Advantages of Fiberoptic Wiring over Copper Cabling
Development and introduction of wide band services require high transmitting speeds as well as more efficient transmission modes. This
demand is best served by optical fibers representing an optimal transmission method due to high transmission capacity. A fiber optic cable with the same bandwidth as a comparable copper cable is less than 2%
of both the size and weight. Apart from this characteristic, optical fibers provide a variety of advantages like low attenuation and insensitivity to electronic interferences. Fibers do not use electric
current or have interference. It uses less energy, maintenance costs are lower and is easier to install. CATV is also adopting fiber optics. Only fiber has the necessary bandwidth for carrying voice,
data and video simultaneously. Fiber is a secure medium, immune from tapping, because if the signal is tapped, light loss is unavoidable, and the connection is shut down.
Lifespan:
A currently installed shielded twisted pair system with an expected lifespan
of eight years will have to be re-cabled after only 3-4 years due to the increased bandwidth requirements. Fiber optic cable, on the other hand, is currently ready to accept protocols and interfaces such as
FDDI (Fiber Distributed Data Interface), ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode), ESCON (Enterprise Systems Connection), Fiber Channel and perhaps any additional mode that may arrive or be proposed in the near
future. Because of these capabilities it is believed that the lifespan of a fiber based LAN with multimode fiber goes up to thirty years. |
