How is FiOS faster than copper wire systems?

Factual Questions
1

So, the transmission speed difference is negligible, where and how is the magic made?

As I understand it, it’s cable internet and phone all in one. Where is this speed burst coming from?

Replacing copper wire with fiber does not yield such an increase in throughput. It has to be in the translation.

2

Doesn’t it? I thought you could just send more complex signals using light - as well as modulating the amplitude of signals, you can modulate the colour(wavelength), the phase and the polarity - maybe also some other attributes I haven’t thought of…

3

My understanding:

You can fit multiple signals onto one cable, so for a certain diameter of tubing, you can handle more customers. If you have more customers going through a “tighter” tube, you have to slow them down to take turns using the line.

The signal can carry farther, so you don’t need to set up repeaters as often (which can slow things down.)

There is less chance of degradation of the signal, so fewer requests for data resends need be made.

And, possibly there might just be some issues that hardware which works with fiber optic will be newer and so faster. Though that would just be a guess.

4

It’s not how fast the signal is, it’s how many units of data you can push through in a given unit of time–in data communications, they usually talk about multiples of bits per second. The limiting factor here is termed bandwidth; simplistically, bandwidth is related to the wavelength of the carrier. Since a light wave is thousands of times shorter than the fastest signals we can push through copper, it can carry thousands of times more data, as well.

5

I’ll explain this in laymans terms: Think of your internet as a tube of water coming to your house. Dial-up is a 1/4 inch plastic tube, cable/DSL is a garden hose, fiber is a fire hose. The water is traveling at the same speed through all the tubes, it is that the amount of water that travels at that speed is greatly increased. The size of the tube is refered to bandwidth and is measured in kb/s, Mb/s or Gb/s.

6

Right. It’s like copper is a road full of stretch limos with one person in each one, while fibre is a road full of motorcycles carrying two people each, packed much closer together. Even though they’re both moving at about the same speed, so that moving one person takes the same amount of time either way, you can move 1,000 people through the motorcycle road much quicker than you can through the stretch limo road.

7

And think of data compression as being Volkswagon Beetle packed with 30 clowns driving down the road.

I kid, I kid… :wink:

8

Actually, that’s not a bad description of lossless compression. You use spaces in the Beetle that wouldn’t normally be filled with clowns. And lossy compression would be the same thing, except each clown has a picture of 3 other clowns that couldn’t make it, and redoes his makeup 4 times upon arrival.

9

So wait. Copper wire is like the kind of a breezy day in Autumn when you suddenly realise you’ve missed your mother’s birthday, whereas Fibre Optic is like eating Stilton in the bath, listening to Eminem and Mozart at the same time. Got it.