fools to my beautiful Heavenly Father Almighty The Most High )