Plastic Optical Fibre: Cheap and Bendy 242
Motivator_Bob writes: "The Sydney Morning Herald has an article on making optical fibres from plastic rather than the traditional glass."Advances in optical-fibre making at the Australian Photonics research centre could bring communications at the speed of light into Australian homes and businesses in the next few years. The advance - microstructured polymer optical fibres (MPOF) - allows the manufacture of optical fibres that are much smaller, cheaper, more rugged and easier to make than glass fibres..."
Glass? (Score:2)
news.recycle();
Re:Glass? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Glass? (Score:2)
Holy shit man, you must splice cable really fast! Want a job, for say 230ms or so?
Re:Glass? (Score:2)
I mentioned in another story how tough fibre is. Telecomms fibre takes quite a lot to damage it.
Re:Glass? (Score:2)
Dark Fibre? (Score:3, Interesting)
"Don't bother lighting it up now, boys, just chop it up good when we start laying the new stuff."
Re:Dark Fibre? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Dark Fibre? (Score:2)
So let me get this straight; all the dark fibre we have in the states is now obsolete and therefore useless? Great, thanks, just checking.
"Don't bother lighting it up now, boys, just chop it up good when we start laying the new stuff."
I don't think old fibre is obsolete, just there might be a new, cheaper fibre also availiable. Which will be useful, because there are many places that don't have fibre running to them, and running it is expensive. Like £200,000 per mile expensive.
They may take our lives, but they will never take our FREEDOM!!!
Given the current political situation, a more appropriate quote may be "They may take our freedom, but they will never take our LIVES!!!"
Michael
Re:Dark Fibre? (Score:2)
It's getting better. Anyone catch Law and Order last night? An ex US military soldier tied up and killed an arab man who he had been tracking for a while. His defense? He was defending the lives of Americans against a terrorist. The more they looked into it, the more the dead man appeared to be a terrorist (tons of money from foreign accounts, talking in code on a pre-paid untraceable cell phone, etc). The jury eventually found him guilty after a stunningly brilliant cross-examination by the prosecutor, and an equally impressive closing by the same. Basically, he posed the question, "how much of our humanity are we willing to give up for the war on terrorism." He also made some wonderful remarks about how those who came before us preserved their ideals in the face of destruction (lest we forget that our enemies burned the White House and other buildings to the ground during the war of 1812), and that we shouldn't be the generation to succumb to fear. A very powerful and refreshing episode that brings hope to those who, like me, almost lost faith in the American peoples' love of freedom and democracy.
My sig is a quote from the movie Braveheart. Anyone who has it on DVD should really listen to the speech he makes where that statement is called aloud. It's actually very relevant to the current struggle we face to have courage and could just as easily had been said by a great leader on Sept 12, 2001. If anyone's seen a great leader around lately, please let me know?
Re:Dark Fibre? (Score:2, Insightful)
Wrong answers generate a good number of responses... corrections and such. This adds more comments total to the article. This will drive up the average comments per article. Articles with higher number of comments will make more people read the comments. This could again lead to even more comments. The responses correcting the misinformation will generally be modded "+1 Informative" or left alone, not modded down (nor should they be). People will not mod you off topic, troll or flamebait, because you are none of the above, you are just plain wrong. This will appear to give a better the signal to noise ratio, as there are now alot more positively moderated or non-negatively moderated posts. I say appear because comments such as these, though not modded down, are noise. The responses, though correct, also shouldn't be her, making them noise as well.
So we have: Appearance of a better signal to noise ratio, more comments per story, and more people reading these comments which equals more ad views and a higher chance of a click-through. These all looks better to advertisers and would be advertisers. This will lead to more ad clicks, and possibly better payout per ad click.
Conclusion:
The slashdot powers that be are purposefully leaving out the "-1 Wrong" moderation option to get more comments per story in order to generate more ad revenue.
Now, as for you being moderated up... well.. Apparently there's also a moderator out there who is "-1 Wrong".
Re:Dark Fibre? (Score:2)
First, I am wrong. Nevermind that the post was a semi-rant about the computer industry's annoying habit of replacing a product before it was used in the first place. And nevermind the fact that you never provide any evidence or reasoning, logical or otherwise, to dispute what I have said. Your arrogance is surpassed only by your paranoia, which brings me to the next point.
Second, there is a massive conspiracy by the editors to make money. Now, I'm not Taco's accountant, but I don't think he's catching up to Bill Gates anytime soon thanks to slashdot. They may make questionable decisions from time to time, but the fact remains that they're maintaining a FREE website for our enjoyment. If you don't like it, go elsewhere. Until now, I would have difficulty naming a major mistake they've made with this site, but I now see the one huge mistake that has yet to be corrected: allowing you to moderate.
Thirdly, the moderators who modded me up (there were two so far) are both wrong. Well, that's three people who are, according to you, wrong, and once again we have a statement of opinion made without the benefit of any supporting arguments.
It must be nice to allow one's self to become so amazingly dillusional. Thank you, and you have a nice day!
Re:Dark Fibre? (Score:2)
"There is no reason to not use that dark fibre, and no reason to assume that it wouldn't be used. In fact, it would be ignorant to think it would just go wasted, never touched, because it can fill the roll it's needed for just as well as this new plastic fibre, possibly better, as we do not know the throughput on this new fibre. Also, from a cost standpoint, no matter how cheap it is to lay this new fibre down, corps have already eaten the cost of laying that dark fibre. It would be foolish to lay down new fibre when there is perfectly good fibre already laid, just waiting to be lit up."
People have been saying this for years, and yet companies continue to lay new fibre without ever turning on the dark fibre already available. This article [bizjournals.com] has some excellent information on why I'm right. To quote a nice part of it, "...companies that installed fiber conduits in the late 1980s to latecomers who started installing cables last year.
On to the next silly response...
"...couldn't qualify as a rant... and your two lines were not
a) a violent or extravagant speech or writing
or
b) a speech or piece of writing that incites anger or violence.
Perhaps you could call it a bit sarcastic, but definately not a semi rant, rant, or a raving.
"
Well, now let's see if this holds true.
If we click here [m-w.com] and go to the noun, we find, "1 a : a bombastic extravagant speech"
Ok, let's go further. If you click here [m-w.com], you'll see that it says bombastic means "overblown". And if you click right over here, [m-w.com] we'll see where extravagant means, "2 a : exceeding the limits of reason or necessity" (as in, overblown).
So a rant is... Something which is overblown and exceeds the limits of reason or necessity. Sort of like saying we should chop up all the dark fibre? I think so...
I find your lack of faith disturbing.
I think you'll find something more fitting to your personality either here, [despair.com] or there, [despair.com] or maybe here, [despair.com] or perhaps there, [despair.com] or here [despair.com].
And as for 3 people being wrong, and you being right? Please check here. [despair.com]
Thankyoupleasedrivethrough
Grrr (Score:2)
Advances in optical-fibre making at the Australian Photonics research centre could bring communications at the speed of light into Australian homes and businesses in the next few years.
Dammit, communicating over copper with electrical pulses is also at the speed of light (roughly). This is a painful but all-too-common misuse of terminology, confusing speed as in data rate with speed as in velocity. Damn marketing types.
Re:Grrr (Score:1)
Re:Grrr (Score:1)
Re:Grrr (Score:2)
I can't tell the difference! They both seem pretty damn fast to me! And I can't drive 55!
No.. (Score:2)
I know it's not any kind of high velocity though.
but it's the elctrical impulse that travels near the speed of light, not the electrons themselves.. think of six billiard balls lined up with 1mm of space between each one. You hit the first one, how long does it take for the impulse to travel? How far do the balls themselves actually move? Not related at all.
That's what I meant! (Score:2)
Re:Grrr (Score:1)
Re:Grrr (Score:1)
Re:Grrr (Score:2)
Therefore, when exposed to an electromotive force (voltage), the electrons do get pulled down along the wire. Because of impurities in the copper, they end up bouncing around like a ball in a pinball machine, and never achieve a high rate of speed (according to my physics teacher, the electrons themselves move along the wire at something akin to walking speed).
However, in a superconductor, there's nothing for the electrons to bounce off, and they do achieve a significant fraction (80%?) of the speed of light. Which is approximately the speed at which the voltage itself moves. You can imagine it as an army of twenty million people in a long column. When they hear a whistle blow, they start walking. Every individual is moving at a very slow rate, yet the signal to move propagates down the column at the speed of sound.
Does any of this help?
Who said anything about electrons? (Score:2)
the change in the electric field propagates at near the speed of light through copper. The fact that the electrons themselves flow is more of a byproduct.
Re:Grrr (Score:2)
That depends on the geometry. (Score:3, Informative)
That depends on the geometry. Use thicker copper and/or space it farther apart and the signal goes faster. A less lossy dilectric helps, too.
At low frequencies - i.e. where the stray resistance of the line's copper is small compared to the characteristic impedence - the speed is dominated by the dilectric constant of the space between the conductor - and you get your approximate 70% of lightspeed. At higher frequencies (or longer wire) the line acts progressively more like a series-resistors-parallel-capacitors delay line cum low-pass filter. This slows and attenuates the signal, the higher frequencies more than the lower ones.
Selective slowing (phase shift) of the higher frequencies smears out pulses, while selective attenuation weakens them compared to noise.
This can be compensated for to some extent (by amplifying and phase shifting the higher frequencies before transmission and after reception). But there's a limit to how much of that can be done: Too much at the transmitter and you exceed the allowable signal level for the wire (causing cross-talk into the weaker signals going the other way nearby). Go far enough out and the high-frequency signals get down near the noise level, so amplification at the far end just jacks up the noise, too, and they're lost. That's why DSL will only go so far (without a repeater/regenerator).
Telephone wiring was designed for audio of only a few kilohertz, distances of a medium-sized town (rural wiring is a special case), and MANY wires in a bundle. So it uses very thin copper. Central offices were spaced in urban areas so that everybody they feed would be close enough to get a good audio signal. But DSL uses higher frequencies which peter out closer to the source.
Within the distances and frequencies where a copper structure will act as a transmission line rather than being ruined by this effect you're still talking about 70% of c.
But when the poster said "propagate through copper" he MIGHT have been talking about the "skin effect". Eddy currents in the copper due to changes in magnetic fields produce a compensating field, and the result is the field doesn't enter the copper until the eddy currents die due to the copper's resistance. (That's why magnetic fields won't enter a superconductor - to a first approximation.)
But that confuses "propagating through copper" with "propagating along a copper transmission line". In a transmission line (or any other waveguide) the signal and energy don't propagate
through the conductor(s). They propagate through the SPACE BETWEEN the conductor(s). Raise the resistance of the conductors and you increase the speed of penetration of signals into the conductor, but slow its propagation along the line.
Re:light in glass? in plastic? (Score:2)
Of course, that's for an ideal wire -- propagation through coax is about 2/3 that speed, which gets you close to the 5 ns/meter you specify for glass.
Speed of light? (Score:1, Informative)
50 years after Einstein, and people still don't realise that the electrons in a piece of copper wire travel at the speed of light? In fact, as light in fibre optic cabling bounces off the insides of the plastic tubing, it takes a less direct route and thus technically has a _higher_ latency than copper wire.
Re:Speed of light? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Speed of light? (Score:2)
Re:Speed of light? (Score:2)
link [networkmagazine.com] link [cmpnet.com] link [cabletesting.com]
Re:Speed of light? (Score:4, Informative)
What is the speed of electrons down a copper wire? [sciencenet.org.uk]
Re:Speed of light? (Score:2)
Re:Speed of light? (Score:2)
Another poster correctly mentioned that the electrons don't move quickly, but the pulses do (as stated in the link you put up).
Another point that needs to be made is that photons do have mass. The de Broglie equation holds for all energy (and matter is energy) which states that m*v*lambda=h where m is the mass, v is the velocity, lambda is the wavelength and h is Planck's constant (6.626E-34 J*s). That gives near infrared light (lambda = 400nm) a mass of about 5.52E-36 kg. For reference an electron's rest mass is 9.109E-31 kg.
Bill
Electrons flow in wire at 87% of speed of light (Score:2)
Re:Speed of light? (Score:2)
50 years after Einstein, and people still don't realise that the electrons in a piece of copper wire travel at the speed of light?
That's only one half of the truth. Although the electrons travel at almost lightspeed, they constantly change their direction back-and-forth, so if you could see a single alectron, it would appear to be traveling at about 3cm/second in (actually *on*) a copper wire.
Re:Speed of light? (Score:1)
Maybe that's because the electrons in a copper wire don't move anywhere near the speed of light - it's the wavefront produced by the electrons' motion that travels at or near c.
Re:Speed of light? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'll admit that I didn't do the math to re-check this, but I seem to remember the velocity of electrons in copper wire being on the order of a few cm/second - much less than the speed of light. The confusion my be coming from the fact that when you stick an extra electron in the end of an otherwise neutrally charged wire, the spare charge sets up an electrical field that pushes a different electron out the other end (assuming it's grounded or generally has another place to go to). It's the electrical field that travels at the speed of light, not the electrons themselves.
>In fact, as light in fibre optic cabling bounces off the insides of the plastic tubing, it takes a less direct route and thus technically has a _higher_ latency than copper wire.
Ummm.. not quite. It's true that the light bounces around inside the fiber, but due to the low index difference between the core of the fiber and it's surrounding cladding the angle of the bounce is pretty small and wouldn't really increase the distance the light needs to travel The distance increase is proportional to 1/cos[angle] so when the angle is near zero, cos[angle] is near 1 and 1/cos[angle] is pretty near 1 meaning no big change in the distance traveled by Joe Photon. For electrical wires, speed is limited by the capacitance/inductance ratio of the cable and is typically around 2-3 times slower than free-space light.
All in all, it's a good thing that electrons don't go the speed of light in our house wiring - I used to work with a synchrotron, which is a device that gets the electrons moving at relativistic speeds, and whenever the beam of elecrons went around a corner it produced enough X-rays due to the angular acceleration to flash-fry a horse. Be glad that copper wire electrons are slow, since if they were fast we'd get cooked every time a bit of house wiring was anything less than perfectly straight.
Re:Speed of light? (Score:2)
Communication over copper is near lightspeed.
Re:Nice troll (Score:2)
weird corrolation of data (Score:1)
from 56k->54M is ~1000x speed. the "future" they are preparing for is only a 2-20x jump. I'd say they should prepare for 54Gbit connections to people's homes, but hey, whatever.
at the same time, who here actually connects at 54Mbits, anyway?
We do! (Score:1)
Then again, I have no idea who could possibly need this for home use. Even watching multiple streamed digital feeds from AOL's new world order couldn't fill that need. In short- that's a helluva lot of pr0n.
-Matt
Re:weird corrolation of data (Score:1)
Re:weird corrolation of data (Score:2)
Learn some science. (Score:1, Informative)
This plastic optics fiber must have a higher index of refraction than glass, which increases Brewster's angle, which increases the amount of bend allowed before the signal is lost. This is no biggie, technologically speaking. The only reason it hasn't been done before is cost. Glass is very cheap and we know how to make thin strands of it already.
Learn some science? (Score:5, Informative)
The relevant quantity in fibers is the critical angle, beyond which all light is reflected inside the higher-index core. (Actually, the whole ray-optics picture is not completely accurate for fibers with features, like the core size, comparable to the wavelength...but it's qualitatively the right idea.) (Which, by the way, has nothing to do with the reflection disappearing from the puddle, since that is a reflection into the lower-index medium, air. The puddle effect has more to do with your shadow blocking the light.)
Note also, by the way, that it's not so much that the index of the polymer fiber core has been increased, its that the effective index of the cladding is decreased (by adding lots of thin holes/veins, hence the name microstructured fiber). And you can do the same thing with glass fibers [ofsoptics.com]. (Because of the higher effective contrast, you can confine light more tightly and e.g. enhance nonlinear effects.
(You were on the right track that it's the bending light loss, and the advantage therein of higher index contrast, that the article was referring to.)
Microstructuring can also go in the other direction to photonic crystal fibers [bath.ac.uk] and guiding light in air [omni-guide.com].)
Cost of broadband? (Score:4, Interesting)
Interesting quote:
Maybe I'm just naive (probably), but the limiting factor today for broadband Internet access is the cost of the bandwidth, possibly due to the stranglehold a few key companies have on access to their backbones. The cable that comes into my house can be used for speeds in excess of 30Mbps, if I recall correctly, yet I have a mere 1.5-2Mbps (at $39.95/mo). Admittedly, DSL has technical limitations on speed, but even so, the large limiting factor seems to be the cost of an OC-12/48/96 connection to the 'Net, right?
When is that gonna change?!? What is needed to bring about that change? Regulation?
on the other hand (Score:4, Interesting)
I wouldn't be surprised if the main issue is the latter. I have spent some time trying to convince one of my coworkers at a major computer hardware company to get broadband, but he doesn't think he needs it. The uses of broadband are not necessarily obvious if you don't have it.
I also read that several telecoms will try to address this issues by selling capped broadband at a lower price.
Yes, it's the last mile and uptake. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes it's the lack of the "last mile" - and content worth paying for its instalation.
Lots of spare fiber (and empty conduit) was laid when the trenches were open, so most of it is dark. Boxes were bought to light up a few fibers, and even when they're all lit we can bump the speed to get a few more powers of two before stringing more long-haul.
But the network speeds and capacities of the first boxes were calculated using what turned out to be Netcom's overstatement of the rate of growth of the internet's bandwidth. For the last 5 or so years it was only doubling, rather than multiplying by 10.
Doubling every year is no slouch for a growth rate, but it's only about 1/3,125 the traffic the designers of the equipment and networks were planning for at this point. (It was 1/125 at the time of the dotcom bubble burst. Maybe some of those dotcoms WOULD have been profitable if the customer base they'd been told to expect actually existed?)
So there's a bandwidth price war at the wholesale level, telecoms folding up as debts come due without revenue to pay them, and equipment suppliers having a REALLY hard time selling any more stuff.
But with the CLECs pretty much all dead, the ILECs and cable companies (with the pre-installed base) have a virtual duopoly on the last mile. So there's no incentive to push cheap fat pipes into your hands. (Markets need THREE suppliers before competition starts driving costs toward price of production. With only two they'd be cutting their own throats to try to cut each others'.)
So there's no cheap last mile bandwidth. But there's virtually no high-bandwith content available to make it worth peoples' while to buy expensive last-mile bandwidth:
- CARP killed "internet radio".
- The RIAA killed Napster, is killing its clones, and finally going after individuals.
- The RIAA and MPAA are scared spitless of allowing any of their members' digital content on the net, for fear of piracy.
So what does that leave Joe Sixpack that will convince him to pay enough extra for high-speed internet that it's profitable to dig up his street and give him a fiber? Better animated popup ads? Most of the rest of the net is more than adequate at moderate speeds.
High-speed internet will be here as soon as there's a "killer app" requiring high-bandwidth that's popular enough to fund a new last-mile deployment, or a cheap-enough last-mile solution is found to be price-competitive with cable and ILEC-based DSL.
Re:Yes, it's the last mile and uptake. (Score:2)
This is the model that is working for fiber, and you're right only someone looking to offer competition can really do this. The bells have huge burried copper loops in triple redundancy, that they don't even want other companies to have access to. They'd have to abandon all that infrastructure to go to fiber to the home, and you still need to install a converter to allow analog telephones to use the fiber optics for telephone service. The cable company has the same situation with it's coaxial network.
Still, fiber to the home will get cheaper because of this, and the bells and the cable companies will die a slow painful death because of small start up fiber all-in-one service companies, well, the bells won't go under, since the startups will all be customers of theirs. but cable companies that aren't prepared to adapt will watch as their market share slips lower and lower.
Re:Cost of broadband? (Score:2)
This sort of speed will not be used until people start delivering video on demand through it. Look for this to show up in set top boxes within the next few years.
Incidentally the reason AT&T bought cable companies is so that they could provide the following services, all over one fat piece of coaxial cable:
Whether anyone will actually do wide-rollout video on demand is up for debate, and has been for a long time. With DOCSIS, however, the technology is certainly there.
Consider PACE's STB based on Cisco's CM reference design. It contains an MPEG2 decoder (for doing digital cable), a DOCSIS CM, and a cute little computer. It also has a smart card slot, and a RJ45 providing ethernet out the back. All you would have to add to this is a little bit of hardware for IP Telephony (namely a sound card and POTS isolation hardware) and you would have everything you needed to carry out the above tasks. The STB itself can be used to surf the internet, hence it should be able to do IP Telephony (with the above hardware) without any trouble.
Re:Cost of broadband? (Score:2)
Bendy light? (Score:1)
I still have no clue who thought of the idea of time being fluid...
Excellent quote (Score:1)
Yeah, I don't want some wussy 300Mbps broadband. Where's my 10GB/s? This flexible fiber, according to the article, can cut the cost to lay last mile fiber. It's about time. Now, if we can only get an ISP to offer the service at that speed...
Re:Excellent quote (Score:1)
For instance, homes will be outfitted with particularly high-bandwidth mediums (to stream video from TiVo to TiVo, etc). Then, connections within your neighborhood, community, town will be the next level of bandwidth, as you stay within your local 'Net (so accessing the local newspaper, TV stations, gov't., etc. will be real quick). Then, access to state-wide and nation-wide services will be the next level, as your connection has to traverse the various backbones to get where its going. Finally, access to global resources will be the last level, as you have to traverse intercontinental (trans-pacific/trans-atlantic) connections (satellite, ocean-bed fiber, etc.)
As the contention for a connection increases, based on the number of folks who would potentially want to access it (less folks want to access local community resources than sites such as CNN or Reuters), the bandwidth experienced will necessarily decrease, right?
Ok so I did not read the article.. (Score:1)
Re:Ok so I did not read the article.. (Score:1)
Deep inside the ISP boardrooms (Score:5, Funny)
Execs #2 & #3: Woo-hoo, that'll really help us get a leg up on the competition!
Exec #1: Oh, wait... We don't have any competition. We don't have to share our lines with anyone, so no one else can get their foot in the door here. I guess we'll have to bonus our expansion money out to ourselves, instead.
Exec #2 (holding plastic fiber up to his eye) : Hey, Dick, I think I can see you through this thing. Neato. Somebody get me a martini.
Telcos don't care about us rural rednecks (Score:1)
When will (non-lagged via satellite) broadband come to the rest of us?
Re:Telcos don't care about us rural rednecks (Score:2)
Re:Telcos don't care about us rural rednecks (Score:2, Informative)
Cheap and Bendy? (Score:1, Offtopic)
Critical Angle? (Score:1)
Not sure where you heard that.. (Score:2)
Maybe on really old fiber.. but any sample I've seen in the last 10 years, it's been easy to bend it far enough to lose your signal without harming the fiber one bit.
Perfect timing... (Score:2)
In an unrelated story (Score:2)
Loss and dispersion? (Score:2)
Short Distances. (Score:2)
Whorin' 4 All the Peeps (Score:1)
Advances N optical-fibre making @ thee Australian
Photonics research centre could bring communications @
thee speed uv light into Australian homes and
businesses N thee next few years.
Thee centre holds patents over a new way 2 make
optical fibres using plastic polymers instead uv thee
traditional silicon-based glass. (A polymer iz a big
molecule composed uv many smaller molecules strung N
long, repeating chains. Examples R DNA, proteins,
rubber, rayon and plastics.)
Thee advance - microstructured polymer optical fibres
(MPOF) - allows thee manufacture uv optical fibres
that R much smaller, cheaper, more rugged and easier 2
make than glass fibres because, N part, they don't
need thee added weight uv protective coatings.
Australian Photonics CEO Mark Sceats says thee new
plastic fibres R about thee width uv a human hair and
can turn through 90 degrees much more readily than
glass fibres. thee technology recently won thee
excellence-N-innov8shun award from telecomms magazine
CommsWorld.
Thee fibre's lower cost also makes it attractive 2
networking vendors who can replace copper coaxial
networks used N most buildings and homes. Optical
fibres will boost transmission speeds by several
orders uv magnitude, from 100Mbps 2 gigabits a second,
Sceats sez. Plastic-based optical fibres may also
permit carriers 2 jump thee curb, bridging thee last
hurdle 2 take high-speed 2-way Internet from thee
street 2 thee home instead uv using thee slower hybrid
fibre-coaxial (HFC) cable.
"Thee communication people want has been increasing
from 56kbps a few years ago 2 54Mbps now," Sceats
says. "N five 2 10 years we will talk about how 2
connect people up @ 100-1000Mbps. That's what we need
2 prepare for."
Carriers would no longer have 2 build huge trenches 2
lay fibre, he says, when a connection thee width uv a
fishing line would suffice.
Thee global downturn N telecommunications and IT works
2 Australia's advantage if we keep our eye on thee big
prize once a recovery occurs, he says.
"We shouldn't underestim8 thee amount uv capital we
will have 2 invest 2 B a player N these gaymes. That's
why getting N early enables us 2 scale up
manufacturing 2 a very high volume."
A problem thee industry faces iz an inability 2 get
test beds N place 2 prove thee technology, he says.
Also, it's not enough 2 B a research centre for
overseas companies, because @ thee first sign uv a
rocky economy, cuts R more likely 2 B made here then
close 2 a US or European headquarters.
"Now iz thee time 2 pump money n2 R&D. Because uv thee
time it takes 2 get 2 market, we have 2 B well
positioned 2 catch thee next wave. Its all about
getting these big fat pipes that were layed N North
America 2 people who want broadband - and real
broadband, not thee wussy broadband people R marketing
@ thee moment."
Fast Enough? (Score:3, Insightful)
Plastic? They don't say what the top expected speed is, but historically, its not been good.
The rollout of a fiber infrastructure costs big bucks. Usually, infrastructure is amortized over a 50 year period. Assuming a two-fold increase in speed need every 18 months (we used to follow that curve in actual deployed technologies, but have fallen off lately thanks to the telcos and cable companies getting their hooks in), and assuming 1 MBaud is needed today though I'd say its more, the needs 50 years for now would be in the area of 1MB * 2^33. I'd say that's realistic as I'd like to be able to do things like have my computer record and analyze continuously the output of multiple 3D remote cameras.
Even glass falls short of that with today's technology, but at least gets closer and holds the possibility that advances in drivers and receivers over that time could get us there.
Short sighted infrastructure rollouts are already killing us. Let's hope the mistake that has been made with DSL (rolling out XDSL instead of ADSL and not having clear paths to go to step through HDSL and VDSL in 18 month increments) is learned from. Infrastructure rollouts MUST plan for the distant future.
Big deal (Score:2, Funny)
I have a battery-operated toy that uses 'wires' made of plastic to transmit light.
I got it at the Smurf-Capades like 18 years ago!
Not so quick (Score:5, Insightful)
When our town put some fibre in for a new government centre they decided to double the number from what was specified in the bid but the cost only went up something like 2 percent.
Re:Not so quick (Score:2)
If they could come up with more sturdy fibers that'd be great, but a new ending system would be even better. Like maybe some kind of connector with a built-in solvent that would melt the jacket but not the fiber and then cure to hold the connector onto the cable.
Re:Not so quick (Score:2)
2 percent is a whole lot of money for a nationwide change.
But more to the point, if this stuff is tough/cheap enough, it's definitely not dangerous, so there's no reason they'd need to put it underground. It's not conductive. They could duct-tape/staple it to the power line.
But, the thing is... I thought the actual cost of the glass was already inconsequential when compared to the cost of the interface at each end of the cable. Whether or not they've got some neat new cheap way to replace the light conductor, weren't the ends of the cable more expensive? I could be wrong. I've been wrong before.
Eh. Iduno. I think we need some wireless ethernet card maker to ship a wifi card with some dark silicon. Then once there's a million users, give everyone an update that lights up the cards and co-opts the analog TV spectrum. No one would be able to use their TVs, and the company would get bootfucked by the FCC, but we'd have our nationwide ad hoc wireless 30mbit network. Hehe. And then we'd never have to pay for bacon again, with all those flying pigs.
Re:Not so quick (Score:3, Informative)
DWDM laser = a few thousand
POF source = a few hundred
Also, LEDs can be used with POF. These sources are only a few dollars once mass produced.
As far as application goes, the main place you would see POF is local area network
Re:Not so quick (Score:2)
Re:Not so quick (Score:2)
Limitations of existing plastic fibers? (Score:2)
Anyway, am I to take it that these plastic fibers are inferior to glass in some way? In transparency, perhaps? Or maybe they absorb in near-infrared wavelengths: glass and especially quartz (or fused silica rather) are far superior to most plastics in transmission of light in the 8000 to 20000 angstrom range.
hyacinthus.
fiber will never go to peoples homes ! (Score:2)
2 years ago it costs approx.$1500 to set up an ISDN line in a clients office. thats 128k both directions.
today I just set up another client with two officed about 50 miles from each other with a T1 in both offices plus 6 voice lines each. one T1 is 256 the other 512. plus 16 IP's e-mail and such. If I were to call the local phone company and request this service I would be paying upwards of $1500 however with another company using the same exact lines as teh local company they can do it for $600 a month. why ? simple price fixing companies will always stretch technology as long as people are willing to pay. So even if all this wonderful fiber is available commercially I doubt companies will be willing to provide it to homes. keep in mind this involves trenching all over again. A more realistic option will be wireless with fiber running to each transmition point.
and it means nothing... (Score:3, Interesting)
fiber into the home.... WHY? is it needed? no.. will it be needed ? not for at least 10-15 years. and it wont be useful to anyone for a lot longer than that. The cost of laying fiber is not the cost of the fiber... it's the cost of directional boring or the manual labor to install it... regular old "expensive" glass fiber is dirt cheap. and most places lie down 24 or 48 count fiber when they only need 1 or 2 of them.. as the cost difference is minimal. (plus you can make gobs of cash selling the dark to other companies)
Plastic fiber is a neat idea
Re:and it means nothing... (Score:2)
>>>>>
He he. Hopefully I'll be out of college by then. I actually kinda enjoy the 300K+ per second I get whenever I connect to someone else on Internet2. Wonder what'll happen to the speed when other people get on
Re:and it means nothing... (Score:2)
Re:and it means nothing... (Score:2)
Re:And you forgot the cost of lighting fiber. (Score:2)
I have a $25,000.00 fusion splicing machine... now I have to buy another one or retro this one for the plastic?? unless I am laying 500 miles of it (48count) the cost isnt justified. Plus until they can give me specs and show me splices that have a 0db loss (my fusion splicer regulary gives me a 0db loss splice) it has no benifit to me.. I have armored fiber in the ground... I cant bend the cable far enough to attenuate the light let alone break it...
there are ZERO benifits to someone that uses fiber on a daily basis.. maybe in the future it will, hopefully it will drive the price of glass down.. but my glass doesnt degrade optically for a hundred years... can they promise me that with their polymer?
When I saw 'Cheap and Bendy' ... (Score:2)
Adult industry implications (Score:2, Funny)
More flexible?? (Score:2)
Maybe they're putting into layman's terms the new fiber's lessened susceptibility to attenuation due to bending. Modern fiber attenuates horribly if bent to less then (as a general rule) twenty times the outside diameter.
The upside of this is that if your signal is too high, a proper level is only a pen and some scotch tape away.
Hemp Plastics! (Score:2)
Cheers, Joshua
Re:So when do I get fiber in my house? (Score:1)
Re:So when do I get fiber in my house? (Score:1)
Re:So when do I get fiber in my house? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So when do I get fiber in my house? (Score:1)
It's the only way anyone will get it cheap. (Score:1)
There's plenty of stories from small communities who Telco's said couldn't get DSL that organized, purchased the necessary hardware, and now run inexpensive commercial-grade bandwidth to all their homes.
-Matt
Re:Privacy issues with optical fiber networks (Score:2)
But you do have a good point, they can watch you, every bit of data that goes across their networks is potentially accessable to them. If you run a webcam at home it's possible for someone to along the way to try to load each image as it's transmitted. Worse yet, instant messages and irc and e-mail are all sent 'in the clear' so they can be monitored, formatted, and greped for interesting words. Quite unlike telephone calls it's technically possible to capture (short term at least) and monitor all clear text transmissions.
Re:Finally (Score:1)
Re:Finally (Score:1)
For example- 3 years ago, i bought a external HP 1x-2x CD burner- 300.00 Now, I can get a 48X for 80.
56k modem new 5 years ago - 75.00 now - 12.00
It will take some time, but then again, it will also take some time to lay all that fiber.
I belive that in 7-10 years, 60%-80% of the US will have fiber to the door.
Re:Finally (Score:1)
Re:Use a spell checker, dimwit. (Score:1)
Re:So? This is new? (Score:2, Insightful)
Confusing the fiber with the armor. (Score:2)
I can assure you, as someone working in the telecom industry, that the fibers we're working with are glass.
Are you sure you're not confusing the fiber itself with the layers of plastic protective armor around it?
Re:It's not the speed that matters.... (Score:2)
Re:Where did the french come from? (Score:2)