
Why Fiber Is Vastly Superior to Cable and 5G - DiabloD3
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/why-fiber-vastly-superior-cable-and-5g
======
gnode
The article is correct that fiber connections can provide a higher bitrate
than cable and 5G, but it fails to explain why that makes it a better social
or economic proposition.

My 200Mb/s DOCSIS cable connection is well below the theoretical maximum, and
is good enough for streaming 8K video, downloading a Linux distro in seconds,
downloading a game in a few minutes, etc. The social effect of having this,
versus 0.1Mb/s connectivity I had before is huge, but greater bandwidth would
not greatly change my experience.

If the aim is to improve the lives of as many people as possible, it takes
more to justify a more expensive project, than just: it will be faster.

My primary concern as a politician would be which solution can be affordable
and adequate for the largest number of people who do not currently have
something adequate.

~~~
bsder
Every order of magnitude change in _upload_ speed has spawned a whole host of
new applications to take advantage of it.

Upload is the key--not download.

~~~
steve1977
Most people do not create content that is worthy of any high amount of upload
bandwidth. Why would you think that upload speed is so important?

~~~
bsder
Because every bump in upload speed created some new application.

email, online services, graphical online services, the web, limewire etc.,
bittorrent etc.

It's not about what everybody can create. It's about what a _select few_ can
create.

The goal is to give the same tools to the person in the middle of nowhere as
if they were the most connected person on the planet.

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Isamu
Perhaps the title should be "Why policymakers should support fiber over cable
and 5G". This is about public policy, it's not a technical discussion.

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EricE
If it's a decision between wired or wireless, wired is always better. Period.

Luckily I have FIOS but my parents are stuck on really crappy DSL or mediocre
cable.

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oarla
Why is there no mention of the initial cost to lay down fiber? I expect that
would be quite significant compared to wireless links and I am not even
thinking of the costs that might be associated with maintenance of the fibers
once it is laid down and operational.

~~~
jkoberg
The dirty secret of 5G is that they have to run fiber to every street corner
anyway just to backhaul the very-short-range base stations.

For a marginal additional cost, you can run it down the street to every house,
and consumers aren't forced into a artificial-scarcity "purchase by the
gigabyte" scheme run by wireless carriers.

~~~
mv1
Yes, but with 5G, I now have high speed internet on your block too, and so
does everyone else.

~~~
mmphosis
Except that my devices don't have 5G or fiber ports. I have WIFI and Ethernet
ports.

~~~
trcarney
The fiber line goes to your house then gets converted to Ethernet via a modem;
just like cable does now. In fact when i had FIOS, the fiber was converted to
coax before it came into may apartment, then went to the modem and cable box.
So from a user perspective, it wasn't any different than cable.

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rkwasny
It's not about speed, it's about reliability. We have a backup 5G connection
for an office in central London, when it rains heavily it just goes down.

Cable/Fibre does not have this problem.

------
bifrost
This is such a superficial and terrible article, its like if you gave an
intern an outline and they could only use wikipedia to complete it.

While I appreciate what they're trying to do, this comes off as ridiculous to
those of us who actually have built or build parts of the internet.

The TLDR of this article is "With current technology you can move more bits
with light and electrons than you can with RF", which is likely to stay true
for the forseeable future.

What they left out is that most fiber service providers use PON, which doesn't
give you the top end of what your physical fiber can do.

Here's a handy article about it: [https://www.electronicdesign.com/what-s-
difference-between/w...](https://www.electronicdesign.com/what-s-difference-
between/what-s-difference-between-epon-and-gpon-optical-fiber-networks)

~~~
sp332
The article was co-written by EFF's senior legislative counsel. It's intended
to be a position paper to influence policy, not a technical deep dive.

~~~
bifrost
Yes, and it shows they don't understand the technology.

This is almost as bad as "the internet is a series of tubes" to a network
engineer...

~~~
admax88q
How do they not understand the technology? They clearly compared the
theoretical max to each technology as options for last mile connectivity.

If you have last mile fiber into your home, then you're capable if receiving
10Tbps. Yes a PON setup won't actually provide that, but they never state that
someone would offer those speeds, only the theoretical last mile capacity.

The point of the article is to counter lobbyist claims that we don't need
fibre investment because cable and 5g are fast enough. This article points out
that even in their best case that is not true.

~~~
bifrost
They don't understand how PON works, think of it like FDDI or even DOCSIS;
You'd never be capable of receiving 10Tbps due to fiber topology... The 10Tbps
number requires DWDM anyways, its like saying a Kia is a Lamborghini.

The Cable/Wireless carriers will use this misdetermination to undermine what
these guys are saying so in the end its unhelpful.

They'd have a much better time pointing out that existing cableco's have
mismanaged their DOCSIS networks and that Comcast is considered the WORST
company in this country (even worse than Monsanto) because of how poorly they
manage their networks. There's also so little adoption for "Wireless to the
Home" that its pointless to consider that a reasonable option.

~~~
didibus
I'm not sure I really understand your alternative. It's not like in practical
terms, providers will achieve the theoretical max of RF or cable either. What
are you suggesting instead?

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bifrost
What I'm saying is they're talking out of their behinds, which will ultimately
hurt us all.

~~~
aeternum
You clearly know about this, but your comments are not very substantive. It
might be more valuable to explain what the article is getting wrong. Many HN
readers are fairly technical and interested in stuff like this.

~~~
bifrost
Based on the downvoting, I'm unconvinced they're actually interested in this
:)

I can tell you this -> Any time anything network/internet infrastructure gets
posted here on HN, its a mess. My friends in NANOG have stopped bothering.

