
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Optical Networking [pdf] - walrus01
https://www.nanog.org/sites/default/files/Steenbergen.Everything_You_Need.pdf
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userbinator
Not long ago I was curious to see what it would cost to run fiber instead of
copper in my home network, and it turns out that the fiber itself is cheaper
(per meter) than copper, but the transceivers at each end and the equipment
required to work with the fiber were much more expensive; which explains why
much of the long-distance Internet links use it, but nearly no one uses it for
their home network... yet?

There's also an interesting failure mode for fibers, known as "fiber fuse",
which can happen when the power level is very high and an imperfection in the
fiber causes the light to literally start burning it like a fuse:

[http://cdn.intechopen.com/pdfs/28593/InTech-
Fiber_fuse_propa...](http://cdn.intechopen.com/pdfs/28593/InTech-
Fiber_fuse_propagation_behavior.pdf)

~~~
myself248
> nearly no one uses it for their home network... yet?

Yeah, sorta. It's depressingly rare to find desktop motherboards with SFP
ports, much less laptops. You end up converting back to copper anyway.

I have a fiber link in my home network, because I was sick of losing wifi
routers every time a storm came through. I suspect the cable modem to be
allowing badness to sneak in even past the grounding block (which doesn't
ground the center pin, of course), so in addition to a UPS with a coax
protector, I now also have the whole "outside" of the network isolated (the
cable modem and a fiber media converter, on that one UPS, on its own circuit)
by a few feet of glass, from the "inside" of the network (another media
converter, wifi router, distribution switch, NAS, etc, on another UPS on a
different circuit). There's now no electrical path between the cable HFC
network and my inner sanctum, and I haven't blown up any more hardware yet!

~~~
mattnewton
Asking from a place of relative EE ignorance: Wouldn’t you worry about blowing
a much more expensive optic transceiver with this setup?

~~~
krallja
$38 [https://store.ubnt.com/products/uf-
mm-10g-20-20-pack](https://store.ubnt.com/products/uf-mm-10g-20-20-pack)

~~~
sigstoat
$16
[https://www.fs.com/products/65336.html](https://www.fs.com/products/65336.html)

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mmt
Looks like the full talk is on youtube at
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KFpXuHqHQg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KFpXuHqHQg)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18108980](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18108980)

And an updated one:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__wn9zXFiy8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__wn9zXFiy8)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18109098](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18109098)

I'm not sure which version these slides correspond to.

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rayvy
So fiber can transfer 20 Tbps+ ? Mind = blown. Great cursory read

~~~
dugborkt
Well, a single fiber pair and a rack's worth of expensive gear on both sides.
The standard front panel ports on routers these day tends to go to 100G with
400 on the horizon.

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xvf22
Optical network surprises sometimes like when certain wavelengths on a cable
will become unreliable due to damage but others work fine.

~~~
rwmj
Do the transceivers work around this (similar to what happens with DSL) or do
you have to replace the whole fibre?

~~~
xvf22
Hmm no I don't think so, the goal with multiplexing is to keep the streams
separate so you can untangle them at the end since you're running multiple
customers on a fiber. Losing a wavelength means less streams you can fit on
it.

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windowsworkstoo
heh ive used the phone camera trick heaps of times coming onto a site that has
had a dodgy splicer who doesnt follow color standards to figure out which pair
I was lighting up...quick and dirty but faster than pulling out the full tesy
kit in a pinch

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atoledano
Related: a visualization of the wavelength assignment algorithm in optical
networks : [https://github.com/afourmy/swap](https://github.com/afourmy/swap)

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urda
Ah, many of these slides are familiar to me! I used to work on the Cyan (now
Ciena) Z-Series shelves way back. Got a chance to help develop some of Cyan's
SDN routing tech to generate network routes through Z-Series 2, 4, and
8-degree ROADM cards.

The bandwidth and capabilities of fiber and ROADM still blow my mind long
after leaving that industry.

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mmmBacon
I’ve been a contributor to GNPY as part of the Telecom Infrastructure Project.
It’s essentially a route planning tool for planning optical networks.

[https://github.com/Telecominfraproject/oopt-
gnpy](https://github.com/Telecominfraproject/oopt-gnpy)

