Adam Wolfe
10/20/2012

NT1310 – Unit 4. Assignment 1 – Copper vs. Fiber
The copper phone wire has very limited bandwidth. It was designed to provide 3,000Hz bandwidth, perfectly adequate for a voice signal. Fiber links offer over 1,000 times more bandwidth capacity and can be carried over 100 times the distance than copper can.
The chart pictured here shows the specific advantages Fiber has over copper wiring in regards to bandwidth and distance.

When it comes to LANs or premises cabling, a lot of controversy, a lot of "positioning" and a lot of misinformation are talked about by most people who speak on the topic of copper vs. fiber cabling.
The wire most use for LANs is a lot younger than fiber optics. Fiber use is over 20 years old, but computer networks on unshielded-twisted-pair cable (UTP) have only been around about 15 years. In that time, UTP has gone through at least 5 generations, each time to keep up with the incrementing bandwidth requisites of LANs; the ever evolving technology of LAN wire is hardly the “telephone wire” that the majority think of it as.

Below is a chart showing the LANs growth in capacity LAN | Bandwidth | Ethernet | 10 Mb/s | FDDI | 100 Mb/s | Fast Ethernet | 100 Mb/s | ATM | 55, 155 Mb/s | Gigabit Ethernet | 1,000 Mb/s (1 gigabit/s) | 10 Gigabit Ethernet | 10 Gb/s |

But still, even with all the efforts that copper cabling manufactures have made to stay relevant in todays LAN structuring, installation is a problem that most face if one needs the maximum performance offered.
A number of magazine articles and even a representative of AMP have been recently quoted as saying that as much as 80-90% of all Cat 5 cabling was improperly installed and would not provide the rated performance. Contractors have been quoted as saying that 40% of their Cat 6 installations pass certification tests. It seems that copper cabling used in LAN is preferred when used in the short distance, and is ideal for wiring a LAN’s backbone.
Looking at fiber optic cabling, we’ll see that it is a fraction of the size and weight of a copper cable, a big point in underground conduits in crowded cities. Depending on the application, fiber costs are typically 1-5% as much as copper in the backbone. In the subscriber loop, where one connection only is utilized, the economics are quite different. A drop to the home is less than $100, while a fiber to the home would cost over $1000 and require an onsite way to power the transceivers. So fiber to the home is a non-player, except in rural areas where the line is long and would require a repeater. Then the longer distance capability of fiber makes it cheaper to run fiber than have copper with repeaters and providing power to the repeater.

Terminating fiber optic cable is not as simple as copper. Fiber optic connectors need adhesives for reliability and low cost and most installation involves stripping fibers, injecting adhesives and polishing the ends. While manufacturers have developed crimp-on connectors, they are expensive, high loss and have not been very reliable. Fiber does not have infinite bandwidth either. A good installer would be able to learn how to terminate fiber in less than 2 hours; at least not the multimode fiber used in most premises networks. It's a lot higher than copper, but as you approach gigabit speeds, you are limiting the distances available for links to 500 meters or so. (The Fiber Optic Association, Inc., 2005)
Works Cited
The Fiber Optic Association, Inc. (2005). The Fiber Optic Association - Tech Topics. Retrieved from thefoa.org: http://www.thefoa.org/tech/fo-or-cu.htm