Copper Vs. Fiber Paper

Unit 4. Assignment 1. Copper vs. Fiber Paper

The Copper vs Fiber war has raged on for years. They are the two most widely used cabling types for a means of communication all over the world. They both perform the same function, to transmit information from here to there. Have to choose which one may be a difficult decision to make.

Copper cable is the least of the expensive to install. Copper itself is cheap and readily available, for now. Copper cable has a higher bend radius than fiber giving it the ability to go around tighter corners if need be. The equipment needed to support copper cable is also cheap compared to Fiber. Unlike Fiber, Copper is susceptible to electromagnetic interference and corrosion.

Fiber cable is another option, an expensive option. Chances of signal loss is greatly reduced since Fiber is immune to EMI and other sources of interference. The distance at which the signal travels is a much greater distance than copper thanks to less signal degradation since it uses light for its signal and glass for the medium. This ensures that minimal signal degradation happens due to the reduced resistance. Fiber cable also has a larger bandwidth compared to copper. The receivers, transceivers, and couplers to install a fiber network is immensely expensive.  

For the normal at home user fiber may be just a little too expensive to run from the demarcation straight to your computer. Copper wiring such as unshielded twisted pair cost pennies of the dollars. My recommendation would be to run fiber to the home (FTTH) then from there use UTP CAT5e/6 to run from the router to your home devices.