Slashdot Mirror
Plastic Fiber Could Make Optical Networking a DIY Project
An anonymous reader writes "A new European project using plastic fiber and off-the-shelf components could make optical networking so cheap and simple that installation could be a DIY job for even a non-technical person. The object of EU-funded POF-ALL project is to find a technical solution to the rising cost of taking optical fiber right into the home." A mere "few hundred metres" of 100mbps (since plastic is thus far dimmer than glass) would suffice to wire any home I'm likely to occupy.
Put bluntly, price. And I think it would be easy to extend it to gigabit at some point, with higher-grade plastics.
Copper is much more expensive than plastic, and 8-wire CAT5 cabling is a lot harder to run than a plastic filament, to boot.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it! --Longbottle
I work for a big telco, the one that runs fiber to the home, we don't put ends on the fiber, at least not directly. what we do is use a fusion splicer, and use a connector with a length of fiber already attached, we then splice that to the end of the fiber..
wanted: one clever sig,apply within
Also, we've got quite a bit of recyclable plastic sitting in landfills. More than we could ever possibly need. Likewise, there are a few new "plastic" materials on the horizon that can economically be produced from plants.
Plastic was made out of plants, hemp was a good feed stock, before oil was used to make it. Which is part of the reason hemp was made illegal. In the mid 1930s, before the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 basically made hemp illegal, DuPont was granted patents on making plastic from oil.
FalconShould there be a Law?