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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