Difference between twisted pair cables and fibre optic cables?

Answer 1

1. Unless you go to proprietory fibre, both can go to 1000Mb/s, so neither has a great speed advantate.

2. Wired is much cheaper. It's not the fibre that's expensive, but the terminations and the adapters.

3. Fibre can do much longer distances. Basic multimode 500 m. Monomode many kilometres. In theory wired is limited to 100 m. In practice you can get reliable connection at 100 Mb/s with up to 200 m. For 1000 MB/s, about 150m is the norm.

4. Fibre requires no electrical connection. So there are no problems about the earth potential being different in different buildings. In many practical situations, this isn't a major problem.

5. Lightening strikes on the ground can, in theory, damage switches connected with cables. In practice, over 8 years of plenty of lightening storms connecting separated buildings in a school site of 5 acres we have had no lightening problems.

Answer 2

Twisted Pair Cables:

- Generally made of copper

- Cables arranged in a twisted pair to help cancel-out electronic noise

- For long distances, needs a device to boost the signal before it degrades.

- Industry Standard on large, medium to small-scale deployments. Usually found on the user-side of infrastructure.

Fibre Optic Cables:

- Generally made of glass or plastic

- No electronic noise, very clean signal.

- Can go super-long distances before needing to be boosted.

- Industry standard for high-end deployments, super-fast speeds (10Gigabit), Core networking infrastructure.

- Proper training is needed to properly use Fibre as it has certain limitations (such as it can't be bent at a 90-degree angle).

Answer 3

Fiber is faster, non-conductive, does not receive interference and is more expensive, but they do much the same job.