What Makes Fiber Optic Cables Better Than Copper Cables?

[Antonio Crocombe]

There are few things in my mind, which is the best fiber optic cable or copper cable. I need help for the clear about this point. which is the better and faster connectivity cable?

 

[iEsther]

Optic fiber has the fastest transmission power. Even there would be no loss in the transmission.

 

[Jerry_]

(For the basics)

In copper cables the signal is transported by electromagnetic waves, while in fiber optic cables the signal is transported by light.

Therefore the two media (copper cable/fiber optic) not only directly influence the signal (f.i. electric resistance resulting in loosing signal strength; electromagnetic interference; etc. ), but also the higher frequency of light allows to transmit more information in the same timespan.

However, not to forget is that electric devices work ... with electric signals; i.e. Even so you have a high gain in transmission speed and signal strength&quality while it is passing through the fiber optic, the electric signal needs first to be converted in to a light signal and later on back to an electric signal (optocouplers need to be added on both ends)

Finally, the higher bandwith of fiber optics allow to use single fibers for bi-directional communication, which -on top of the fact that it does not need a ground cable for the TX and RX cables (4 copper cables for bi-directional communication) - to be thinner (and easier to produce)

 

[bgr34]

transmission power like said above. it's mure powerful

 

[kataran]

The obvious is speed but Copper will not go away anytime soon as it’s the best material for conducting high voltage electricity

 

[Grace Hadid]

Fibre optics are far better than any other transmission medium as it allows faster transmission. data travels with the speed of photons in it. Yes it is expensive but provides best reliablilty among others. Apart from that are poor conductor of heat than copper wires.

 

[imwjl]

The basics have been said and I don't see this as pertinent for the consumer oriented stuff we discuss here. It's performance that shows up in wide area networking, enterprise technology and storage. Even in a small enterprise where I use it and feel the advantage it is all expensive and not for average user stuff.

The places I've used fiber instead of copper as an end user or not TELCO or ISP are longer distances in a building and in hyper converged virtualization. It can be entertaining to look at the incredible capacity or capability. Most of our 750 employees think the "servers" are computers somewhere. It's really files in pools of RAM, solid state storage tier & spindle storage tier connected via fiber and network switches that cost more than many pay for a car.

 

[metllicamilitia]

I assume we’re talking about data transmission here, at least let’s start there. CAT5/CAT6 cable (standard Ethernet cable), has a data range of 300 feet, or 91 meters. That’s a pretty hard cap. You can put a data booster, though it would have to been done every 300 feet. Fiber is a little different as the different types of fiber will affect the data range. However most fiber is good for at least 2km for 100mbps.

As far data transfer speeds, fiber wins again, and as stated in previous comments, fiber can easily handle bi-directional simultaneous data transfer. It can send and receive data at the same time, copper cannot do this on the same line. So there is more communication, happening faster, over greater distances with fiber rather than copper.

With fiber in a consumer sense, that’s depends on where you live. A lot of ISP’s in the US are starting to offer fiber run gigabit internet packages. I myself have fiber gigabit internet with Google.

With fiber in a business sense, most of the time fiber is used for long distance data transfer ending in standard network switches that then use copper within buildings.

While fiber offers the better technology, most devices still require copper connections, and it depends on your needs for which you should use.