Internet Fiber Optics By Daniel Dick

Introduction  What Fiber Optics mean to computers in the past, present & future. Also included are the advantages & disadvantages of fiber optics.

Objectives  Past History  Present Applications FTTN FTTP  BPON  GPON  Advantages & Disadvantages  Future Potential

Past History  In 1870, John Tyndall, using a jet of water that flowed from one container to another and a beam of light, demonstrated that light used internal reflection to follow a specific path. As water poured out through the spout of the first container, Tyndall directed a beam of sunlight at the path of the water. The light, as seen by the audience, followed a zigzag path inside the curved path of the water. This simple experiment marked the first research into the guided transmission of light.

History  Early success came during the 1950’s with the development of the fiberscope. This image-transmitting device, which used the first practical all-glass fiber, was concurrently devised by Brian O’Brien at the American Optical Company and Narinder Kapany (who first coined the term “fiber optics” in 1956) and colleagues at the Imperial College of Science and Technology in London.

History  Semiconductor lasers were first realized in 1962; these lasers are the type most widely used in fiber optics today.

History  In 1970, Drs. Robert Maurer, Donald Keck, and Peter Schultz of Corning succeeded in developing a glass fiber that exhibited attenuation at less than 20 dB/km, the threshold for making fiber optics a viable technology. It was the purest glass ever made.

History  The U.S. military moved quickly to use fiber optics for improved communications and tactical systems. In the early 1970’s, the U.S. Navy installed a fiber optic telephone link aboard the U.S.S. Little Rock.

History  In 1977, both AT&T and GTE installed fiber optic telephone systems in Chicago and Boston respectively. These successful applications led to the increase of fiber optic telephone networks.

History  In 1998, researchers transmitted 100 simultaneous optical signals, each at a data rate of 10 gigabits (giga means billion) per second for a distance of nearly 250 miles (400 km). In this experiment, dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM technology, which allows multiple wavelengths to be combined into one optical signal, increased the total data rate on one fiber to one terabit per second (1012 bits per second).

History  Nearly half a billion people have Internet access and use it regularly. Some 40 million or more households are “wired.”  The increase in fiber transmission capacity has grown by a factor of 200 in the last decade.  The push to bring broadband services, including data, audio, and especially video, into the home is well underway.

Present Applications  FTTC Fiber To The Curb or Fiber To The Cabinet (FTTC) refers to a telecommunications system based on fiber-optic cables run to a platform that serves several customers. Each of these customers has a connection to this platform via coaxial cable or twisted pair.

Present Applications  BPON (Broadband Passive Optical Network) is a standard based on APON. It adds support for WDM, dynamic and higher upstream bandwidth allocation, and survivability.  Standard ITU-T G.983 is referred to as Broadband PON, or BPON. A typical APON/BPON provides 622 megabits per second (Mbit/s) of downstream bandwidth and 155 Mbit/s of upstream traffic, although the standard accommodates higher rates.

Present Applications  FTTP Fiber to the Premises (FTTP) or Fiber to the Home (FTTH) is a broadband telecommunications system based on fiber-optic cables and associated optical electronics for delivery of multiple advanced services such as the triple play of telephone, broadband Internet and television all the way to the home or business.

Present Applications  The ITU-T G.984 (GPON) standard represents a boost in both the total bandwidth and bandwidth efficiency through the use of larger, variable- length packets. A GPON network delivers up to 2,488 Gbits per second (Gbit/s) of downstream bandwidth, and 2,488 Gbit/s of upstream bandwidth.

Present Applications  Service providers using PON include Verizon (FiOS), AT&T (U-Verse), and several greenfield development networks. Packages start at $35/month for a “slower” 5 Mbps Verizon FIOS connection. At the higher end of the spectrum, a blazing 50 Mbps connection is available at $159/month in some areas while only $89/month for other more competitive markets.

Present Applications

Advantages  Less expensive-Several miles of optical cable can be made cheaper than equivalent lengths of copper wire. This saves your provider (cable TV, Internet) and you money.  Thinner  Higher carrying capacity

Advantages  Low power - Because signals in optical fibers degrade less, lower-power transmitters can be used instead of the high-voltage electrical transmitters needed for copper wires. This saves your provider and you money.  Digital signals - Optical fibers are ideally suited for carrying digital information, which is especially useful in computer networks.

Advantages  Non-flammable  Lightweight  Less signal degradation

Disadvantages  Cost to install  More delicate than copper wire, making them easy to break and difficult to manipulate.

Future Potential  Fiber optic technology’s immense potential bandwidth, 50 THz or greater, makes for extraordinary possibilities for the distant future of fiber optic applications.

Future Potential  Fiber-optic technology deployment costs are decreasing, making this technology a competitor to existing services. KMI Research forecasts that the total FTTP market for equipment, cable, and apparatus will reach $3.2 billion in  In the near future, FTTP, also referred to as Extreme Broadband, will deliver performance speeds exceeding 100 Mbps downstream.

Conclusion  Fiber optics are now the standard by which communications are measured by and will be for years to come. The potential for computing applications is endless with ever increasing download and upload speeds. The use of fiber optics continues to grow with no end in sight.