 Mutiny32Network Security Engineer join:2000-07-04 Lees Summit, MO | reply to Dennis
Re: Good luck with that battle... Copper technically is far inferior to optical-based communications. The potential capacity of copper versus fiber is insanely disproportionate. |
|
 DeathKPremium join:2002-06-16 Cincinnati, OH 3 edits | Yeah. Except for in-home use copper is perfectly sufficient because you generally don't have to deal with super-long runs and we aren't at the point where we need bandwidth that fiber can offer which copper can't. Just look at HDMI. Spec 1.3+ supports TMDS bandwidth of more than 10Gbit/s. This was his point.
Obviously for long-distance communications fiber is superior because light transmission can be sustained. |
|
 | reply to Mutiny32 said by Mutiny32:Copper technically is far inferior to optical-based communications. The potential capacity of copper versus fiber is insanely disproportionate. The cost of tapping fiber's potential is in a league of its own though: you can get a 10GBase-T card for $500 while a 10GBase-SR SFP+ module will set you back $2000 per line module + host equipment... and even then, you're not tapping into fiber's true potential until you start using WDM with adds a ton of extra cost for the ADMs and wavelength-shifting equipment.
Few internet subscribers are likely to feel like they need speeds beyond 100Mbps within the next 10 years and that sort of speed is within DOC3/VDSL2 territory... it is still about a decade early to start worrying about fiber.
How long will it be before the average internet subscriber needs significantly more than 100Mbps? Probably more than 20 years. With fiber cables having a 25-30 years typical lifespan, fiber installed today will already be approaching end-of-life by the time we may actually need it.
Fiber is not immune to aging and FTTH fiber is a lot more likely to suffer from premature hydrogen contamination than carrier cables. |
|
 patcat88 join:2002-04-05 Jamaica, NY kudos:1 | reply to DeathK But DisplayPort uses fiber optics. And Intel is working on Fiber Optic USB »www.hardwarezone.com/img/data/ar···peak.jpg |
|
 Markie join:2003-07-26 Kalispell, MT | DisplayPort does not use fibre |
|