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Fiber Optics (internet)

#1   Toasty 

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    Posted 21 August 2007 - 04:22 AM

    I'm pretty sure most, if not all of you, know what fiber optics are, seeing as it's been around for a while. But what you may not know, is that it has the potential to be a hell of a lot faster than it is right now.

    First off, I'd like to state a few things for clarity. The way fiber optics work, is by sending a white light along a strand of fiberglass. Unlike with metal wires, these strands can be shrunk without loosing any of their capacity. Infact, this allows for more lines to occupy the same space, and in turn provide for more signals to be transfered. These strands of fiberglass are also cooler, since they don't carry electricity, and are also safer because of that. The reason why fiber optics are faster than other connections, is because they're signals travel at the speed of light, which is faster than the speed at which current wire based signals can run. I'm not sure if in the future wire based signals will be faster, but I do know that they won't be able to have more bandwidth than fiber optics. I'll explain why next.

    Because fiber optics use white light, that means that it is actually carrying many colors of light in one signal. By splitting these colors apart, you can send two signals in the same space that one signal would normally occupy. Since there is a near limitless amount of colors, then fiber optics have the potential to have near limitless bandwidth. The size of the bandwidth is only limited by the sensitivity of the equipment that reads the optical signal. Which means you could theoretically send ALL of the information in the world (that's on computers of course) across a fiber optic line in less time than it takes to blink your eye. Personally, I find that incredible, because I KNOW you can't do that with a standard DSL or whatever connection.

    Right now, the fastest fiber optic connection I've heard of is about 50Mbps. The reason for why this is so slow (when compared to fiber optics potential speed), is because the hardware on the servers that support it aren't advanced enough to run at the speed of light. Now if they can increase the voltage on those servers, and replace the standard hard drives with solid state (flash memory) hard drives, they could increase the speed of the signal by a lot. Until then, It'll stay around 50Mbps. At least as far as I know.

    But also, I'd like to point out that whenever you're connected to other computers and transferring files, you are only as fast as the slowest connection. So if you've got fiber, it won't mean anyting if you're downloading from a PC or server that runs on dial up.

    #2   Ironsight 

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      Posted 21 August 2007 - 05:13 PM

      Thats pretty amazing stuff. Wered you find all of this?

      #3   Gardna 

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        Posted 22 August 2007 - 12:36 AM

        I wish I had something like that at home..

        #4   Nosferatu 

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          Posted 22 August 2007 - 04:27 AM

          View PostDarkSword, on Aug 21 2007, 04:13 PM, said:

          Thats pretty amazing stuff. Wered you find all of this?


          The internet! Where else do you find things these days?
          Mwhaha. Topical.

          Either way, impressive facts. I applaud you.

          #5   Kwesi 

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            Posted 22 August 2007 - 03:28 PM

            I just got the new Verizon FiOS modem installed and the internet is running so fast my old bandwith down was running at like 14156 and now it was at 20285.

            #6   Max 

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              Posted 22 August 2007 - 06:52 PM

              The internet backbone is run on fiber bundles, and is much, much higher than 50Mbps. Do a search for OC-3 or even OC-192 and you'll find tables of the different sizes and speeds. Verizon's FiOS service is currently the only commercial fiber internet service in the U.S., though I do believe a number of European nations have ultra-high speed broadband (presumably using fiber). I recently had the infrastructure for FiOS installed on my street, but since I'm moving off to college it's now a moot point.

              #7   Toasty 

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                Posted 23 August 2007 - 12:54 AM

                Yeah, I figured that it was faster, since I've seen some people get close to 1000Mbps, but I didn't have any way of telling if they were using fiber or not. I do know that they did these tests at work on their work servers.

                But for now, 50Mbps is the fastest I've seen in a home environment. I only wish mine was that fast, but alas, my outdated PC is only capable of half that speed.

                And Nosferatu, I actually got a lot of this info from magazines and personal experience (having a fiber optic connection). Though the internet is always a good resource. ;)

                #8   PDM 

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                  Posted 24 August 2007 - 07:08 AM

                  And I thought I was doing bad at 100 Mbps

                  #9   Toasty 

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                    Posted 24 August 2007 - 09:10 PM

                    o.o; That's better than an OC-1 connection....What ISP do you have?

                    #10   Ironsight 

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                      Posted 24 August 2007 - 09:14 PM

                      yo toasty, can i get one of those SSBB things?

                      and i get Dial-up here, it sucks :(

                      #11   Toasty 

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                        Posted 24 August 2007 - 09:22 PM

                        Well, if you don't give me a picture, or a description of what you want it to say, then I reserve the right to use any picture I can find, and any words that I can think up. Except for swear words.

                        #12   Ironsight 

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                          Posted 24 August 2007 - 09:25 PM

                          look in your comments l:P

                          #13   Toasty 

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                            Posted 24 August 2007 - 10:16 PM

                            I'm too lazy/incapable of finding the picture. Provide, or I will improvise!!

                            #14   Ironsight 

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                              Posted 24 August 2007 - 10:28 PM

                              (/panic) it in the TRT!

                              #15   Toasty 

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                                Posted 24 August 2007 - 10:39 PM

                                TIEM TO IMPROVISE!!

                                Now back on topic.


                                I did some research on the OC thing, and apparently, OC-96 (or 192, can't remember. But it had a 9) is the fastest fiber connection to date, and competes with 10 gigabit Ethernet. Both run at around 10Gbps, which is 100 times faster than PDM's connection.


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