What makes fiber optic faster than copper?

Have you ever wondered why fiber optic cables are faster than copper wires?

The answer is an interesting and complicated one that has to do with the history of how these cables and wires came to be. Both copper and fiber optic cables have been used so far for electrical wiring and telecommunication purposes.

After the invention of fiber optic wires, it was preferred instead of copper with its data or electric transmission capability almost at the speed of light.

Watch the video to find out more.

#engineering #fiberopticcable #copperwire #datatransmission

[pertybluestang]

I've really learned how to plug cables in after this video.

[Aanonymous]

The quality of the cables is unmatched by your ISP's greediness.

[michaeltb]

Fibre optics apparently appeared in the early 70s. Initially we played with solid glass rods coated in another glass which caused light to reflect back inside. Over years they became thinner and flexible which increased their potential uses. Amazing how things have developed. Today I have a box across the street which connects to my home with copper, but even months after new cables and connectors were installed, there is no sign of a FO cable coming across the street. Progress is not always fast.

[EchoTangoSuitcase]

I find myself unable to adequately articulate just how wrong and misleading this video is.

[shivsankermondal]

Copper - Long live resistance
Fiber - there is light in end of the tunnel

[Monni]

The signal doesn't travel in the copper wire, it travels in the magnetic field around the copper wire... One can't do the same with fiber optics... I have 1 Gbit/s connection using 1960s copper wire that isn't even rated Cat-2. No current ISP does even try to fix the cables if they break... It would cost a lot more than running new cables for whole neighbourhood...

[Hoidienvietnam]

*Traditional copper wires transmit electrical currents, while fibre optic technology sends pulses of light generated by a light emitting diode or laser along optical fibres. ... And this is the key difference — fibre optic cables have much higher bandwidths than copper cables*

[dma.amd]

As someone who works in IT, I still can't comprehend how fast everything happens. Literally less than a second, from DNS lookups to encapsulating and decapsulating --and considering the end receiver is on the other side of the planet. DNS is just one protocol, there are other things attached to the data packets, such as IP addressing and tags. How da hell does this happen in less than 1 second, across the world? It's still hard to believe up to this day.

[jmikronis]

Modulating light carries much more information than any copper or other alloy wire can.

[dipinjose]

Interesting engineering.
Please don't don't flash so many images.Its difficult to concentrate.

[robm]

It would be more pleasant to watch if you didn't Flash the images so fast

[starmc]

Light doesn't have resistance.... Electricity does.

[BrilliantDesignOnline]

0:29 That wire wrapper is a VERY cool device. Even though fiber optic is not susceptible to EMI like copper, it unfortunately is still susceptible to backhoes. I can hardly wait until FO is cheap enough for home networks (gigabit).

[ldc]

another BIG difference is safety. You CAN be electrocuted by copper wire. You can NOT be electrocuted by fiber.

[SudipChorghe-ymis]

In india they are putting fiber optics wire in every village and city.

[SantanuProductions]

This video is a true example for the idiom beating round the bush. Not sure if it genuinely answers the primary question.

[johnpanos]

i'm a retired telephone frameman/copper cable splicer/testing tech. fiber faster than copper? fiber need a t-carrier system in order for it to work. t-carrier is basically a binary encrypted analog signal. the first T-1's used sf/ami coding and later esf/b8zs when i left in 2007. check out DSx Beer Analogy for more info.

[victortitov]

Okay, this video in a nutshell: so fiber optics are faster because they have more bandwidth. Which is actually a definition of "faster". But the actual question of WHY do they have more bandwidth is not answered. I'm sorry, but brr goes the thumbs-down button!

[mgabrielle]

what he didn't say which is very important is the data frequency, yes it is somewhat called the bandwidth, but many wouldn't understand what is a bandwidth, why can it not be made same as that of fiber optic, here is why, higher the switching frequency of digital signals i.e. 0s and 1s copper cable tends to have capacitance and inductance, this limits the highest frequency transmission, so if one were to transmit 3000 simultaneous calls over a single copper wire, we have to remember our speech frequency lies between 20Hz and 20Khz, but in most telephonic communications a range of say 100Hz to 4Khz is sufficient to hear a clear enough speech, so to transmit 3000 seperate speech signals each with 4 Khz means we have got to transmit 3000 x 4000 which is 12Mhz which immensely fast for a copper cable, and about its limit using a special cable with lowest inductance and capacitance as these cause signal deterioration, as well as copper has resistance so original signal when it reaches the other end say a mile away will have become much less in strength, so repeaters will be needed to boost the signal and send it away further, with Fiber Optic we only have resistance to light, but not the inductance and capacitance so we can transmit many more speeches each of 4khz x say 30, 000, in other words we can transmit much higher frequencies of up to a good few giga bytes per second, like in copper cable, fiber optic also losses some light so it also needs repeaters every few miles, light fades with distance when travelling through a medium, But also to transmit many thousand simultaneous calls at once also requires time division circuits called Multiplexers, so this will take a split second (nano seconds) sample of your speech and send it off to Demultiplexer where individual speech signals are separated and send off to its individual destination, via copper cables or via fiber optic cables, so quite a complex operation but nothing is beyond the capability of modern fast computers to do that working at few Ghz processors. It is a miracle this technology.

[Acid]

fiber is cheaper than copper wire.
The expensive part is transmitter&reciever. But while time passes, it gets cheaper and cheaper