How fast do you think Fiber Optic lines are?

[HaVoC]

I work for a telecom company and we have SONET networks that run at OC-192 line speeds, which is about 10 Gigabits/sec! That's just the beginning of it. Fiber has a LOT more headroom to go. I was reading a SONET primer book that was comparing bandwidths of various physical carriers. The best copper is coax cable which has around 1Ghz of bandwidth. Guess how much fiber has? With a wavelength of 1550nm that gives around 300 Terahertz! That is theoretical, but even if real-world gets to half that, think of the speeds. Until I started working here, I had no real idea of what bandwidth could be.

 

[Windogg]

Imagine OC-1024. I heard it has been developed. Mmmmmm.....

 

[Mday]

i think testers have gotten 100 GB, or something...

 

[GQ]

In twenty years you can tell the grand kids about those old T1 lines that where so fast .

I thought the switches to handle that kind of bandwidth is the "problem" today not the pipe. I'm not in the backbone carrier industry but I read an article about it once and I think thats what they said.

How much for an oc-3 to my house?

 

[BoberFett]

GQ

Researchers (don't know where, I'd have to dig up the article) have developed a fiber switch that uses photosensitive cells that can switch something like 100 Gbit/sec.

 

[HaVoC]

Windogg, The next ITU standard for SONET is OC-768. However, this is not really commercially practical at this point. Besides, other solutions are just using multiple channels of OC-48 and OC-192 to aggregate bandwidth.

Yes, the problem is not the pipe, but the switching. There is still no such thing as a purely optical switch that can handle protection switching. This will change in the near future.

 

[DBavaria]

well so far we got 300 terahertz rite? well it will be a while untill we build sum computers that will use that line to the full extent and thats gonna take some time

 

[JackBurton]

As far as back bones, those are NICE! But I heard a quick clip about how they working on lasers to tranfer data (they are pretty much done). This will be (don't quote me) about 10-100Gbps to your home and it will cost about the same as cable or DSL. And I thought my 1.5Mbps connection was nice.

 

[dszd0g]

OC-768 is about 40 Gb/s.

I really don't know the theoretical maximum of what fiber can do or even if it has one. From what I understand it's all a matter of how many wavelengths we can transmit and then differentiate on the other end. This is an area where a lot of development work is being done.

 

[RossGr]

Aglient, the other part of the HP breakup, is developing the switching technology. Believe it or not it is based on Thermal Inkjet technology.

 

[Smurfwow]

the southern cross cables (au->nz->us) are made up of 2 * 120Gbps fibre pairs and 2 * 160Gbps fibre pairs.

and it will be up for commercial use 3-4 months.

 

[Nullity]

My friend told me of a radio/light/laser pulse technology that allows data to be sent in pulses rather than a constant stream of data. He said this would allow cell phones to run off of battery watches for a very long time. He also said it would allow extremely fast wireless data transfers with great bandwith. He said another possibility would be to use this technology in fiber optics to increase bandwith and speed. Anyone know what he is talking about? Or is he making this all up? I have no proof or evidence of this..nor do I know if they have this technology already. Someone please enlighten me.

Null

 

[M]

I believe the fastest communication over fibre achieved to date is ~3.5 Tb/s. From memory this was achieved over a 100 Mile link by a team of researchers from Lucent.

As for real-world stuff, well, yeah, the southern-cross project is impressive, and I can't wait for that injection of bandwidth (being an australian), but have a look at this: http://www.oxygen.org

I believe the maximum throughput on long-haul undersea segments will be 2.56Tb/s. :Q

 

[corkyg]

For a very easy to understand report on this topic, see U.S. News & World Report, 17 July, page 36. Lucent is leading the way. The "microelectromechanical systems" (MEMS) switch was recently developed by Bell Labs, a division of Lucent.

 

[thorin]

I work for NortelNetworks and they have announced a project called OPTera which will start at 1.6Tb and ramp up. On a 1.6Tb connection you could transmitt the entire contents of the Library of Congress from Washington to LA in 4 sec.

Check this Press Release:
http://www.nortelnetworks.com/products/01/optera/long_haul/1600/index.html

And trust me they plan to ramp far past 1.6Tb. One of my neighbours is programming the router shell for OPTera and he's been telling me about the testing lab with Multiple OC-192s they're going to have to setup to test the damn thing.

Thorin

 

[Sunner]

Have a look at http://www.whatis.com/thespeed.htm.
Speed ratings for just about every current line out there.

 

[dee]

Everyone gets excited when talking about the speed of fibre tech but most seem to forget that the local telephone loop and cable lines (in the UK at least & I'd guess USA as well but not sure) are almost exclusively copper.

To get fibre to the home means relaying these lines which is going to be a massive expense (I remember reading a while back that when AT&T was the sole provider in the US over 50% of its assets comprised the actual copper in the telephone lines).

You really have to remember that the big selling point for adsl & cable modem (for the telcos at least) is that they operate on the existing copper infrastructure.

While I have no doubt that fibre will eventually replace copper I really don't expect it to happen to any significant extent in the next 10 - 20 years (here in the UK at least - maybe the higher levels of competition in the US will accelerate its adoption a little).

 

[Scorpion]

dee, that's already happening where I live in the US. SWBell is going to have Fibre runing to everyone's box in 2 years. Then from there, it will eventually be run right up to your house. If this is happening where I live, I'm sure it's already started in other places.

 

[Soccerman]

yes Fiber optics haven't been fully utilized yet, because we haven't thought of all the wasy you can squeeze data through and put them all together.

Now, as for fiber going to you're house. yes it is expensive NOW, but if everyone does it, it will probably cost less.

Fiber SHOULD already be going to you're neighborhood's Box, which connects to all you're coaxial cables which go to you're house. Well, many places should already have this. it's a question of getting someone who you trust into that company so he/she can confirm or deny it..

 

[Nikepete]

A combination of wireless and optical based network could very well be the best approach. Don't have to wire every single home.

 

[Edski]

DAMN Windogg, you drooled so much that MY monitor is wet.

 

[SSP]

What's the down side for wireless technology? Weather?

 

[Soccerman]

there are often ways to get around weather problems when wireless is you're communication. don't ask me for them, cause I don't remember!

 

[ElFenix]

the cool thing about fibre optics is that some swiss researchers were able to send a photon to bern, and the same photon to geneva! if that sort of thing could be harnessed, the server could sent out only one packet to get to multiple clients. bandwidth per client does not decrease with added clients accessing the same info.

 

[HaVoC]

One of the other engineers where I work was telling me that some company (Lucent?) had developed a technology that would use a laser beam to deliver wireless connectivity between two points in a metropolitan area. This would initially be used as a quick and dirty link that would later be replaced by an in-ground fiber connection. The bandwidth was over OC-48 speed (2.5gigs) and it would work through rain, but not fog. Also, the environmentalists should like it more because it doesn't harm birds like wireless microwave links do. There was also some technology where the transmitter would spin rapidly and deliver bandwidth to multiple receivers! (Imagine broadband on that!)