Kitz Forum
Broadband Related => Broadband Technology => Topic started by: Bowdon on August 17, 2016, 08:45:30 PM
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Lets assume its 2050. OR and others have finally got full fibre to every house/business in the UK.
What are the real advantages of a full fibre network over the current copper network?
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I'll start the list by saying that there will be nothing worth stealing and selling as scrap metal.
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1. RFI issues are gone
2. REIN & SHINE gone
3. Crosstalk gone
4. DLM hopefully gone
5. Faster broadband with bandwidth a home user could not max out
6. more expensive per month
7. probably more expensive OR charges to end-user if no fault found
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No needs for cabinets, lower maintenance costs, can't really think of anything that hasn't already been said.
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The majority of the likes of our own Black Sheep will be out of a job. :(
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Aw, bless ya 4candles. :drink: ............From a purely selfish angle, hopefully I won't be here in 5yrs time .... let alone 2050 !! But I take your point and alas that is one of the downsides to technological advancement, the diminishing need for man-power.
The other being the amount of active threads on kitz ........ just the one. ;D ;D ;D
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Faster broadband with bandwidth a home user could not max out
Not sure if congestion would ever cease to be an issue for contended lines though.
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Not sure if congestion would ever cease to be an issue for contended lines though.
I agree, will probably see more centralized congestion at ISP's data centers and content providers will surely be applying data rate caps that folks can retrieve data at.
I think if say we had a 99% full fibre coverage across the UK the prices for high speed packages would surely be exorbitant to reduce the number of users (required bandwidth)... a 100/100 line would probably be the most popular package for households with anything faster being considered a premium service...
Of course this could not be the case depending on how the main web of fibre's is upgraded in years to come and whether they will be able to carry 1000's of time's more data simultaneously
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Way more reliable. You can virtually go for years without your connection dropping.
Much easier to diagnose and fix issues. With dsl as soon as you sneeze a little too loudly and something has broken.
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Looking at the flip side!
One problem for fibre is water damage or rather freezing water damage.
In the splice enclosures where the protective sheath is stripped away there is the very real risk of the fibres being crushed if water is allowed to get into the enclosures and then it freezes: then they cease to function.
Its more of a problem is those countries which have "real" winter I'd admit, but the problem is a known one.
Keeping the enclosures totally water tight seems to be the current solution or to use some form of anti-freeze gel inside it.
Another issue in theory at least, though I've no idea whether in practice it is an issue if the possible effects of radiation - and in this country that means radon gas in place such as Cornwall.
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Radiation could mean Cherenkov radiation? No, seriously I very very much doubt electrons would be able to get in.
Back to the minus side, lightning strike gone?
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From a purely selfish angle, hopefully I won't be here in 5yrs time .... let alone 2050 !! But I take your point and alas that is one of the downsides to technological advancement, the diminishing need for man-power.
I guess you'll survive in your role until pension time - well I certainly hope so.
Back in 1980 I was on Strowger and TXE2 switching, but the writing was on the wall. Thankfully I was offered a post on transmission, which saw me through to voluntary redundancy in 1999.
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I hope we'll have many years of the pleasure of sheepdom still to come. Not too many, we all need to put our feet up and get on to the serious business of supping the odd pint and making many helpful, sageful posts on kitz.
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Thanks lads ^^^ :drink: :drink: ................ I have to admit, I'm ready to hang mi' Lancashire clogs up now. There's not enough time in the day to do what I want, and work is getting in the way now ;) ;D.
I envy you* guys & gals that are enjoying your retirement, not in a 'wishing ones life away' meaning ...... more like having the time to actually enjoy life's pleasures, rather than trudging to work every day.
*As in the royal 'You', I appreciate Weaver is sadly house-bound for the most part.
Sorry for taking this OT ..... split if you think it's for the best, Mods ?? :)
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Doesn't everyone quote a lifetime for fibre as being 40 years?
If that's right, then BT would likely be starting up a programme of replacement come 2050... :whistle:
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All if the cables are not going to fail all at the same time, there are mathematical witchcraft things they will do to establish what workforce they need if and when full Fiber is rolled out.
I'm just waiting for my quantum entanglement BT Genius Hub 54a with 1ms pings to andromeda,then I'll be waiting for them to enable the superposition it works perfectly on Huawei all I have is 0s and 1s that's unacceptable :lol: :lol:
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All if the cables are not going to fail all at the same time, there are mathematical witchcraft things they will do to establish what workforce they need if and when full Fiber is rolled out.
Absolutely. The lifetime is a statistical thing anyway.
But remember that clock doesn't start with full fibre rollout. It started when BT commenced deploying spine fibre out of exchanges in 2010.
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But remember that clock doesn't start with full fibre rollout. It started when BT commenced deploying spine fibre out of exchanges in 2010.
Surely that logic is also applicable to the fibre used in the telephony network, etc? :-\
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Yes, but is that portion maintained by Openreach engineers? I thought they stuck to the access network.
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> I'm just waiting for my quantum entanglement BT Genius Hub 54a with 1ms pings to andromeda, then I'll be waiting for them to enable the superposition it works perfectly on Huawei all I have is 0s and 1s that's unacceptable
;D
Hilarious! Is there by chance another physicist about, perhaps? (Former (failed) theoretical physics student myself.)
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Yes, but is that portion maintained by Openreach engineers? I thought they stuck to the access network.
No, it is maintained by Operate technicians (so I have been told). And yes, from the MDF outwards to the EU's NTE5. :)
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It gets rather confusing doesnt it?
Apparently BTwholesale own the backhauls from the exchanges when they designed 21CN. This is straight forward and easy to understand.
Its just like how BTw owned MSIP the previous exchange backhauls.
(https://forum.kitz.co.uk/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.kitz.co.uk%2Fadsl%2Fimages%2F21CN_network.png&hash=4c6315937638a8aba4bbe57d6cbea14d8a18760e)
However, it differs with NGA because Openreach have so many cabs which aren't connected to the same exchange as the PCP and instead feed from a head end exchange.
I think (and I could be wrong on this) but because the fibre from a cab may go to an exchange many miles away, these are the 'spines' that belong to Openreach from the Head-end exchange... ie they dont necessarily follow the same path as the traditional exchange backhauls.
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To expand further... this is why I corrected hendry the other week (http://forum.kitz.co.uk/index.php/topic,18174.msg329180.html#msg329180) when he pointed in his video what he reckoned was fibre running down an small country lane to his local exchange from off the A30. There may well have been (BTw) backhaul cable there feeding from say Exeter and then back to the Reading RAS... but I doubt it will have contained any NGA fibre to his cab.
Reason: Any FTTC cabs in the area were directly connected to Bodmin which was the head-end exchange.
Having looked at the BT S-VLAN data, I could see that Bodmin was serving as the headend for several other local exchanges.. and having then looked at the map... it would make more sense for Openreach geographically wise, to install a new 'spine' out of Bodmin that ran down the A38 and then branched up towards the Cardinham cabs, but could still cover surrounding exchange areas from the same spine. It would be highly unlikely for them to install something that went up the A30 and then back down to just serve 2 cabs. Instead Openreach create a 'new network' with nodes that branch out from the Head-end.
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Hilarious! Is there by chance another physicist about, perhaps? (Former (failed) theoretical physics student myself.)
I'm afraid not just a chemistry graduate who takes a healthy intrest in theoretical physics that relates to either PC hardware or communications.
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I agree, will probably see more centralized congestion at ISP's data centers and content providers will surely be applying data rate caps that folks can retrieve data at.
The core networks are fine. 400Gb Ethernet is on the way and routers supporting 400Gb per slot are already available.
With the average punter pulling 1-2Mb/s at peak times and usage only increasing by 40-60% per year I think we're okay from that point of view. Crunch points are likely to be somewhat closer to home.
(https://stats.linx.net/cgi-pub/aggregate/decade)
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In answer to the original question, it's easier to upgrade, you just put new kit either end, and the cost savings in terms of operational expenditure for Openreach over the current solution are huge.
Openreach's £2.5 billion figure for FTTC was capital and operational expenditure. £1 billion-ish of it operational. Powering the cabinets, monitoring and other things.
A pure fibre network allows Openreach to retire most of their exchanges. They can take an exchange's entire functionality and put it in what's not much more than a shed and sits there to collect fibre together and send it elsewhere, glorified massive patch panels.
No power bills for cabinets in the field. No maintenance costs for a geriatric copper network constantly corroding and being impacted by the elements. FTTP is 70-90% more reliable than copper.
Power bills for the exchanges that are left go down, no need to send voltages onto copper wires, just power OLTs and any networking kit.
The downside in the case of BT is that in the short term it involves taking money away from the poor shareholders, leaves less money in the Group for bidding on football rights and means they lose out on the FTTC assets they were hoping to sweat until the mid-late 2020s.
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In an era of increased attention towards cyber security, fiber-optic internet is touted as a cost-effective way of instantly increasing your Internet security. Intercepting copper cable can be performed by connecting taps to a line to pick up the electronic signals.
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The downside in the case of BT is that in the short term it involves taking money away from the poor shareholders, leaves less money in the Group for bidding on football rights and means they lose out on the FTTC assets they were hoping to sweat until the mid-late 2020s.
So really, it's BT actually having to be the infrastructure provider they claim to be.
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. . . fiber-optic internet is touted as a cost-effective way of instantly increasing your Internet security. Intercepting copper cable can be performed by connecting taps to a line to pick up the electronic signals.
An optical fibre can also be easily intercepted and "tapped". Just ask NSA or GCHQ.
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It is however much easier to detect a tap on fibre, as the light level usually suffers a significant loss. If appropriate hardware is used, then it is easily detected. Not only that, but quantum technology is being used as well nowadays, essentially emitting a photon with a quantum state, which when intercepted changes state, and can then be detected at the other end.
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It is however much easier to detect a tap on fibre, as the light level usually suffers a significant loss. If appropriate hardware is used, then it is easily detected. Not only that, but quantum technology is being used as well nowadays, essentially emitting a photon with a quantum state, which when intercepted changes state, and can then be detected at the other end.
I have no idea whatsoever of the percentage-chance ....... but 'Tapping' or putting a 'Bridged Tap' on a copper pair of wires would probably be as noticeable as light-loss on a fibre ?? At least for that one EU ??
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It is however much easier to detect a tap on fibre, as the light level usually suffers a significant loss. If appropriate hardware is used, then it is easily detected. Not only that, but quantum technology is being used as well nowadays, essentially emitting a photon with a quantum state, which when intercepted changes state, and can then be detected at the other end.
Taps in either optics or electrical transmission can be detected from the microreflections or drop in received signal power or increase in required transmission power, however I seriously doubt that anyone is going to tap an xDSL line, separating it from a cable bundle and going to that level of work, and demodulate it when they can tap an optical backhaul.
Quantum transmission. Really? Quantum cryptography is certainly a thing, but it's a very long way from commodity. Haven't seen quantum kit in the Cisco or Juniper catalogues.
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Agreed. Quantum teleportation (of photons) I believe exists in the research labs, eg at York University, but as I understand is still along way from being useable at the moment.
Side note: The Aspect experiment (c. 1980, test of the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen effect) did demonstrate something vaguely related which seemed (naively) to contradict special relativity but doesn't allow practical comms. But later work is heading in the comms direction iirc. I used to know all this stuff once.
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Not quantum teleportation, it is as Ignitionnet said, quantum cryptography, and the kit is definitely being worked on