What Makes Fiber Optic Cables Better Than Copper Cables?

There are few things in my mind, which is the best fiber optic cable or copper cable. I need help for the clear about this point. which is the better and faster connectivity cable?

Welcome to our Forums.

A quick Google search brought up a lot of articles on this, of which the following two may be of interest.

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2010/10/21/3044463.htm
http://www.cablexpress.com/blog/5-r...-choose-fiber-optic-cables-instead-of-copper/

As you will gather, this is a subject that is easier to answer by reading articles than lengthy explanations typed out by hand.

Ian

Two very different methods of transmitting data Antonio. Copper transmission is by electrical current and suffers from loss due to the resistance of the copper to conducting whereas fibre is optical (light) and therefore much faster and suffers almost no loss.
Fibre optic will always be better than copper but then the equipment being connected need to have the facility to transmit and receive optical information. Not all do even today.

Perhaps if you tell us what application you are looking at, we can better confine the answers, otherwise speaking cheddar-caveman is spot on about the differences..

From an Audio Visual point of view the difference in output quality will be negligible. Whilst it's true that copper is susceptible to losses over long distances it wouldn't likely be of concern to the home user. Fibre Optic is however less robust mechanically and can suffer damage if handled or installed incorrectly.

I have small lengths of FO cables (mainly Toslink) connecting bits of AV equipment but I'm putting Cat 5e and Co-ax in every room as I refurb the house for the avoidance of any doubt.
If it's a broadband query then of course newly installed FO networks would outperform older existing narrow copper bandwidths.

Looks like AntonioCrocombe has lost interest in his post

Maybe you guys did such a great job replying...OP got all the info they needed.

- Nick

a clear distinction

Hi Antonio

fibre optical works faster than copper. while copper depends on transfer through metallic electronic transmission,and are thus resisted by metallic friction; fibre optical work through internal reflections thus almost the speed of light. far more faster than the copper one. upvotes to fibre optical cable. extra advantage it does not get rugged with time unlike copper cable. Fibre optical seem expensive than copper but it is much more reliable and makes up that cost with its speed and negligible maintenance cost.
upvote my answer if your query is clarified.

Another ask a question and then ignore! Don't know why we bother!!

If I was a betting man I'd guess that was a school/college/homework question, probably posted to a number of forums to try and get a response that wouldn't be easily identified as a standard Google copy and paste.

Or am I getting old and cynical

No offense to the OP if not the case!

Since the link to the ABC as provided by IWT was written, we have had a change to an ultra right wing government who immediately scrapped the idea for a much, much cheaper (and much much slower) option of fibre to the node, and then the old, old copper wires for those living in metropolitan areas nwhilst we in rural areas are still waiting, and that paper was written in 2009!

So there is much more to your question for consideration and difficult mto reply without knowing all the factors.

I think most of us are happy to take the question at face value - a genuine wish to know which is the better option - than to try to bring politics or anything else totally irrelevant into the post!

Fiber optics can send tremendous amounts of data. Tremendous is a small adjective since it can be manipulated using pulses of light. Signal can travel further and with little resistance to the the fibers itself. Light does not interfere with each other (but in quantum mechanics, it does), so, severe thunderstorms cannot interfere with data transfers.

With copper, it cannot transmit as much data versus fiber optics. Even though copper is one of the most conductive materials for electricity, it will still suffer resistance and severe thunderstorms both will kill your internet dead. Did I mention copper is prone to theft for its value?