• Question: what is the difference between fibre optic and normal wires and why is the internet speed affected by this.

    Asked by LucasH to Yetty on 20 Jun 2017.
    • Photo: Yetunde Kolawole

      Yetunde Kolawole answered on 20 Jun 2017:

      Hi Lucas,

      The normal wires are called coaxial cables, and the difference is in the capacity, that means how much information can you transfer with those wires without losses. Because coaxial cables are made with copper, the losses are greater. This is why Fibre optic cables are faster. Think of fibre optic cable as a water hose without holes used to water your garden and coaxial cables as a hose with holes, if you start with the same pressure of water to both hoses, the one without holes with water your garden quicker.

Comments

  • Photo: Tom

    Tom commented on :

    Just to add to Yetty’s very good answer. The signals you send down each type of cable are different. With ‘normal’ copper cables the signals are electrical; with digital data the voltage changes to set either a 1 or a 0 but this means you can only use one piece of wire cable for each “channel” you’re sending. This can be overcome by mixing the digital signals into an analogue carrier signal which can be multiplexed to allow a few channels of data, but this is still restricted as the noise in the cable increases and (as yetty said) you get losses in the wire caused by resistance.
    In a fibre optic cable you are sending data in the form of light down it. This does not suffer from electrical resistance so the losses are far reduced, plus with clever time synchronisation at either end you can send multiple channels of data down a single fibre the thickness of a human hair.
    Even though the fibreoptic is smaller, lighter and cheaper than a copper cable, because of it’s ability to handle dramatically more channels of data give a greater “bandwidth”, a term describing how much information can be transmitted. And greater bandwidth = greater internet speed.
    Fibre-optic cables are used in many applications these days, from computer networks to remote control lines for submersible vehicles at the bottom of the sea.
    Hope this helps and was not too technical 🙂