Quote:
Originally Posted by bopat
Fiber is glass, glass breaks.
Copper is coax, it's shielded but subject to interference.
Wireless is subject to interference.
The myth that fiber isn't shared is just that, a myth. It's all shared at some point. There's no way quantum has dedicated 1gb up and down for every customer on their network.
The myth that copper is always shared is just that, a myth, it's dedicated at some point going to a switch. That's how networking works.
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You are right at some point, everything is shared but from your home to your ISP the cable is shared while with fiber you have your own dedicated bandwidth.
The confusion is what do we mean by shared? Is it a single strand of fiber for every customer to the ISP? Is it a single run of copper cable to the ISP? It's neither.
With cable and fiber there is a single run of copper or fiber from your home to a hub then it's multiplexed to the ISP.
The difference is with copper cable there is a fixed amount of bandwidth per cable to the ISP. The more customers the cable company allocates to a specific cable the more likely the cable's capacity will be reached and possibly cause slow downs. Think of it this way, with cable it is like a highway where during peak hours, when more people are online, the connection can slow down, just like traffic gets congested during rush hour. In technical terms, this slowdown occurs because multiple users are drawing from the same pool of bandwidth on the copper cable. This is why some areas of the Villages homeowners have little or no cases of buffering and other areas there is a lot. The reason why you get fast download and slow upload is because the majority of the download bandwidth of the cable is allocated to download and the smaller remaining bandwidth is allocated to upload.
With fiber, the bandwidth of each fiber is far greater than copper cable so they can allocate a fixed amount of bandwidth for each customer so there is never a slow down at this part of the network. It's like a private toll road, you get the full speed limit at all times, and there’s no traffic to slow you down. You have a continual amount of bandwidth that is solely for your use, ensuring consistent speed and reliability regardless of the time of day or the number of users online. With fiber each customer is allocated their full allotment of download and upload bandwidth so the speeds are the same.
Hope this helps clear things up.