Laying fiber optic cable -- when?

The way I see it, at least for my home, wireless is just a temporary
situation until it makes sense to run fiber.
(Will continue to have some limited wireless for mobile devices: laptops,
PDA phone, etc.)

I'm to lazy to run ethernet cable throughout my house, but fiber would make
sense...

But when? Fiber was supposed to have replaced everything except power lines
"Any Day Now" for decades! I remember reading articles about it in the
1980's!

What is the holdup?

"bc20" <bc20z020@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:qPMrl.37446$Rg3.29008@newsfe17.iad...
> The way I see it, at least for my home, wireless is just a temporary
> situation until it makes sense to run fiber.
> (Will continue to have some limited wireless for mobile devices: laptops,
> PDA phone, etc.)
>
> I'm to lazy to run ethernet cable throughout my house, but fiber would
> make sense...
>
> But when? Fiber was supposed to have replaced everything except power
> lines "Any Day Now" for decades! I remember reading articles about it in
> the 1980's!
>
> What is the holdup?
>
>
>
>

cost....

> The way I see it, at least for my home, wireless is just a temporary
> situation until it makes sense to run fiber.

Then it'll be never. Fiber inside the home isn't a good idea, nor is it
necessary. Why? Basically because it's fragile and expensive to terminate
(the outlets and the cables).

Fiber to the premise makes more sense. The wires are pretty much fixed in
place and aren't going to be screwed around with.

But inside the house or office? No way, it's just not worth the hassles and
expense. Not now and not likely ever.

On 5 Mar, 19:44, "Bill Kearney" <wkearne...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > The way I see it, at least for my home, wireless is just a temporary
> > situation until it makes sense to run fiber.
>
> Then it'll be never. *Fiber inside the home isn't a good idea, nor is it
> necessary. *Why? *Basically because it's fragile and expensive to terminate
> (the outlets and the cables).
>
> Fiber to the premise makes more sense. *The wires are pretty much fixedin
> place and aren't going to be screwed around with.
>
> But inside the house or office? *No way, it's just not worth the hassles and
> expense. *Not now and not likely ever.

It looked like a good idea to some people in the mid 90's
when wired ethernet was limited to 10M. For sure a few
people did put it in. I am almost sure I heard of an
investment bank in London that did fibre to the desk.
Then we got 100M Ethernet and the need vanished.
Now of course 1G on copper.

As I understand it - *very* limited - this is still baseband
signalling (oh maybe 1G is not quite) so prepsumably
if broadband techniques were used then that rate could
go up a lot (by orders of magnitude). Of course the encoding
delay goes through the roof, just depends on what you want.

1G seems to be sufficient for todays applications. In many
cases propadation delay dominates application performance.

Well we now have 10G over copper apparently, I have never
seen a 10G port of any kind though.

"Bill Kearney" <wkearney99@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:5_KdnRKYL94yti3UnZ2dnUVZ_tLinZ2d@speakeasy.ne t...
>> The way I see it, at least for my home, wireless is just a temporary
>> situation until it makes sense to run fiber.
>
> Then it'll be never. Fiber inside the home isn't a good idea, nor is it
> necessary. Why? Basically because it's fragile and expensive to
> terminate (the outlets and the cables).
>
> Fiber to the premise makes more sense. The wires are pretty much fixed in
> place and aren't going to be screwed around with.
>
> But inside the house or office? No way, it's just not worth the hassles
> and expense. Not now and not likely ever.

I guess what I'm thinking is one fiber cable could be used for everything:
LAN, internet, TV, phone, video, music. Who knows what that would lead to.
Devices could start using all that smartly merged together...

If fiber were mass produced, wouldn't that cause the price to come down?

I'm imaging decades from now when every house could be a (HD)TV broadcast
"studio"...

bc20 wrote:
> I guess what I'm thinking is one fiber cable could be used for everything:
> LAN, internet, TV, phone, video, music.

I have TV, phone, LAN, internet and music all over ethernet cable under
my floors.

> Who knows what that would lead to.
> Devices could start using all that smartly merged together...

Bwahahah. That depends on the manufacturers stopping from using
proprietary interfaces. which will be when hell freezes over, or
cellphone makers agree on a standard connector for their chargers.

> If fiber were mass produced, wouldn't that cause the price to come down?

It /is/ masss produced :-) Its just expensive to work with. Have you
ever tried to work with glass wires? :-)

On Thu, 05 Mar 2009 22:27:31 +0000, Mark McIntyre
<markmcintyre@TROUSERSspamcop.net> wrote:

>bc20 wrote:
>> I guess what I'm thinking is one fiber cable could be used for everything:
>> LAN, internet, TV, phone, video, music.
>
>I have TV, phone, LAN, internet and music all over ethernet cable under
>my floors.
>
>> Who knows what that would lead to.
>> Devices could start using all that smartly merged together...
>
>Bwahahah. That depends on the manufacturers stopping from using
>proprietary interfaces. which will be when hell freezes over, or
>cellphone makers agree on a standard connector for their chargers.

You're right to be skeptical, but here is yet another such
announcement, like similar others that have come before:
"Standardized Cell Phone Chargers Are On Their Way"
http://sustainablog.org/2009/02/17/s...-on-their-way/

On Thu, 5 Mar 2009 17:07:26 -0500, "bc20" <bc20z020@hotmail.com>
wrote:

>I guess what I'm thinking is one fiber cable could be used for everything:
>LAN, internet, TV, phone, video, music. Who knows what that would lead to.
>Devices could start using all that smartly merged together...
>
>If fiber were mass produced, wouldn't that cause the price to come down?

No. It's still a rather messy production process.
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFl1dHUJj98> (9 mins)
Actually, un-clad fiber is relatively cheap. The jacketed and
protected fiber cables cost money. Also, attaching connectors
requires considerable practice and patience.

Incidentally, there are 3 different diameter fibers (50, 62.5, 125
microns), a mess of "colors", and at least 6 different connectors.

>I'm imaging decades from now when every house could be a (HD)TV broadcast
>"studio"...

<http://802.11junk.com/jeffl/pics/drivel/slides/fiber_01.html>
I "bought" this mess from the local recycler. I now have 2 more boxes
of the same stuff. I'm not 100.0% sure, but it's apparently *ALL*
defective. It's the stuff that failed various tests from a local
cable production house.

There's another problem. Fiber can easily do 100MBits/sec or
gigabits/sec. Do you really need that to move 3Kbits/sec POTS voice?
Higher speeds costs higher dollars. When you're trying to move
everything from slow voice to fast video, the only way it's going to
be cost effective is if the volume is going to pay for the overkill.
That may happen when we start seeing Toshlink connectors on more than
just home theater boxes. However, even Toshlink is overpriced because
it's overkill for moving digital audio. For the time being, CAT5 for
everything from POTS voice to video is good enough. Wait for the
industry to shake out the losers, and then wait for home networking to
adopt whatever works in industry.

--
# Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060
# 831-336-2558 jeffl@comix.santa-cruz.ca.us
# http://802.11junk.com jeffl@cruzio.com
# http://www.LearnByDestroying.com AE6KS

On Thu, 05 Mar 2009 20:48:14 -0800, Jeff Liebermann <jeffl@cruzio.com>
wrote:

>No. It's still a rather messy production process.
><http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFl1dHUJj98> (9 mins)

Ugh.. That video made me ill from all the gushing and self serving
public relations buzzwords. This video clip shows more detail on the
optical fiber production process:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llI8Mf_faVo> 5 mins

--
# Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060
# 831-336-2558 jeffl@comix.santa-cruz.ca.us
# http://802.11junk.com jeffl@cruzio.com
# http://www.LearnByDestroying.com AE6KS

> I guess what I'm thinking is one fiber cable could be used for everything:
> LAN, internet, TV, phone, video, music. Who knows what that would lead
> to. Devices could start using all that smartly merged together...

Which is being done now, more or less, with FIOS. Fiber to the home, in
turn distributed inside the home by copper. Either by coax or ethernet.

> If fiber were mass produced, wouldn't that cause the price to come down?

The hassle is in the connectors and how they're attached to the ends of the
glass strands (it's not wire in the classic sense). It has to be optically
aligned properly and doing that is not inexpensive. This as opposed to
copper which any DIY nitwit can set up.

> I'm imaging decades from now when every house could be a (HD)TV broadcast
> "studio"...

Oh joy, youtube idiots in hi-def. Blech.