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it's the ultimate battle of the networking Communications cables copper

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versus fiber which will win the ultimate bandwidth Challenge and send his

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opponent's ping crying home to Mama let's begin with the key characteristics

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of those Good Old Reliable copper foam lines that's right the same basic

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infrastructure that we've been using since the beginning of the 20th century

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copper is highly conductive this is what makes it so great for carrying the power

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to your home that you need to do all the things that are important that you need to do there and copper wires use the

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movement of electrons to carry signals by modulating a waveform at one end then

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demodulating it at the other end to convert the patterns in the waveform

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into an analog or a digital signal a device that modulates and de modulates

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is called a modem the problem is that copper even higher bandwidth coaxial

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cables can carry only a small number of waveforms limiting its maximum data

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capacity and these waveforms degrade very quickly as the distance between the

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communications devices increases in fact

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copper only has two main advantages today one it's much less expensive per

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unit distance than fiber and two it's already deployed basically everywhere

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thanks telephone and television modern fiber optic cable invented by Corning

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Inc in the 70s changed the game completely by allowing the use of light

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bursts to carry a signal instead of waves traveling through metal today

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these cables are made up of a highly transparent flexible glass core wrapped

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in a series of layers that protect both the Integrity of the signal in the glass

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and the structure of the glass inside from the elements because this is light

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traveling through a nearly transparent medium it moves at approximately 200,000

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km/ second actually not that different from an electrical signal through copper

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um but but much more importantly the Integrity of the signal the ease with

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which we can interpret the light on versus light off at either end is much

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easier to maintain at higher switching speeds and over longer distances I mean

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we're talking thousands of kilometers like across oceans giving Fiber Optic

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Cables an enormous advantage in speed and well distance there's lots of other

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cool stuff too Optical signals are immune to electromagnetic interference

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individual fibers can be bundled together during installation some for

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use now others dark for expandability in the future depending on the requirements

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fiber can be used with LEDs or lasers and an individual fiber might transmit

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multiple wavelengths or colors of light at the same time to split out at the

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other end to further increase capacity sounds great let's use it for everything

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lonus well life is rarely that simple isn't it we're heading in that direction

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but currently fiber is so much more expensive per length than copper that

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it's taking a little while to get there the good news is that copper carries

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some additional hidden costs that increase fibers appeal even further

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thicker heavier cables are more difficult to install and may require

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more clearance than is even available in existing underground Pathways in cases

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where multiple connections can leverage a single backbone the cost per capacity

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argument comes into play where even if two fibers cost a thousand times what

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copper would if it can carry over a thousand times the data the cost per

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customer in ISP can serve goes down and of course the distance thing comes into

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play again the ISP will save again on repeaters that you'll need all over the

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neighborhood to maintain the Integrity of a signal that's running on copper

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lines so Mrs Rochester's connection doesn't drop out in the middle of her

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Netflix Marathon but that doesn't mean

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that every house will be getting a direct fiber connection anytime soon it

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would certainly be nice but hybrid deployments with a fiber backbone that

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serves many customers and copper runs to individuals for the last mile are most

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common today because they deliver solid speeds and reliability while saving a

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lot of money for the notoriously tightfisted isps that are managing the

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infrastructure speaking of whatever it is I was just talking about our sponsor

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out so the only thing we ended up being able to do with it at all was make me

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pretty for you guys so I hope you enjoyed it all you viewers and you Josh

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do you find me pretty and sparkly am I

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sparkling excellent I'm sparkling all right so thanks again to fractal design

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watching like this video if you liked it dislike it if you thought it sucked leave a comment if you have suggestions

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for future fastest Possible episodes just like this one and Nick that's for

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