* Mailbag: fiber vs. copper
My recent articles on wireless, copper and fiber as desktop alternatives resurrected the age-old debate of whether fiber optics could or should be used to connect desktops to a LAN.
For the most part, you argue that fiber cannot be used, for several reasons.
First, despite the fiber industry’s attempts to convince IT managers otherwise, many of you believe that fiber to the desktop (FTTD) is simply too expensive. Here’s a representative response:
“Fiber is a red herring. The cost of an optical NIC is typically two to 10 times the cost of anything that produces an electrical interface. That assumes we’re talking about multimode fiber, which doesn’t provide much more capacity than Cat 6 over the range we’re describing.”
Here’s another one:
“Fiber is great – however, the cost of the cabling alone is enough to keep this product from reaching mass market appeal. The lack of widespread demand for fiber (in both capacity and volume) keeps this from being implemented as a standard into consumer electronics. The alternative solution to deploy media converters isn’t exactly cheap either.”
Still, some argued in favor of fiber:
“Deploy fiber everywhere. It is secure, fast, reliable, and immune to EMI. Yesterday, if fiber were too expensive, you would deploy copper; however, the cost advantage is no longer a big factor in most systems. In fact, in systems where copper must be protected with expensive surge protectors, rigid steel conduit, exotic grounding and power protection schemes, fiber may be cheaper than copper.”
A couple of readers brought up the fragility of fiber lines as being a large drawback:
“It’s not just the initial cost of the cabling itself, but [also] the cost of the adapters/transceivers for the hosts AND the switches, and the manpower for troubleshooting fiber cabling problems caused by Barbara the CEO’s assistant kicking off her shoes under her desk and breaking the glass. When Barbara kicks the doghouse that her [copper] cabling comes from, it isn’t that big a deal to open it up and check for loose cables, and re-punch, if necessary. Not anymore with fiber.”
The last major strike against fiber that readers brought up is that Power over Ethernet – and possibly other desirable technologies – is available only over copper lines:
“[With fiber,] you lose all the existing and future protocols/creations (PoE, etc.) that will spring up to use the huge, vast UTP infrastructure out there.”
Many thanks to all who wrote in. More on this topic in the next couple of newsletters.
