Poll: Wireless or Fiber Optics and the future

Brent · Post by **Brent** » Sat Apr 28, 2001 8:27 pm

Gimmie your opinions on what you think the future of High Speed Internet will be more prevelent in the Home (Residential)

Will Wireless take over the Home user market

Or will Fiber to every house take over the Home market

Lets say in a time span of 5 years or so

gimmie your thoughts on the future of high speed internet to the Home user

JackMDS · Post by **JackMDS** » Sat Apr 28, 2001 10:01 pm

Both!

In NYC, all new wiring in apartment and office building is Optic, old buildings are slowly upgraded from coax to optic.

Inside the house, or office wireless will be used. It is a starting trend in the cooperate environment, people like it and it will transferred to the home environment. You can see signs of it the various BBS; (Unfortunately, this BBS seems to attract useless Capping cursing, but no interest in Wireless.).

JackMDS · Post by **JackMDS** » Sun Apr 29, 2001 2:52 pm

LOL, 18 hours post the initial post.

May be you should change the name of the post to:

Wireless: A new Method to uncapping.

Brent · Post by **Brent** » Sun Apr 29, 2001 3:19 pm

Originally posted by JackMDS:
LOL, 18 hours post the initial post.

May be you should change the name of the post to:

Wireless: A new Method to uncapping.

It's the weekend, I expected there wouldn't be as many replies as during the week... I'll just bump it up if it gets too far down this week....

smaier69 · Post by **smaier69** » Sun Apr 29, 2001 3:42 pm

i would also have to say "both", as there are applications/scenarios where one would have benefits over the other (wireless for either mobile or remote applications. i am including satilite in this catagory. and fibre for speed and security).

if i had to pick one, i would have to say fibre for the majority of the home market.

tomsykes · Post by **tomsykes** » Mon Apr 30, 2001 2:58 am

Definitely Both, but ideally Optical.

It'll become more and more apparent now. Most city buildings have dark fibre loops running into their basements, telco's (here at least) refuse to deliver alot of services over copper any longer - all glass now.

Fibre to the consumer (ie, residential) will clearly arrive in stages, as the initial outlay is far too much to justify. Fibre to the curb will show itself first, again we're seeing it around now with fibre to the curb, and VDSL to each house. The existing VDSL copper portions could be replaced (eventually) by optical networks - even lower cost plastic fibre.

pimptrizkit · Post by **pimptrizkit** » Mon Apr 30, 2001 4:55 am

i would like to see optical hehe i here it is faster,is therea speed diff tho in glass or plastic fiber wire? "speed,cost, were and tear" and i think the wireless would be the next big hit cuz it wont cost so much money but once it runs out of juice and is over packed i think optical will all the sudden be avible in every area you can think of "in cities" and they will probaly try to rape you with the charge of it

btu i say wirelss first then optical but optical will stay for the ride

tomsykes · Post by **tomsykes** » Mon Apr 30, 2001 4:52 pm

Wireless is incredibly expensive. The 'aggregation' type towers which would be used for consumer style widespread customer aggregation cost at least a million dollars, and would need higher density than that of current cellular phone networks. There are currently thousands of cell phone towers in some cities now, high speed wireless would require even more density.

Of course optical is expensive, having to trench all the fibre into the ground. Apparently some companies in the US put the fibre overhead? They tried that here... except residents/local government protested because it "looked bad against the trees"

Plastic fibre is capable of lower bandwidth - but its cheaper - and more flexible - can bend through walls more easily etc.

Pikap39 · Post by **Pikap39** » Tue May 01, 2001 12:47 am

Most of the cable here in the states is partial fiber already. You see it more in the cable side, but it is present in the bells and PSTN's. The key is going to be in the engeniering of an afordable end user product. It would take some effort and serrious money to put fiber up to a house and we will only see it if there is money in it. As far as wireless I saw some neat test while i was in seatle. The problem is the fastest for of wirles is a laser link network but that still requires skyscrapers or towers ( and is generaly only available to corperate giants). I personally belive the next ten years we will speed increase by bandwidth increases (cap elimination). This will be due to the convertion of analog TV to digital transmition by 2005. This convertion alone frees up 550 MgHz in the cable pipeline. This will alow them to dedicate more chanles to the data end of the market. The last thing i believe will help in this end is compression algorithims. With Bell runing 10:1 and cable running near 6:1 compression and MPEG 2 for video as we compress more information again we open up more bandwidth. just my opinion.

tomsykes · Post by **tomsykes** » Tue May 01, 2001 8:22 pm

Yep - exactly. The main fibre runs are already present everywhere - it's just the fibre tails into people's homes which cost the big $$$.

rodrod5 · Post by **rodrod5** » Tue May 01, 2001 8:30 pm

fibre should win in the end for large metro and suburban areas but in the stix or small towns or sparce areas wireless might be the better way.
i do not believe wireless will be able to meet the bandwidth of fibre especially for long distances

rodrod5 · Post by **rodrod5** » Tue May 01, 2001 8:31 pm

fibre should win in the end for large metro and suburban areas but in the stix or small towns or sparce areas wireless might be the better way.
i do not believe wireless will be able to meet the bandwidth of fibre especially for long distances

Brent · Post by **Brent** » Tue May 01, 2001 8:36 pm

Speed.God you make some very good points

Since the Cable is already there for the most part, once they free up space on it it will go faster, therefore this will be the preferred method right now. Because right now Wireless is too costly to startup.

But I think in the LONG RUN say heck 50 years, Wireless everything will be the future... IMO

but for right now actual physical cables will be prevelent

I know there has been a lot of uprising about Wireless options lately, and for the most part Speedguide has not gotten into it, but we are starting, that's what i started this thread. Wireless is the future in the long run, but in the short run cables are the thing.

ZenOps · Post by **ZenOps** » Tue May 01, 2001 10:25 pm

To the home, wireless is going to win for sure. If and when 802.11a gets going we will all have 54mbit/sec bandwidth over the air. It just costs too much to dig up the road to lay cabling.

The city<>city and continent links will still be fiber, but there will be no need to ever upgrade them ever again (just add another wavelength laser via DWDM and bam, instant unlimited bandwidth.)

Pikap39 · Post by **Pikap39** » Tue May 01, 2001 10:31 pm

I would like to see more wirles threads started. This is something that i have been getting into, in house and would like to see some others ideas and opinions on the subject. Of the availabloe wirles routers out there, I'm about to plop down abot $1'000 on the D-Link wirles sytem DI-714. Has anyone out there heard anything about this one
\
By the way I agree with the 50 year thing. I think by then we will have gone the way of Star Trek and the thacion beam......

JackMDS · Post by **JackMDS** » Tue May 01, 2001 11:39 pm

I am using for the last two month, SMC Wireless Barricade (the same as D-Link 713), and D-Link USB Wireless Card. It a lot of fun for the Internet, however for real network applications it is too slow. The ranges that advertise by the manufactures are really a gross exaggeration (it is at best 25-40% of what they claim).

The current advances in regular computing and Internet is to push more Video, and audio content, which leaves network to play catch up most of the time

Currently I see real big relief that the wireless network provides in certain work environments, where it allows moving around with a Laptop without been depended on wired installation.

I believe that wireless will take fast in situation were it is self-contained, i.e. local installation will be available in Airports, Gov. Building, Big cooperation building. I think it will take much much longer as a medium for everywhere use.

As an example.
Quote from: http://www.wininformant.com/

Coffee, Tea, or ... Wireless Internet Access?

The Starbucks coffee chain expanded its deal to provide customers with wireless Internet access by announcing this week that Compaq Computer will supply the hardware to make it happen.

[ 05-01-2001: Message edited by: JackMDS ]

[ 05-02-2001: Message edited by: JackMDS ]