3. Fibre optic communication
This offers the widest bandwidth of all optical technologies. The technology is based around highly transparent glass fibre. Light is launched at one end and a photo-diode translates the light back into digital data at the other end.
The Flash movie below takes you through the main points regarding fibre-optic communication
Fibre optic cable is widely used for larger LAN installations where cable runs exceed 100 metres or so, where copper cable would struggle with weakening signals. It is also widely used where extreme bandwidth is required for example cable television and high speed internet access.
Advantages |
Disadvantages |
---|---|
Can carry signals over a much longer distance without a repeater compared to copper. The more repeaters used the more expensive it is to set up. | Fibre is more expensive than copper cable |
Extremely large data capacity | Connecting fibres together ("splicing") is more difficult |
Immune to electrical interference | The complex electronics at both ends of the line tends to be more expensive |
Immune to corrosion | Needs specialist expertise to lay fibre and many installers are more familiar with copper cable |
Can carry many different services over the same line, TV, telephone, data transfer | Fibre cannot carry power as it is made of glass. Copper cable can carry both signal and power at the same time |
Can be used in hazardous environments such as petro-chemical refineries | Failure can be more catastrophic than a copper cable because you may have crammed many services over a single cable - they all fail because of a single cable failure. |
'Future proofs' your network to cope with the growth in data traffic - plenty of bandwidth | |
Excellent security as it is difficult to tap into a glass fibre without detection | |
One cable carries many fibres, each fibre can carry 10Gbps or more | |
Each fibre could be used for a different service |
challenge see if you can find out one extra fact on this topic that we haven't already told you
Click on this link: Fibre to the home