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Technology

New Fiber Development 119

Posted by Hemos from the run-throughout-the-house dept.
Maaaac writes "Just read this on GMSV: 'British researchers are developing a new kind of optical fiber that could surpass the known data transmission limitations of fiber. Augmented with a pattern of microscopic air holes that runs their entire length, these aptly-named holey fibers have a variety of surprising optical properties, not the least of which is single mode operation at all wavelengths and the ability to withstand the transmission of huge amounts of energy or data. To produce the fibers, researchers aligned an array of thin glass tubes, melted them together, and then stretched them to make a single fiber several kilometers long and about 125 microns across. While it's previously been suggested that such fibers would be predominantly used to transmit power -- or even matter -- their data transmission capabilities could be instrumental to the development of optical computers.' Now if only they would run this to my curb..."
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New Fiber Development

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  • Britons are usually quite innovative, the problem is this pre-eminence is not usually matched with businesses prowess, most inventors usually end up dying a porper or having their invention ripped off, and not receiving any recognition... or both of the above.

    Such examples include the light bulb, Joseph Swan [rr.com] published his work in a journal and a guy called Edison ripped him a few months later. People today still believe Edison invented the light bulb.

    There was Sir Frank Whittle [soton.ac.uk] who created the jet engine, he had to fund his research one shoestring because the government turned their back on him for years, then US company also tried to steal his work. Anyway, he finally succeeded, he didn't make any money out of his invention, but he finally achieved the recognition he deserved. (hence the knighthood).

    Other calamities include the guys at GCHQ who created public-key [wired.com] crypto years before it was even a twinkle in Diffie's and Hellman's eye. But they didn't see the significance of their invention, mainly because the official secrets act stopped from applying it commercially.

    Donald Davies [slashdot.org] who worked at Middlesex University invented the concept of Packet Switching but couldn't receive funding from the British government at the time, he took his research to ARPA where his technology was integrated into a little known project called "APRANET"... I'm not exactly sure what became of that :)

    Fibre optics and the optical amplifier also came out of British Research [business2.co.uk]

    Obviously there's also the likes of Alan Turing and the rest of the slightly madcap bunch who were the brains behind Bletchley Park and the WW2 code breaking.

    There's countless others too, and obviously some we probably don't even know about. Above all, they failed yet succeeded in a magnificent British way, a lot didn't make much or any money out their work, but they changed things.

    There's lots of innovation and pure research in the UK, however not much it carried through to commercialisation, maybe because the British are more risk adverse, there's also a deep stigma attached to failure and bankruptcy in the UK, something which is often admired in the US.

    This is changing though.

  • Re:What in the hell are they talking about? (Score:4)

    by Yarn ( 75 ) on Friday March 23, 2001 @07:00AM (#344724) Homepage
    It allows multiple frequencies to pass as if they were going down a mono-modal fibre.

    It changes the refractive index without requiring strange doping of the glass.

    More energy can be pumped down as the waves spread out. This means that fewer repeaters are required.

    New Scientist had a good article on these fibres a year or so ago, and I talked to some of the researchers at the Royal Society.

  • Well, I'm not the telco, so I can't give an offical confermation, but my understanding is there are miles of unused dark fiber.

    The reason we don't use it is it doesn't go anywhere we need more capacity. The most expensive part of running fiber is the labor. So when they hire someone to run a fiber line between two offices they don't put in four pieces of fiber (Assuming they need 4), they put in a hundred. If the workers accidently break on fibre line (or there is a defect) there are still 99 potentially good lines to choose from. This leaves a lot of fiber that isn't in use because it is unneeded. If tommorow the telco decides they need more capacity it is very simple for them to add it, just use anouther line.

    In theory it is possibal to lease one of these lines and have your own equipment on each end. Problem is they run from telco office to telco office, not to your neighborhood.

    Basicly there is a lot of dark fiber because it doesn't cost much to put it in dark fiber so they add redundant capacity. they don't use it because they have no data to put down those lines.

  • I have read something similar. The idea is that companies are laying fiber, but not lighting it up until bandwidth demands necessitate it. They are merely planning on having the infrastructure in place for when they do need it. I remember reading about it in Canadian Business Magazine [canadianbusiness.com], the same issue I first read about FutureWay [futureway.ca]. I think it was in this article [canadianbusiness.com]. I particularly love the Gates reference at the end:)
    >~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  • well, you seemed to miss another important point in the article: fiber computing. This will come out in the fiber equipment long before it ever makes it to anybody's desktop. This means that you can have a fiber end-to-end solution. No electronics.
  • I thought that the latency issues were largely related to the optical-electronic interfaces. And I think fiber computing in it's early phases will still not be terribly efficient, but with time, it will mature.
  • Ahh the stories...

    One that sticks out in my memory was told to me by a telco tech. If say, a customer calls in a noisy line and the tech isolates it to a given location, his employer then calls a contractor to dig up and repair the pair. Notice I said pair. Should the contractor discover more bad pairs in the same location, they are bound to only fix the pair as ordered by the telco and ignore the other bad pairs. The telco considers it cheaper to do it this way than it is to have the contractor repair all the found problems at the same time. Of course it may be that the contractors have negotiated this deal with the telco banking on repeat business.

    Dilbert lives!


    --
    Hang up and drive!
  • If you maintain a fault tolerant line, then that line is generally up and running between two routers which are exchanging sync info. Otherwise when your main line went down it would take a disproportionate amount of time to set up a link on a backup line.

    If it is a L3 backup then it is connected to an IP router and some sort of routing info is going over it. If it is a L2 backup it is connected to an ATM or Frame Relay switch and some sort of L2 protocall is running over it exchanging whatever it exchanges. If it is a L1 backup it is dark until it is needed.

    However not all backup circuits are dedicated. People will pay for a circuit that isn't there all the time. They don't pay nearly as much as they pay for one that is there (almost) all the time.

    Lastly not all that dark fibre is in use. It is very very expensave to dig up ground and run cable (or fibre), copper is cheep, and fibre is way more expensave then copper, but a lot cheeper then putting it in the ground. So when you get the right to lay fibre and the equiptmenr lined up, and the folks there digging (or running the flow mole) you put way way more fibre then you need.

    Sometimes that way more then you need is more then anyone needs. A fibre from DC to NY is going to have a lot of demand. One from Ohio to, well, some other part of Ohio may not get nearly enough demand to fill it. Since it only costs (say) 20% more to get 5000% bandwidth, it is worth it on the off chance that those two remote parts of Ohio become boom towns sometime.

    Other fibre may be held back to keep prices up, but I expect that is rare (I have no evidence one way or another). Some there may even be demand for, but nobody realises it is cheep enough, or they can't find the right part of the right compony to buy it from. Big busness may have effencies of scale, but they also have ineffencies of scale.

  • Uh, single-mode fiber core is 5-10 microns.. Multimode ranges between 50 and 100 microns, and goes for like $2/m for custom duplex SC/SC..

    (to have a fiber link from my linux workstation to the server core.. it's good ta be da king ;)

    Your Working Boy,
    - Otis (GAIM: OtisWild)
  • Is OC-128 even a standard data circuit speed? I was certainly aware of links at 3, 12, 48, 192, and had recently heard of 256, but where is OC-128 used? (OC-n being = n × 51.84 Mbps)
  • No, they're just using black light.

    :-)
  • Good golly Gothmolly. You seem to be saying that because it might not be everyone's weakest link, it's not worth improving?

    I respectfully disagree. We ought to improve all weak links, one at a time. If you pass on one, it will be the weak link, eventually.

  • The British invert it.
    The Americans sell it.
    The Japanese Perfect it.

    Story over.....

    F
  • That guy doesn't know the difference between the phone line 64K baseline multiplier and the powers of 2.

    But hey, he had a kinda good point.
  • One company DID think ahead. Its called Level 3 Communications. http://www.level3.com

    They actually run multiple conduits through their entire fiber optice network all over the US, so they can upgrade and pull new fiber easily with each new generation. You want the newest fiber, go to Level 3 - they are pulling and lighting LEAF3 from Corning right now, and it just became available to the market a month ago. All IP (no SONET or ATM), and all Glass (no Copper!)

  • Becasue the cost to LIGHT fiber is about 8 to 20 times the cost to dig and lay it.
  • Nope - there is one comapny that is plaaning to cut prices 50% every year for a decade for long haul data. Its Level 3 Communications - I know some folks who work there. Its nto PRICE cuts that hurt, its MARGIN cuts that the old companies are afraid of. Newer companies have lower cost infrastructures, are set up to use IP instead of SONET and ATM, and are dropping their costs with new fiber and optics. Thats why the big guys are scared now. There is no glut of bandwidth - just a shortfall of cost-effective lit fiber. The old opanies cant afford to light it, and hte new ones are just now coming on line. Watch the market shake out HARD and kill the BT's and AT&T's of the world. Fossils.

  • But even now most fiber is enormously underutilized.
    Sure, at the endpoints. But that is not the case in the core of the internet.

    Talk to someone from UUNET. They'll tell you about trying to double capacity every 6 months in order to keep up with the demand. It won't be long before today's "fat honkin' pipes" are tomorrow's "2400 baud modem line".

  • Imagine if you had some way (think nanotech or fast STM) to arrange the atoms at the other end into molecules, and from there up. Matter transporter/3d Fax/replicator/world's best RPD station? If you could deconstruct the other end, perhaps wired teleportation. All of this is blue sky stuff, but remember you heard it here first, and these ideas are public and prior art (ok, I am sure someone else has thought of them in relation to this fiber, perhaps)...

    Worldcom [worldcom.com] - Generation Duh!
  • Along Railroad rights of way. The RRs run between cities, they own the land, and many of them laid fiber when they laid wires for the control signals for the signals. Sprint got its name because it was started by the Southern Pacific railroad. Lots of fiber next to their tracks. These days lots of fiber is laid next interstate highways.
  • uh -- no.

    Aerogels are mostly air -- a foam or sponge of Si and other junk with some intert gas in the cells/holes, while these fibers are mostly glass, and the holes are really tubes that run the length of the fiber in a very regular pattern. So, you see that the structure of these two things are totally unrelated.

    hth
  • Why did the telecos not think ahead and pre-position areas to upgrade or put in PVC piping or such so they could run new fibre lines at will instead of ripping up roads, sidewalks etc to put in technology that is three or four steps behind what exists?

    Because what is available today to the market is not the "bleeding edge" type of fiber. Rather, gigabit fiber and up to 10 Gbps are what is really availble, although really expensive. If they ran this new "holey fiber" it would sit in the sidewalk/ground/PVC until someone was ready to build the router or MUX/DEMUX equipment needed to utilize this technology. By going ahead and laying first generation technology, they'll get use out of it (fiber into homes, even at first gen. hasn't even proliferated yet) and be able to sell it for a few years. Hopefully by then they'll have a better upgrade path.

    Massive bandwidth via fiber is an infant technology for end users. It's got to mature.

  • The article may not have mentioned matter transport, but the link to the IOP did. I know it is considered de rigueur to blast Hemos et al for not properly reading the articles before posting, but it is quite ironic for you to make the same mistake.

    Experiments also indicate that microstructured fibres like holey fibres could be used to guide atoms. A fibre is made with four holes in a square and a central hole. A wire is inserted in each of the four outer holes and a current passed through it. This creates a magnetic field that can guide atoms through the central channel. Proof of principle experiments have shown that this is possible, but research here is only just beginning. Ultimately, the technique could provide a way of measuring gravitational fields with unprecedented accuracy.
  • Will someone explain where the holes are and their affects on light in a clearer manner?
  • That is true. I quote myself: "tradeoff games between _attenuation_, dispersion, bandwidth"

    1.55 um is at a minimum between where Rayleigh scattering losses dominate and losses due to a vibrational absorption line in water (which is unintentionally incorporated into the fiber during manufacturing). However, this is what I recall off the top of my head so it may not be completely accurate.
  • Actually, you are right. The important thing to remember is that typically different modes in an optical fiber have different optical path lengths and this can limit the speed you can transit information.

    There are graded index optical fibers such that the optical path length of modes launched in an arbitrary (confined) direction is equal within in the limits of ray-tracing theory (which may or may not be appropriate for a given fiber). In fact, calculating the grading profile to equalize the optical path length is a standard textbook problem (at least in graduate courses).

    As to the earlier comment stating you can not do much about other sources of dispersion in a fiber:

    That is not quite correct. Carefully picking the wavelength, modulation scheme, fiber materials, fiber grading and what not can be used to play tradeoff games between attenuation, dispersion, bandwidth ... The typical 1.55 um wavelength of operation for a fiber was not picked out of a hat.

    Also, non-linear crystals can be used to play games with the spectral characteristics of a signal in an optical fiber to invert the dispersion. (By the way, similar spectral tricks are played in the new-fangled 10^18 W/cm^2 intensity desktop pulsed lasers.)

  • The reason all that "dark" fiber is not being used is because, as the other replier mentioned, the cost to run extra, unneeded fiber is minimal. The cost to "light it up", however, is NOT inconsequential.

    What this means to you and me is that there's a whole lot of capacity available for future expansion, as soon as someone or some organization/business/etc. is willing to pay for the bandwidth.

    Supply and demand. Easy-peasy.
  • I thought that while the bandwidth is huge, there are some latency issues with fibre -- copper is faster when bandwidth is not big but latency requirements are strict... Right?


    willis

  • This month's Discover magazine [discover.com] had an article [discover.com] on "trapping light", that breifly mentioned these types of fibres.

    A good read.

  • Is this what that one company and their new commercials are saying with their "bubble technology" ?? These "holes" sound like bubbles to me! :)

    Mike Roberto
    - GAIM: MicroBerto
  • Why not use some kind of tube? Because it's way too expensive. Believe me, laying fiber is *not* an easy task. The biggest cost is deployment - much bigger than fiber itself.

    (From the planning department of a small telephone company in Brazil)
  • I've heard that there are miles and miles of "dark fiber" in the US, fiber that hasn't been used yet.

    If this is true, why aren't we using it? Can anyone confirm or deny this?

    Progress marches on, but sometimes a solution is right in front of our eyes.
  • Please, someone remind me of my Physics 2 notes, here...

    I seem to remember that a good deal of energy was wasted in electrical transmission. Let's see... a quick search on Google gives us this link [bsharp.org] with some formulas and a note that:

    " Line loss can be quite large over long distances, up to 30% or so. "

    Given that we seem to be trying to transmit our power over ever increasing distances (California, anyone:-) -- high-energy laser transmission over holey fiber sounds like an interesting idea. Some questions though:

    How much energy would you use in transforming back and forth between laser and electrical? Could you deploy a system before it was made obsolete by high-temp superconductors? How bad would it suck if someone pulled the line a little too tight, and fractured the glass just enough to cause a meltdown? :-P

    Yah, it's probably a stupid idea... but maybe an interesting stupid idea!

  • damn! That was what I was gonna say, you stole my thunder!

    *ponder*

    Well, while the core of your argument contains a fiber of truth, there are quite a few holes in it.

    Going on means going far
    Going far means returning
  • OK, this looks like a troll, but I'm happy to feed it...

    Ummm, the fibre is wrapped in successive protective layers, which provide mechanical robustness. The transmitting core can be supprounded by up to three layers - a cladding layer of 200 microns, a polyamide etch-resistant coating to bring it up to a quarter millimetre, and then usually a plastic buffer for up to a millimetre, and that's before it goes into a protective conduit....

    OTOH, bare fibre is an absolute bastard to handle - I built an astronomical instrument which used fibers *shiver* never again, never again....
  • ...garrotte wire in the fiber cable runs.

  • This is very true! Most Cable and Telephone companies when stringing fiber string lots of extra. This is for future need and to sell or lease to other businesses that might need it. Many companys will work deals with other telecommunication trading dark fiber so that each can reach a needed destination.
  • Because being a monopoly means never having to say you're sorry.

    The phone company here refused to do a city-wide upgrade until their franchise came up for review, and the city made it a condition of renewal. Even then, they procrastinated and delayed until WIN [slashdot.org] showed up and scared the hell out of them.

    It wasn't an improvement. In the last nine months, the work crews have cut two gas mains, five water lines, and more power lines than I care to count. Note that this is just on one street where my job is located. Around town, it's the same.

    That's why monopolies suck. They have no incentive to plan ahead, and when change is forced upon them, they get indignant and ensure that they do a poor job.

  • This article did mention undersea cables being as being a prime candidate for this.

    And one doesn't just concentrate on optimizing the bottlenecks in a system.
  • I hereby propose that we add a new moderation entry:
    • It gives no score
    • It takes no score
    • It will be called "Good Try"
    Anybody seconds my proposal?
  • Around here they're still putting in first generation fibre lines. I'm sure they are putting the cuts in the sidewalk only to bypass my building and run the lines across the street. Why did the telecos not think ahead and pre-position areas to upgrade or put in PVC piping or such so they could run new fibre lines at will instead of ripping up roads, sidewalks etc to put in technology that is three or four steps behind what exists?

    DanH
    Cav Pilot's Reference Page [cavalrypilot.com]

  • "not the least of which is single mode operation at all wavelengths"

    What does single mode operation mean?

  • Now, I'm not a person with hands-on experience, and really the only reason I'm posting is to get someone like that to reply. I'm genuinely curious about this. Anyway, my opinion:

    We have some pretty fat honkin' pipes.... relative to the end users. They're "holding up" network speeds in more ways than one. When someone gets broadband, trust me, they're going to end up using all of it.

    I don't think pipes today are capable of handling a faster last mile. Fiber to the home nothing, let's just go with 30% of internet users getting cable instead of what is it now, 5% I think? Companies today are loathe to go the last mile because the last mile is costly, and the current networks would need a big-ass overhaul. That's a lot of money. They would end up having to eat it or pass the cost on to consumers. Both situations don't really look good.

    So to anyone reading who perhaps could answer on the basis of more than an opinion, how ready is the internet for a faster last mile? And then anyone else, how do you suppose we get that to happen? I'm not but so sure 10 years from now modems will still be prominent.

  • Try posting once. And try reading Hemos' comment. "Now if only they would run this to my curb."He was the one who brought up the last mile. Incidentally, if you knew who those websites were, doesn't that make you a PC cluebie too?
  • And what would you do with all this bandwidth? Download ISO images at 30 K/sec because the mirrors are swamped? Read Slashdot, slowly, because its all in Perl? Try and pull up pages on TomsHardware, and lag because the web bugs and banner ads come from a dozen over-subscribed servers? 3MBit cable access isn't even that fast sometimes. Speeding up the last mile will only swamp the NAPs more than they are now. It's all a chain, as strong as its weakest link.
  • I mean in the theory you have unlimited frequencies to transmit data with
    Theoretically, yes. Practically, you have things like Rayleigh scattering and lattice absorption that seriously limit efficiency at most wavelengths. Most fibers are made out of glass, which has two wavelengths that are optimal for communication: 1.31um and 1.55um. Outside of these wavelengths, one of the two effects causes serious attenuation over distance.

  • Not much difference in path length (Score:3)

    by DeeKayWon ( 155842 ) on Friday March 23, 2001 @10:41AM (#344769)
    Theoretically, yes, but the path length for each mode doesn't vary much, only by roughly 0.01% - 0.2% between successive modes. On the other hand, a difference of 0.015 between the indices of refraction of the core and cladding creates speed differences of around 2000km/sec between the two materials, or about 1% for standard glass. Higher modes have a longer path difference, but they also penetrate further into the cladding and get sped up more. The effect of the speedup in the cladding is more pronounced than the effect of path length, so higher modes reach the end faster.

  • Re:What's "single-mode operation" mean? (Score:5)

    by DeeKayWon ( 155842 ) on Friday March 23, 2001 @07:43AM (#344770)
    In an optical fiber, light rays traveling through the core can bounce off of the outer boundary between the cladding (lower index of refraction) and the core via total internal reflection. However, interference only allows rays at certain angles with respect to the fiber propagate. Each of these valid ray directions represents a mode.

    Single mode operation means only the axial mode, where the ray travels straight down the core, is valid. The reason single mode operation is desired is because the higher modes do penetrate into the lower-index cladding where the speed of light is higher when they reflect off of it, which causes the higher-index modes to propagate faster than lower modes. Basically, if you fire a very sharp pulse of light of all modes into an optical fiber, the modes will all reach the other end of the fiber at different times. Since your sharp impulse has been spread over time, there is a limit to how many different pulses can be resolved over a certain period of time. Single mode operation means that there are no higher modes and hence less spread and higher bandwidth. (There are other causes of spread, but not much can be done about most of them).
  • Do you reckon this is what God used to wire heaven?

    I would imagine the Great One has some pretty massive bandwidth requirements for sending all His priests E-mail (ecclesiastic-mail).

    *grin*

  • I was quite intrigued by the mention of this phibre

    Sounds like you have been Smokin' some and listening manto too y hip-hop records! And I take it this stuff is desribed as phat pipes.

  • However, its not a case of it not being used yet, its there for fault tolerance. A lot of internet backbone companies (Genuity, UUnet, PSInet, etc.) maintain some duplicate runs in the event of a fiber cut. They want to make sure that if a high traffic run breaks, they have another run that can handle the traffic while they hunt down the break and patch it

    Actually, I beg to differ.

    If you maintain a fault tolerant line, then that line is generally up and running between two routers which are exchanging sync info. Otherwise when your main line went down it would take a disproportionate amount of time to set up a link on a backup line.

    Some fiber may be held for this purpose, but the vast majority just hasn't been connected up to anything yet.

  • Because, that would require forethought, planning, and a willingness to spend more money now to save money later.

    It would be like the Gas company asking the Water company if they would like access to the hole they are currently digging up in the middle of a main road to save the effort of them digging it up for their own needs later *sigh*

    They were meant to try this in the UK within the last 5 years or so, but it's never happened. This is why ever road and pavement is in such a mess.

    Actually, they have been in much more of a mess since we allowed cable companies to dig the entire country up for Cable TV & phones. At least BT never left the place in such a state.

  • AFIAK, there is about a two-orders-of-magnitude difference in the Nobel-prizes-per-capita scores.

    Can dig out references if needed or flamed.
  • There is already a strong theory, supported by experiments, of quantum teleportation [cjb.net] of individual particles. Their quantum state (except the position) is preserved exactly: the original state is destroyed, because it has to be quantum mechanically observed by a part of the system, but it is reproduced exactly at the other. So you cannot copy particles, in addition the transmission is limited by the speed of light, which makes this philosophically sound. In principle this allows teleportation of any quantum mechanical system such as Capt. Kirk, but so far only elementary particles have been used. Moreover, it is not exactly clear whether consciousness obeys QM; wouldn't that suck if your body was teleported but not your mind. (Very funny Scotty, now beam down my memories ;-)

    --
  • Probably refers to this part fo the article:

    Experiments also indicate that microstructured fibres like holey fibres could be used to guide atoms. A fibre is made with four holes in a square and a central hole. A wire is inserted in each of the four outer holes and a current passed through it. This creates a magnetic field that can guide atoms through the central channel. Proof of principle experiments have shown that this is possible, but research here is only just beginning.

    Even though this isn't about moving huge amounts of stuff around, moving individual atoms is 'matter transmission'. This could be interesting if some of the quantum state of the atom is preserved - maybe use it for information storage?

    --

  • There is more fiber put down at the backbone level than anyone needs or is willing to use at this point. Why? Light the fiber, create more supply, LOWER THE PRICE. That, along with increasingly strategic peering agreements, are measures in place to keep the price of transmitting a bit from falling to zero, which they certainly would if the fiber was lit up at once. While zero is a nice sounding number to the consumer, it stinks if you are Qwest or UUNet.
  • Pricing is vicious right now. None of the vendors are going to free up extra supply in a tight economy, it would drive the price down even lower and they would collapse. Add on the peering agreements which control the competition, and Yes Virginia, the internet backbone is a cartel operation.
  • Content distributors no longer need to clog the NAP to get you want you want, many are using caching to deposit the information near or at your ISP. Sure for dynamic sites this can't be done completely, but you can sure as hell cache almost all of the images, and more of the content than you might think. How much of the bits on this page are really dynamic? I bet the images represent a larger chunk of bits.
  • as the other replier mentioned, the cost to run extra, unneeded fiber is minimal. The cost to "light it up", however, is NOT inconsequential.

    You're misunderstanding previous comments. The reason extra fiber is installed is because the incremental cost of laying extra fiber is small. In general, however, laying fiber (and the cost of fiber itself) is much more expensive than "lighting it up." This is one reason long-haul links (e.g., MAN, WAN, and transoceanic SONET) are serial, whereas for very short reach links at higher data rates groups like the Optical Internetworking Forum [oiforum.com] and the InfiniBand Trade Association [infinibandta.org] are specifying parallel links. At short distances, fiber is "cheap." But for long distances, the fiber's more expensive than the optoelectronics.

  • The mayor of D.C. tried to convince the CEO's of the Gas, Electric, Telecom, Cable etc. companies to try and work together before ripping the roads up.

    From their response, it was as if he had asked them all to engage in public group sex.

    In other words, it ain't gonna happen.

  • Because, that would require forethought, planning, and a willingness to spend more money now to save money later.
  • Yes, there are hundreds of miles of dark fiber in the US. However, its not a case of it not being used yet, its there for fault tolerance. A lot of internet backbone companies (Genuity, UUnet, PSInet, etc.) maintain some duplicate runs in the event of a fiber cut. They want to make sure that if a high traffic run breaks, they have another run that can handle the traffic while they hunt down the break and patch it.
  • Even though this isn't about moving huge amounts of stuff around, moving individual atoms is 'matter transmission'. This could be interesting if some of the quantum state of the atom is preserved - maybe use it for information storage?

    The mechanical movement of matter via a wire is interesting, but probablt is not what most people think of when they think of transmission. People usually think of something from Start Trek

    On top of that, there is the small problem of "bandwidth" for such a device. It's going to be a while before it becomes substantial, moving things on an atom by atom basis.

  • Matter Transmission? (Score:3)

    by Alien54 ( 180860 ) on Friday March 23, 2001 @06:25AM (#344786) Journal
    Actually, the original article says nothing about matter transmission:

    Because the size and positioning of the holes can be specified, the fibre can be designed to confine the light it is sending to a small central region of, say, a micron square, or a "big" region of several thousand square microns. If this central region is small, it is possible to operate an optical switch using very low light intensities, which is important for the future development of optical computers. (Indeed, optical switching has recently been demonstrated in a holey fibre by researchers at Southampton University.) In a "large mode" holey fibre, the cable can send lots of power, which makes these fibres useful for applications such as laser welding and machining, as well as the development of high-power fibre lasers. Being able to tailor the way light is guided by a holey fibre could revolutionise the way data is transmitted and there are likely to be many other exciting applications which have yet to be discovered

    The optical computing aspects are exciting, however.

  • Re:Dark Fiber? (Score:4)

    by Vireo ( 190514 ) on Friday March 23, 2001 @06:33AM (#344787)
    Confirmed... You can be sure that whenever someone has to dig the ground, they lay fibers (along pipes, copper wires, whatever) since what is costly in installing optical fibers is not the fibers themselves, it's burying them. Why aren't they used? There is a bunch of answers to this question. These fibers are laid to be rented by someone else. 'Dark fiber' does not refer to the fact that no signal goes through them, but to the fact that they are rented 'as is' without the lasers and detectors necessary to build the whole optical network. So you need someone to rent them... That would be telecom companies, but those only use backbones and WAN/MANs (Wide/Metropolitan Area Networks) and are not interested yet by the FTTH (Fiber To The Home) concept, and they won't be unless the copper wire network's cost has been written off.

  • Completely and utterly irrelevant (Score:3)

    by ZanshinWedge ( 193324 ) on Friday March 23, 2001 @06:46AM (#344788)
    Big whoop. We already have some pretty fat honkin' pipes. The real hold up and cost is not the fiber or the fiber's capabilities, it's the machines at the ends of the fiber. Certainly, when laying fiber you want to lay the best fiber you can for future needs. But even now most fiber is enormously underutilized. Most high speed connections (faster than oh about OC-3) currently requires multiple computers to handle the bandwidth. And it takes even more equipment to bridge between the fiber and all the other networks (most of which use different protocols). That is where the major setup and operations costs are. The nature of the situation has resulted in the fastest connections (OC-128 or OC-256) being limited to only a smattering of locations. We would be far better off if the equipment to use these connections was much streamlined and lower cost. That would result in many more high speed connections and a much faster and much more robust internet.
  • with a pattern of microscopic air holes that runs their entire length, these aptly-named holey fibers have a variety of surprising optical properties, not the least of which is single mode operation at all wavelengths and the ability to withstand the transmission of huge amounts of energy or

    Arthur, fetch me the holey hand grenade!

    1.. 2.. 5.. (three, sir).. 3!

  • kinda wrong... In the case of fibre you only have a limited number of wavelengths to work with. From the point of view of the cable (wave propogation, how often the signal needs to be boosted ect.) Light is a wave, not a particle. So you have to be able to bouce the wave without loosing data.

    IEEE Spectrum had a good article on this a few months ago. It might be available for free on thier site (www.ieee.org) but I'm not sure.

  • Please correct me if i'm wrong but i thought that the 'Data' transmission is not because of the fiber line but because of the end applications which should handle the data.

    I mean in the theory you have unlimited frequencies to transmit data with but this data must somehow be handled. So it's more a matter of in and output into the fiber lines.

    Am i wrong???


    --

  • Anybody remember Homer poking holes in the hood of his car with a pick? "Speed holes."

    Cars/fibre optics - no big difference...

    (Going out to put speed holes in his bike tires... D'oh!)

  • which causes the higher-index modes to propagate faster than lower modes

    Wouldn't a 'higher mode' ray take longer to reach the other end - wouldn't the zig-zagging from internal refraction cause it to have to travel a longer *distance* than single mode, which just goes "straight"? Sorry if this is a stupid question, this stuff is probably over my head.

  • This problem you refer to is only if you're talking about lots of little files. DNS lookups normally happen only once though for a web site, connection establishment is (IIRC in HTTP) per file. But if you're transferring a *big* file (e.g. > 1MB) then that overhead quickly becomes insignifant, as it happens once at the beginning and then file transfer begins - *then* the bandwidth really starts to help, as the only latency you have left is your ping to the server you're downloading from. Thats not bad with fiber, LAN etc (a couple of milliseconds maybe), but modems are pretty crap, they introduce about 100 ms of latency outright.

    All we're saying here is that Fiber-To-The-Curb isn't very useful if all you're going to be doing is a lot of interactive web-browsing. Well of course yes then, but nobody was touting FTTC as an ultimate solution for web-browsing to begin with. FTTC is powerful specifically because it opens up the realistic possibility of widespread downloading/streaming of *big* files (e.g. music, movies etc).

  • Uh, that was *my* point - the guy basically said that the ones that have to travel longer propagate *faster*. Read a little more carefully next time.

  • I think that as available bandwidth increases, even most of those "most users" you speak of will learn to use it more. You'll probably see lots more streaming video etc, streaming video will get bigger, higher quality. It is that way now (lots of little files) mainly because it is still too slow to be anything more. I'm not saying its going to be *better* of course, all it probably will mean will be bigger, higher image/audio quality streaming *adverts* and streaming *crap*. Probably also lots more file sharing going on (mp3s and specifically whole movies probably in the not too distant future will become very common to copy). More game playing as well.

    Hmm .. now that you mention it, even now only a relatively small percentage of people even copy much music online. You're probably right, the majority of people (+/- 60%) are probably always going to be relatively low-bandwidth users. More for the rest of us.

  • If this new generation of optic fibers becomes more of a mainstream standard, how long (if at all) before they are developed as a new method of internet data transfer? I would be very interested in seeing how it would compare to a T3 or such when it comes to massive downloads... Or how it would affect my ping in games! All those lag-kills down the commode. Would that mean your ping could be written in decimals or would this completely redefine the entire ping standard? I've been connected to a T3 server before in a game of Half-Life and it had an average ping of between 3 and 9. If this new technology surpasses older methods, we may have to reconfigure such things, don't you think?
  • We're always reading about cool inventions these Brits are making, do they get more respect than American scientists?

    It seems like American scientists get little respect, and the best and brightest in America go into business.
  • When you're laying fiber (or even installing cat5), the incremental cost to lay double or triple the amount that you currently need is very low compared to the cost for the labor (or the cost for new jeans and a t-shirt if you're the hapless SA crawling through ceiling panels and ducst :) ).

    So, most fiber (or cat5) installers add more than they need, leaving some dark until they need it. Then, it's a simple matter of plugging the ends into Cisco's.
  • That would indeed be interesting, but I'm wondering about the interference problem. Would running power through the same exact same cable cause interference? I know it causes problems in some of our other methods of transmitting it, what about with this type?

    If we don't have to worry about it, that would indeed be very cool, to just hook a computer up to a wall socket with one plug, and have everything available.. Now I just need to work on getting wireless power.. :-)
  • Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the speed of light was slower in glass than in air / vacuum (and indeed the speed of electrical impulses in metal conducters).
    I was under the impression that optics were used in data transmission because of reduce signal attenuation over long distances.
    Anyway, point being a fibre-optic computer wouldn't achieve anything.
  • I have a hard time believing that transmission from microwave to infrared would be possible... Imaginge trying to send a 1685HZ wave across a tube of glass.
  • Yeah, right. Backbone providers' idea of a "redundant" circuit is two fiber lines in the same conduit...completely worthless when a backhoe digs up the line and severs it.
  • ...and you have proof otherwise? For God's sake, Universities still have professors who are admitted Marxists...about as relevant today as the Whig party. I myself do make a distinction between a scientist/researcher and a professor, though.
  • Nah, the Japanese haven't been perfecting anything since 1989 or so...the one-invincible juggernaut ran into a ditch long ago. Their economy is actually contracting, they are experiencing deflation, and I would not be surprised at all to see an IMF bailout in the next year or two.
  • Tom's hardware? ISO images? Slashdot? Sure, we'll postpone new fiber technologies until you get your web pages quicker. Freaking PC cluebie.

    There are those of us who use the internet for real work, you know.

  • Tom's hardware? ISO images? Slashdot? Talk about a dead giveaway of the PC cluebie...sure, I guess we'll stop development of new fiber technologies until you can view your damn websites faster.

    There are those of us who use the internet for real work, you know. This fiber stuff has zero to do with the "last mile".

  • The first time I clicked "submit" I got the "whoa nellie, slow down" message, which was strange, since I didn't qualify for that. Slashdot editors *always* say, "I wish I had this at my house" etc etc etc.

    doesn't that make you a PC cluebie too?

    Ha! You admit it. Touche! Nah, I used to be, many years ago...the last time I read Tom's Hardware was when I shopping for an AMD 233, which was the second-to-last PC I ever bought.

    The first time I clicked "submit" I got the "whoa nellie, slow down" message, which was strange, since I didn't qualify for that.

  • Why would the Yankees want to sell something that the Brits turn upside-down?
    ---
    Vollernurd.

  • And let us not forget the great Clive Sinclair!

    Brought the microcomputer to the masses, and then he gave the C5.

    You're right about the way failure is stigmatised in this country. There's nothing we like more than to grumble about the weather.

    Looks like rain...
    ---
    Vollernurd.

  • As Anne Robinson would say:

    ``You are the weakest link, GOODBYE!''

    ---
    Vollernurd.
  • I second the motion.
  • And the one thing that is more stigmatised than failure in the UK... is success.

    Az.
  • We're always reading about cool inventions these Brits are making, do they get more respect than American scientists?

    It's the tea, mate... It stimulates their brains. ;)

    cheers, joshua

    Terradot [terradot.org]

  • I was quite intrigued by the mention of this phibre being able to carry both power and data. It would be truely amazing if we could simply have a standard for all cables carrying any kind of anything, be it power or data, and perhaps even both travelling through the same wire at the same time. Imagine a peer to peer power network over the internet. Can you send power inside a packet? Granted, I'm thinking in the long term, but it's a lovely idea, eh? BTW, I have no idea what I'm talking about, this is just ideas.

    cheers, joshua

    Terradot [terradot.org]

  • Working for the company that manufactures "Brighton" rock this information will allow us to start work nice and early on our patent suit against these heinious people who are trying to steal our IP for placing long continuous threads through the length of a cylinder.

  • was it just me or was the idea of fiber computers no good because of the length of the fiber inside the computer would be so short it wouldn't make any huge differances in how quickly the data would be transfered. over large distances (say several klicks or so) would be great because then it would actually be used to its fullest potential... or am i just way off track here... any ideas?
  • 125 MICRONS!!!!
    I can see what will happen with wire like this. The companies that make it would sell 50 feet at $200/foot. Plus, they'd have to sell a lot more than that to deal with the fact that the wire breaks about every foot or so as it is being carried.

    Does anybody think this is as even close to being practicle for use?

    Actually, I think I'm a little mistaken. We could use all of the broken wire fibers to make really cool looking fiberglass computer cases.

  • Really? BT never screwed up the place? So explain to me all of the telegraph poles everywhere with their hundreds of wires crisscrossing the sky.
  • The one thing I haven't seen answered here is whether holey fiber is better for the digestive tract than regular fiber...
  • "dying a porper": It's spelled "pauper" if that's what you were trying to say.

    Joseph Swan: I haven't studied the details of that, but my impression was that his and the Edison lab's work on light bulbs was truly simultaneous. Anyway, they both filed patents, then sued each other, and somehow Swan won in British courts and Edison won in American courts. (Makes you suspect a little bias, eh?) In any case, eventually tungsten filaments superseded the Swann & Edison bulbs. Edison got rich because he _also_ created the first electric company -- not a patentable idea, all the DC generation and distribution technology was more or less ready and waiting for an application, but it must have been much harder to put together all the financing and technology than just figuring out which kind of carbonized thread would work best as an incandescent filament was.

    Incidentally what they (perhaps co-)invented wasn't the basic idea of the incandescent light bulb -- about ten years earlier some Frenchman had put a tiny wire in a vacuum and ran current through it until it glowed, then burned up because the vacuum wasn't good enough. Swann and Edison had better vacuum pumps, but had to work out all the details of how you bring wires through glass, seal off the bulb, and make a filament that lasts longer than it takes to change the bulb. It is indeed remarkable that Swann, who was a high-school teacher if I recall correctly, managed to find the solutions at least as fast as Edison's 100 men trying every possible way did...

    Whittle: If he invented the jet engine, why was it the Germans who built the first combat jets?
  • Could these be produced by Si areogels as well?

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