I'm sure this stuff works fine and cheap and everything, but real glass fiber optic cable isn't very expensive either. The only expensive part seems to be splicing and termination. for the lengths you would use in a home, I can't imagine ever having to splice it. So unless this stuff is much easier/cheaper then glass to terminate, I just can't see any good reason to use it.
However TFA talks about the average person being able to install it. The first sentence says "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." Would a non technical person be able to install glass fiber?
Plastic can be organically produced from corn [columbia.edu] and citrus oil [cornell.edu], possibly even other sources. That makes it at least a potentially renewable resource.
True, plastic was made out of plants way before it was ever made from oil. Which was one of the reasons hemp was made illegal. Hemp was a good source of feed sock, for among others, plastic. Henry Ford built a vehicle on his Iron Mountain Estate with material made from hemp. Hemp was also used to fuel the vehicle, ethanol was made out of hemp, which was used as fuel for the vehicle.
But what I think needs to be answered is how well will Bioplastics work for fiber optics.
If we recycled it better than we do now, it wouldn't be as a big a concern... but I know several people who throw away the last 60 or so feet on a 1000' spool of CAT5 because they're too lazy to be bothered to use it.
Yea, that kind of bothers me. At the apartment I live in we've had a number of repairmen come in to replace things. A tech from the cable company replaced a bunch of cable from a box on a phone pole to the building, and he just left all the cable, both what he replaced and some extra he cut from a roll of cable. Another repairman left a bunch of metal when he repaired the heater, as did the one who replaced the water heater who left sheet metal and copper pipe scraps. The cables I kept while I put the rest of the metal left behind out to be recycled.
Also there's a lot of cables that are 40, 50, or more years old that should be replaced. The phone lines where my sister lives have to be replaced, but Quest won't replace them, and the thing is is she lives close enough to the central office to get DSL but because the cables are so bad they can't handle DSL, heck they got so bad they couldn't even handle a 56k modem. However with the move to hybrids and pure electric vehicles the demand for copper will only increase.
But most of the oil used in the US is imported. Another thing going in copper's favor is all of the copper in cables and power lines that are old. A lot of them should be replaced. But working against copper is that as electric vehicles and other electric motors become used in wide spread applications, there will be more demand for copper. Also plastic has it's own advantage, plastic can and was made out of plants. Hemp was a good feed source. But how well will Bioplatics work for fiber optics needs to be answered.
Good point. People talk about about the rise of corporatism and undue influence upon our lawmakers, e.g. the DMCA, copyright extensions, corn and ethanol subsidies, and any number of more egregious abuses. However, if you look at the history of big business in the United States, such examples of overt corruption are nothing new. It's been going on for as long as there has been a Congress.
Corporations were recognized as a problem almost as so as the USA was founded. Thomas Jefferson warned about the Corporate Aristocracy when he said "I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country."
A major advantage of optic fiber on CAT6 is distance. CAT6 has a maximum distance of ~75 metres, but with optic fiber you can run connections upwards of 1km.
However as TFA says plastic fiber does not have the distance range glass fiber has. Plastic fiber only can go a few hundred meters. That's more than Cat6 but it's not really that far.
it takes a good amount of energy to mine, transport, and smelt copper. So the cost of copper will most likely go even higher based on the cost of oil.
Energy can, and more and more will be, derived from renewable sources. However, as someone else pointed out before, copper from dumps and the power cable stung out 40 years ago may be a better source. The thing is is plastic can be made from renewable resources as well. Plastic can be made from plants, however I wonder how well bioplastics will work for fiber optics.
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.
once W. is gone and the tax cuts for ethanol is rolled out (please), then realism will take hold of corn, and we will see corn being used in plastics.
Even with the massive subsidies corn gets corn prices will still go up. A better feed stock for plastic is hemp. But how well will Bioplastics work for fiber?
One is cost. Copper is getting more and more expensive plastic is cheap. Not only that but it should be lighter to ship and easier to install since it is smaller than CAT5.
It's very possible for plastic get more expensive than copper. First most plastic in the US today is a petrochemical product. As oil is depleted the cost of plastic will rise. Secondly because of the depletion of oil transporting it become more expensive as well. However copper can be and is mined in the US.
well for one, nobody is sitting in there car taking my bandwidth or bypassing my firewall. i prefer wired to wireless and having a non-conducting cable is a positive so for me this is something i would do in a heartbeat.
I was going to say security as well however I like having wireless access. With my laptop I can be outside and still have access without stringing cable.
The simple fact is that Copper is about to become VERY expensive. China is buying it as well as working with all countries that have copper mines to aquire full access to the copper.
However the US has a bunch of copper.
Finally, copper does not go the long distances that Fiber does.
Glass fiber goes further but TFA talks about plastic fiber and says it doesn't go nearly as far.
That may be true now but currently plastic is a petrochemical product. As oil prices rise so will the prices of plastic fibers. Copper will rise as well but at least in the US copper can be locally mined thus reducing transportation costs.
When I had my service brought up two years ago, there was a $50 installation charge and a $5 monthly charge for rental. That may have changed since then, but as I've never seen a rental charge, I wouldn't know.
I too had to pay for installation. Oh, I was wrong when I said I paid $2 for the modem rental, as you did I paid $5. When I switched to cable a few years ago I checked into buying a modem and they were about $100. At $5 a month it would take 20 months to pay for it. The modem the tech brought over when I got cable only lasted about a year before it had to be replaced. If I had bought it and the warranty was out when it died I would of had to buy another. So while I prefer to own and not rent I think in this case it cost me less renting.
Look, you gave IRIX and Solaris as evidence that a Linux port of Photoshop made sense. But IRIX and Solaris versions of Photoshop flopped,
Is IRIX still in production? Last I heard SGI stopped building PCs and now concentrates on supercomputers. And what is Solaris' market share? Especially in graphics. But Adobe still makes a version of FrameMaker for Solaris, they even make an educational version. I don't know if all the open source graphics programs available for Linux can also be used on either IRIX or Solaris. However their existence as well as people paying extra for CrossOver Linux to run Photoshop indicates there is a market for Photoshop on Linux. People even jump through hoops to get PS running in WINE. Here's a Ubuntu forum on running PS CS3 in WINE.
Only SOUTH Koreans of all ages and certain others in high-density areas will see these speeds any time soon.
No, there's a place in the US who will soon be able to get these speeds if they can't get them today. It's a little place in northeastern Utah called Broadband Utopia. Because of the competition Comcast was "Forced to offer $90 bundle in fiber-fed region".
-Will the service be reliable, as in always on, 24x7x365, you know, like the phone companies and my FiOS connection are?
In the 4 years I've been with, first Time Warner but now Comcast, I've only had one problem. It was when the cable modem I had died. The next day a tech came by and replaced it, with a faster modem.
Will the charge per month keep increasing every six months?
My service is cheaper than it was when I signed up. And though I rent the cable modem the cost is $0.00.
Will you still charge customers for house calls even when the fault lies in your network and your equipment?
When the tech came by I was not charged either for the visit nor the new modem.
Will you replace your unskilled, rude and generally ignorant customer service with talented, considerate and intelligent people?
The tech seems pretty knowledgeable and offered to optimize the connection including the computer's network settings.
I know Comcast has a pretty bad rep, and has done some nasty things but I think it really depends on where you are as to whether they are good or bad.
Because, in my case at least, buying a modem ended up being significantly cheaper than renting one. Rental is about five dollars a month (before taxes, service charges, etc.) and I got a Motorola Surfboard from eBay for $30.
I've got my cable bill right in front of me and it lists the price of the modem as 0.00. I was paying about $2/month for it but now not only does it not cost me but my access is actually cheaper. Normally I prefer to own instead of renting but paying $0.00 to rent sounds good to me. And this is the second modem I've had. The first one had to be replaced and a tech brought the replacement, a faster one, the next day with no additional charge.
Err...what kind of servers are you downloading from that use a home user connection?
I don't right now but a number of people run servers from their home. RSN I'd like to setup my Linux tower as a server so I can access as well as upload files while on the road with my laptop, but I don't know how to or what's the best way to do it.
Actually I seem to recall DHS paid a CIA analyst to do an impact study on global warming and climate change. Instead of looking at where temperatures are changing (which scientists are concerned about) the question posed was what will these changes mean. The result was that cities are not that robust. More than hurricanes, but I'm sure they were a part of it...
DHS did another one of those studies? The Department of Defense did one years ago. And it didn't paint a pretty picture.
Get Ready for price hikes. When Comcast took over for Time Warner in the Twin Cities, They wasted no time in doubling DVR fees and raising every other price point they had.
Like you I live in the Twin Cities and my cable is, was, through Time Warner but is now Comcast. However my service cost less now. All I have now is basic cable and internet access though. I've been thinking about upgrading to digital, and maybe getting some source of premium cable service.
And if we do see that kind of speed for personal use, anyone actually using it to download a fair number of DVDs will find themselves dropped from Comcast.
Where Comcast doesn't have competition but I bet that they won't where they do have competition.
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I'm sure this stuff works fine and cheap and everything, but real glass fiber optic cable isn't very expensive either. The only expensive part seems to be splicing and termination. for the lengths you would use in a home, I can't imagine ever having to splice it. So unless this stuff is much easier/cheaper then glass to terminate, I just can't see any good reason to use it.
However TFA talks about the average person being able to install it. The first sentence says "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." Would a non technical person be able to install glass fiber?
FalconPlastic can be organically produced from corn [columbia.edu] and citrus oil [cornell.edu], possibly even other sources. That makes it at least a potentially renewable resource.
True, plastic was made out of plants way before it was ever made from oil. Which was one of the reasons hemp was made illegal. Hemp was a good source of feed sock, for among others, plastic. Henry Ford built a vehicle on his Iron Mountain Estate with material made from hemp. Hemp was also used to fuel the vehicle, ethanol was made out of hemp, which was used as fuel for the vehicle.
But what I think needs to be answered is how well will Bioplastics work for fiber optics.
If we recycled it better than we do now, it wouldn't be as a big a concern... but I know several people who throw away the last 60 or so feet on a 1000' spool of CAT5 because they're too lazy to be bothered to use it.
Yea, that kind of bothers me. At the apartment I live in we've had a number of repairmen come in to replace things. A tech from the cable company replaced a bunch of cable from a box on a phone pole to the building, and he just left all the cable, both what he replaced and some extra he cut from a roll of cable. Another repairman left a bunch of metal when he repaired the heater, as did the one who replaced the water heater who left sheet metal and copper pipe scraps. The cables I kept while I put the rest of the metal left behind out to be recycled.
Also there's a lot of cables that are 40, 50, or more years old that should be replaced. The phone lines where my sister lives have to be replaced, but Quest won't replace them, and the thing is is she lives close enough to the central office to get DSL but because the cables are so bad they can't handle DSL, heck they got so bad they couldn't even handle a 56k modem. However with the move to hybrids and pure electric vehicles the demand for copper will only increase.
FalconFYI: oil is also locally mined
But most of the oil used in the US is imported. Another thing going in copper's favor is all of the copper in cables and power lines that are old. A lot of them should be replaced. But working against copper is that as electric vehicles and other electric motors become used in wide spread applications, there will be more demand for copper. Also plastic has it's own advantage, plastic can and was made out of plants. Hemp was a good feed source. But how well will Bioplatics work for fiber optics needs to be answered.
FalconAluminum isn't as good of a conductor for power transmission as copper. The reason that it is being used for power lines is that it is a lot cheaper.
Thanks, I didn't know, or recall, that aluminum was used for power transmission.
FalconGood point. People talk about about the rise of corporatism and undue influence upon our lawmakers, e.g. the DMCA, copyright extensions, corn and ethanol subsidies, and any number of more egregious abuses. However, if you look at the history of big business in the United States, such examples of overt corruption are nothing new. It's been going on for as long as there has been a Congress.
Corporations were recognized as a problem almost as so as the USA was founded. Thomas Jefferson warned about the Corporate Aristocracy when he said "I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country."
FalconA major advantage of optic fiber on CAT6 is distance. CAT6 has a maximum distance of ~75 metres, but with optic fiber you can run connections upwards of 1km.
However as TFA says plastic fiber does not have the distance range glass fiber has. Plastic fiber only can go a few hundred meters. That's more than Cat6 but it's not really that far.
Falconit takes a good amount of energy to mine, transport, and smelt copper. So the cost of copper will most likely go even higher based on the cost of oil.
Energy can, and more and more will be, derived from renewable sources. However, as someone else pointed out before, copper from dumps and the power cable stung out 40 years ago may be a better source. The thing is is plastic can be made from renewable resources as well. Plastic can be made from plants, however I wonder how well bioplastics will work for fiber optics.
FalconAlso, 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.
Falconour best place to obtain copper may be in the dumps as well as overhead lines that were put in 40 years ago.
I didn't want to say anything about recycling, but you're right, dumps and all the copper cables already laid down may be a better source.
We do have SHITLOADS of coal that can be changed into feedstock for plastics.
A better source of fee stock for plastic may be hemp with bioplastics being renewable. My question then is would bioplastics be good for fiber optics.
Falcononce W. is gone and the tax cuts for ethanol is rolled out (please), then realism will take hold of corn, and we will see corn being used in plastics.
Even with the massive subsidies corn gets corn prices will still go up. A better feed stock for plastic is hemp. But how well will Bioplastics work for fiber?
FalconOh come on, 12MB/s is just fine for a normal home network
OMG who can ever use 64KB of RAM?
Whatever is available will get used.
FalconOne is cost. Copper is getting more and more expensive plastic is cheap. Not only that but it should be lighter to ship and easier to install since it is smaller than CAT5.
It's very possible for plastic get more expensive than copper. First most plastic in the US today is a petrochemical product. As oil is depleted the cost of plastic will rise. Secondly because of the depletion of oil transporting it become more expensive as well. However copper can be and is mined in the US.
Falconwell for one, nobody is sitting in there car taking my bandwidth or bypassing my firewall. i prefer wired to wireless and having a non-conducting cable is a positive so for me this is something i would do in a heartbeat.
I was going to say security as well however I like having wireless access. With my laptop I can be outside and still have access without stringing cable.
FalconThe simple fact is that Copper is about to become VERY expensive. China is buying it as well as working with all countries that have copper mines to aquire full access to the copper.
However the US has a bunch of copper.
Finally, copper does not go the long distances that Fiber does.
Glass fiber goes further but TFA talks about plastic fiber and says it doesn't go nearly as far.
FalconThat may be true now but currently plastic is a petrochemical product. As oil prices rise so will the prices of plastic fibers. Copper will rise as well but at least in the US copper can be locally mined thus reducing transportation costs.
FalconWhen I had my service brought up two years ago, there was a $50 installation charge and a $5 monthly charge for rental. That may have changed since then, but as I've never seen a rental charge, I wouldn't know.
I too had to pay for installation. Oh, I was wrong when I said I paid $2 for the modem rental, as you did I paid $5. When I switched to cable a few years ago I checked into buying a modem and they were about $100. At $5 a month it would take 20 months to pay for it. The modem the tech brought over when I got cable only lasted about a year before it had to be replaced. If I had bought it and the warranty was out when it died I would of had to buy another. So while I prefer to own and not rent I think in this case it cost me less renting.
FalconLook, you gave IRIX and Solaris as evidence that a Linux port of Photoshop made sense. But IRIX and Solaris versions of Photoshop flopped,
Is IRIX still in production? Last I heard SGI stopped building PCs and now concentrates on supercomputers. And what is Solaris' market share? Especially in graphics. But Adobe still makes a version of FrameMaker for Solaris, they even make an educational version. I don't know if all the open source graphics programs available for Linux can also be used on either IRIX or Solaris. However their existence as well as people paying extra for CrossOver Linux to run Photoshop indicates there is a market for Photoshop on Linux. People even jump through hoops to get PS running in WINE. Here's a Ubuntu forum on running PS CS3 in WINE.
Only SOUTH Koreans of all ages and certain others in high-density areas will see these speeds any time soon.
No, there's a place in the US who will soon be able to get these speeds if they can't get them today. It's a little place in northeastern Utah called Broadband Utopia. Because of the competition Comcast was "Forced to offer $90 bundle in fiber-fed region".
Falcon-Will the service be reliable, as in always on, 24x7x365, you know, like the phone companies and my FiOS connection are?
In the 4 years I've been with, first Time Warner but now Comcast, I've only had one problem. It was when the cable modem I had died. The next day a tech came by and replaced it, with a faster modem.
Will the charge per month keep increasing every six months?
My service is cheaper than it was when I signed up. And though I rent the cable modem the cost is $0.00.
Will you still charge customers for house calls even when the fault lies in your network and your equipment?
When the tech came by I was not charged either for the visit nor the new modem.
Will you replace your unskilled, rude and generally ignorant customer service with talented, considerate and intelligent people?
The tech seems pretty knowledgeable and offered to optimize the connection including the computer's network settings.
I know Comcast has a pretty bad rep, and has done some nasty things but I think it really depends on where you are as to whether they are good or bad.
FalconBecause, in my case at least, buying a modem ended up being significantly cheaper than renting one. Rental is about five dollars a month (before taxes, service charges, etc.) and I got a Motorola Surfboard from eBay for $30.
I've got my cable bill right in front of me and it lists the price of the modem as 0.00. I was paying about $2/month for it but now not only does it not cost me but my access is actually cheaper. Normally I prefer to own instead of renting but paying $0.00 to rent sounds good to me. And this is the second modem I've had. The first one had to be replaced and a tech brought the replacement, a faster one, the next day with no additional charge.
FalconErr...what kind of servers are you downloading from that use a home user connection?
I don't right now but a number of people run servers from their home. RSN I'd like to setup my Linux tower as a server so I can access as well as upload files while on the road with my laptop, but I don't know how to or what's the best way to do it.
FalconActually I seem to recall DHS paid a CIA analyst to do an impact study on global warming and climate change. Instead of looking at where temperatures are changing (which scientists are concerned about) the question posed was what will these changes mean. The result was that cities are not that robust. More than hurricanes, but I'm sure they were a part of it...
DHS did another one of those studies? The Department of Defense did one years ago. And it didn't paint a pretty picture.
FalconGet Ready for price hikes. When Comcast took over for Time Warner in the Twin Cities, They wasted no time in doubling DVR fees and raising every other price point they had.
Like you I live in the Twin Cities and my cable is, was, through Time Warner but is now Comcast. However my service cost less now. All I have now is basic cable and internet access though. I've been thinking about upgrading to digital, and maybe getting some source of premium cable service.
FalconDo you think the average person is going to spend his own money so that other people can get their music and movies for free?
If they don't have to pay as much, yes.
FalconAnd if we do see that kind of speed for personal use, anyone actually using it to download a fair number of DVDs will find themselves dropped from Comcast.
Where Comcast doesn't have competition but I bet that they won't where they do have competition.
Falcon