New Fiber Optics In The Works

Logic Bomb writes: "An article from MIT's Technology Review has the details on a new kind of fiber optic cabling that could provide part of the backbone bandwidth increase everyone is looking for. Instead of sending the light through glass, the light is actually sent through nothing but air. The key is a tube lining made of a special class of materials called "photonic-band-gap" which manage to perform an almost-perfect reflection of particular wavelengths of light. I wonder if it'll be cheap enough for home use. :-)"

Comments

Thoughts on fibers

[maggard]

The article isn't clear on how these hollow-core fibers handle multiple frequencies of light (rather it implies different answers at different points.) It appears that (using their trite analogies) one might be trading in a several-hundred lane highway with regular tollbooths for a single lane without need for a tollbooth. Presumably this would be a boon for some applications but it's not a universal revolution.

Indeed with many of the increases in fiber-bandwidth having come from multiple frequencies of light & with greatly improved hardware soon to roll-out ('tunable' lasers & all-optical switches, some using light-frequency as a routing determinant) if these new fibers are truly limited in their frequency-transmisson they could find themselves hobbled when they eventually come to market.

I also wonder about splicing these cables, terminating them, etc. The difficulties of a single fiber were surmounted but with a number of wave-guides closely bonded together I imagine most present technology wouldn't work.

Those concens aside I can see a number of applications where a long-distance non-repeated cable could be of enormous use, particularly in under-sea cables.

Back to the when-can-we-see-this-in-our-homes I doubt we will ever as this particular technology seems unsuited for such an application. If the question were about fiber-in-general expect it to become possible in a few years.

Plastic-based fiber is proving to be cheaper & more versitile then glass based in the sort of mid/high density generally assumed for residential and now the sticking point is the connections & switching. Once cheap optical switches come onto the market it'll just be a matter of physical installation - presumably in about the same pattern cable-TV has used.

If you can get cable-TV now hopefully in about a deacade you'll begin having the option of fiber.

Imagine a Bewulf cluster of these... - sorry, couldn't resist.