Fiber Optical Cables: An Upgrade Your Business Cannot Pass Up
Lately, there has been a lot of buzz about fiber optical cables. But what are they and what can they do for your business? Is the current cabling infrastructure of your business obsolete or at risk? Why should you be interested in fiber?
Companies around the world are upgrading their copper wire networks to fiber optics at an alarming pace. But what do they know that you do not? It is the latest and greatest technology, but is it necessary? It may very well be.
To understand why an upgrade may be necessary, it is important to understand the basics of your current copper wire network. The industry standard for this network is based on Category-5 (Cat-5 or Ethernet) cable. Ethernet uses four copper wires that are twisted around each and is unshielded. It has RJ-45 jacks on either end and looks much like a thick phone line with larger jacks. Data is transmitted in the form of electrical signals at rates of up to 10 megabits per second to a distance up to 300 feet. Gigabit Ethernet (Cat-5e) is capable of up to 1000 megabits per second. These unshielded signals are easily degraded or exploited.
Fiber uses light rather than electrical signals to transmit data. Transmission bandwidth of fiber far exceeds even Cat-5e. In fact, the true maximum bandwidth throughput of fiber is still unknown. Light can also travel substantially farther in fiber, over 1,500 miles in some optical cables (not that you would need that for your business).
Anyhow, there are two significant advantages of fiber in a business. The first is that the light is entrapped within the cable. Because it is light and not electric signals, it is not influenced or degraded by outside factors. Cat-5, like phone wire, can be degraded by many factors. Running many Cat-5 cables near each other or near electric lines can degrade network performance and waste bandwidth.
However, the most important aspect of fiber in the business perspective is security. Cat-5 can easily be exploited for vulnerabilities. An inside threat or corporate spy can easily implant devices on or near Cat-5 cables that will intercept the data as it travels through the lines. Because Cat-5 is copper wire, breaks in lines and these implanted devices cannot be detected without visually inspecting every line. Fiber on the other hand is completely secure. Any break in optical cables will completely cut the line. Spying devices cannot be used on or near fiber, so data traveling through the lines is completely secure during transit. Additionally, there are methods to locate where attempted intrusions (breaks in the lines) have occurred with simple software.
Fiber optical cables offer businesses security and better data transmission than any other type of cable. When your company needs at least one of these benefits provided by fiber, it is time to make an upgrade.
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