A Deep Dive into Fiber
The infrastructure of Fiber Optics consists of a line of glass material known as silica used to transfer light from one end of the wire to the other. Because of how silica in this form refracts light, these light signals can be sent over 40 miles without the data being affected.
Technology, in recent years, has had faster growth than anything we have seen before. Computers, cell phones, televisions. All these items becoming more abundant in our everyday lives as well as becoming more advanced and harder to keep up with. One similarity that almost all new technological devices share is use of the internet. These devices each require a web connection to function for their intended use and will not serve their full purpose without it. This may seem like a good thing, but households, specifically rural ones have had trouble with internet issues and their bandwidth being too small or their infrastructure not being as well maintained. With technology speeding up relentlessly, the future of how the internet functions is yet to be determined.
Bandwidth is the amount of internet traffic a network can handle at a given time. Imagine a highway. Each device on the network is sending cars and vehicles down that highway. If there is too much traffic the highways get jammed, slow down, and can stop functioning entirely.
Nowadays DSL is the most common form of internet and data communication. DSL stands for Digital Subscriber Line and simply put, is a wire that runs along our telephone poles and directly into our houses. This wire is a dedicated internet wire and does not transfer electrical power to your house what-so-ever. It flows down the telephones poles and connect to each house that has internet. In today’s world that is almost everyone. This infrastructure was perfect and did what everybody needed when the internet use was not astronomic, but since devices have started using more internet, as well as the number of internet users increasing; DSL is starting to show its flaws. The biggest flaw being bandwidth. This DSL wire down your road is shared by everyone, causing issues on a rainy day when everyone is inside and watching streaming services. When this happens your internet speeds can be much slower than what your ISP or internet service provider promised. On a typical day, this issue does not arise because the DSL wire on the road has higher bandwidth than the amount that is supplied to your house, allowing for a number of houses to use plenty of internet without interrupting each other.
There are three factors that are affected by high bandwidth usage; latency, upload speed, and download speed. Latency, measured in milliseconds, is the amount of time it takes for the information to be sent to your ISP and then get back to your pc. Download speed is the amount of incoming information possible at any given moment while upload speed is the amount of possible information that can be sent from your pc. Both upload speed and download speeds are measured in Megabits per second or Mbps. Latency is affected when networks become congested and are using most or all the available bandwidth. The latency gets slower as Bandwidth is used because only a limited amount of information can be transferred at a time causing information to wait its turn. This doesn’t just happen in your house though; this can happen anywhere on the World-Wide-Web. As I described earlier, not only do our individual houses have bandwidth, but so do the roads and the DSL wires that go down them.
Now that there is an understanding of how DSL functions let us cover some of the other issues: maintenance and reliability. While DSL has been as reliable as we needed in the past, compared to some of the other options that are arising today, reliability is becoming an issue that is un-ignorable. DSL is hard to maintain and hard to pinpoint when something goes wrong. Especially in rural environments, the infrastructure of the internet is not as frequently checked upon and is not fixed as fast when something does go wrong. When internet goes down in a suburban or urban environment more users are affected and ISPs are more inclined to help immediately as the need is greater. But what if I told you reliability is not as much of an issue with newer internet options such as Fiber Optics, Fiber for short?
Fiber is a technology invented in the 1970s but has recently started being put to practical use to supply houses and businesses with internet. The infrastructure of Fiber Optics consists of a line of glass material known as silica used to transfer light from one end of the wire to the other. Because of how silica in this form refracts light, these light signals can be sent over 40 miles without the data being affected. If this distance needs to be extended than the signal only needs to be picked up and retransmitted, a simple and very easy process. On top of Fiber being easier to maintain it also allows for internet speeds multiple times greater than what people experience with DSL. While DSL is a shared Bandwidth on the road, fiber allows for higher internet usage because these wires are dedicated to a node. A node being the point when the fiber turns back into an electrical signal. Because these wires are dedicated to the node, the bandwidth is not affected by people under different nodes.
There are four common configurations for Fiber: Fiber to the Home, Fiber to the Curb, Fiber to the Building, and Fiber to the Neighborhood. Simply put, in each of the configurations the fiber supplies to everyone who is under the given scope. For example, in Fiber to the Building the fiber is converted back to an electrical signal at the building level. If it is an apartment building, everyone must share that electrical wire as if it were DSL, but in a Fiber to the Home setup the fiber is converted directly before it gets to your router, giving a dedicated line for anyone in that household. Because of this design convention it allows for internet speeds that have never been seen before.
High speed internet is classified as internet with download speeds of at least 25 Mbps. This was classified as highspeed internet in the early 2000s when everyone was switching from Dial-Up. A technology we are far beyond. This term “High Speed” is outdated and in today’s world, should not be used to determine if your internet is sufficient for everyday use. DSL connections these days can easily supply 25 to 60 Mbps download speed which rarely go higher as ISPs limit this so that other users on the road can have that same luxury of “High Speed Internet.”
Since Fiber is a dedicated silica wire there is no longer a limit at the consumer level. As a result, this allows your ISP to provide download speeds of up to 1000Mbps without much of a price difference. Most ISPs are adding Fiber as an option but the infrastructure is not very widespread, so the technology is not available to everyone yet. In some neighborhoods the infrastructure is there but not fully implemented. This means the Fiber optic wires are put in place on main roads but then the consumer must pay per foot to get it to their house allowing for an extreme initial down-payment.
I would argue that in the end Fiber is worth it though. Having this dedicated line to your house allows for higher reliability as there are not other users that can interrupt your signal making it so your latency, download, and upload speeds can be much better. Fiber also does not degrade over time like copper DSL wires do, so maintenance is easier to carry out and also to pinpoint when an issue arises. Gone are the days of slow internet as Fiber pushes its way into the scene with competitive pros and little cons, the internet will be grander and vaster than ever before.
- Crimson Wheeler, Service Technician