The Advantages and Disadvantages of Fiber Optics June 4, 2009Posted by Paul Seibert in Fiber Optics, Telecommunications.
Tags: Fiber Optics, fiberoptic, networking, Optical fiber, Optical fiber
The Advantages and Disadvantages of Fiber Optics June 4, 2009Posted by Paul Seibert in Fiber Optics, Telecommunications.
Tags: Fiber Optics, fiberoptic, networking, Optical fiber, Optical fiber cable, Optical Time Domain Reflectometer, Photon, Telecommunications
Advantages of fiber optics:
1. Extremely high bandwidth – No other cable-based data transmission medium offers the bandwidth that fiber does.
2. Easy to accomodate increasing bandwidth – Using many of the recent generations of fiber optic cabling, new equipment can be added to the inert fiber cable that can provide vastly expanded capacity over the originally laid fiber. DWDM, or Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing, lends fiber optic cabling the ability to turn various wavelengths of light traveling down the fiber on and off at will. These two characteristics of fiber cable enable dynamic network bandwidth provisioning to provide for data traffic spikes and lulls.
3. Resistance to electromagnetic interference – Fiber has a very low rate of bit error (10 EXP-13), as a result of fiber being so resistant to electromagnetic interference. Fiber-optic transmission are virtually noise free.
4. Early detection of cable damage and secure transmissions – Fiber provides an extremely secure transmission medium, as there is no way to detect the data being transmitted by “listening in” to the electromagnetic energy “leaking” through the cable, as is possible with traditional, electron-based transmissions. By constantly monitoring an optical network and by carefully measuring the time it takes light to reflect down the fiber, splices in the cable can be easily detected.
Disadvantages of Fiber Optics:
1. Installation costs, while dropping, are still high – Despite the fact that fiber installation costs are dropping by as much as 60% a year, installing fiber optic cabling is still relatively costly. As installation costs decrease, fiber is expanding beyond its original realm and major application in the carrier backbone and is moving into the local loop, and through technologies such as FTTx (Fiber To The Home, Premises, etc,) and PONs (Passive Optical networks), enabling subscriber and end user broadband access.
2. Special test equipment is often required – The test equipment typically and traditionally used for conventional electron-based networking is of no use in a fiber op