How Optical Fiber Connected the World

[@MrMcparsons]

I worked in the industry in the 1980s, designing and installing fiber links. The annual increase in bandwidth was staggering. At the time I wondered at what use we would make of all this capacity and the fact that the world did not recognize the revolution that was taking place under their feet.

[@chengong388]

Cat videos, obviously

[@patrickbateman3840]

@@chengong3888k corn, I2P

[@Mordecrox]

I live in a third world country and at a rather backwards city, got interested in IT when as a kid already found that, although not as flashy as in the movies, computers, lasers, satellites and potable water are real. Three decades later I travel to the capital to get networking certs, and a simple manhole catches my eye and I wonder at how people in the capital were a decade ahead of everyone else for centuries. At the manhole it reads: INTELSAT FIBER OPTIC SATELLITE UPLINK - 1992 Meanwhile at home we started getting our first fiber in 2015.

[@MrMcparsons]

@@Mordecrox I was installing fiber in Kuala Lumpur in 1992 and teaching splicing to local technicians. It was a pretty exciting time.

[@brad9529]

Even those designing the optic systems didn't realise that the demand could be outstripped. The saying "If you build it, they will come" stands true. When humans see a hole, we like to fill it.

[@careycummings9999]

I always appreciate that you take the extra time to shout out these mostly unknown men & women who pioneered the tech we take for granted. Well done as always.

[@DerekWoolverton]

Those same optical amplifiers also gave rise to fiber lasers for industrial cutting and welding, replacing bulky and expensive CO2 lasers. And laser diode power modules are still growing in power and capability.

[@dewiz9596]

As early as 1970, I worked on a phototypesetting machine, the “PhotonPacesetter”, which use a xenon flash and a fibre optic bundle to transport the flash through a spinning disc with a character set, through a series of lenses, to photographic paper. It was my introduction to minicomputers. At one point, I was able to work around a hardware problem with “software”. I was hooked.

[@benmcreynolds8581]

It blows my mind that all the data we transfer is basically a new fancy version of Morse code that CPUs convert into videos or some other data packet. All while using thin glass fiber optic cables. Using light & lasers. It's basically magic

[@ArifGhostwriter]

Indeed - you could travel not even that far back in time, describe your current era of technology - & you'd be sectioned as a madman.

[@der.Schtefan]

Multi mode fiber used to be the cheap one that you avoided for high performance application, becuase the multiple paths lead to a smearing out of the signal. Instead of an impulse you receive a smear of all possible paths. Now, with additional mathematics and advances, we can actually use it to our advantage. How times change

[@siegfriedkettlitz6529]

To utilize the "multi" you need more complexity in the sender and receiver. Uncontrolled "multi" mode fibers over longer distances have semi-infinite modes which don't help your data transmission because the complexity to transmit&receive those modes is beyond what we can build. You want a relatively low number of modes to actually make use of that property. Actually you want many modes that are mostly-independent and require low complexity to make them fully independent logical signal channels.

[@hariranormal5584]

@@siegfriedkettlitz6529 Yea it balanced out. Multimode fiber itself was cheap, the transceivers were expensive tho. It was opposite for SM.

[@jfbeam]

The problem with MM is also the size (volume) of light entering the fiber. SM works because it's a very tiny beam. You can, in fact, fire a SM laser down a MM fiber, but it won't go nearly as far. I've often wondered why no one built systems to fire multiple SM lasers down a MM fiber. With modem DWDM optic capabilities - i.e. very selective receivers - it's totally unnecessary. A multi-core fiber would a serious pain in the ass to splice.

[@geekswithfeet9137]

Until we have functional rectennas, it’s not worth it. Just put in a separate fibre.

[@djn3kkid]

​@@jfbeamI work as a fiber-tech, and a few years ago we were connecting multiple companies in a new building. To their infinite wisdom, the building owners built a fibre distribution net. However, they built MM, while all modern ISPs use SM. So we patched from incoming SM (isp side) to MM (building side), with SM gear in the rack at each corporation renting a few offices. And it worked, had a few more DB then needed of attenuation, but with a 10db headroom, who cares... Works fine to this day.

[@THALASA]

Fun fact When the F4 Fighter jet was modernized, they saved 300 KG of weight by replacing copper wire with fiber.

[@Conorscorner]

661 lbs or 1 OP's mom

[@kkrobertson1]

I'm hoping these videos are used in our educational system. This channel is freaking amazing!!

[@Kneedragon1962]

I was introduced to optical fibre in Brisbane, in '95, while doing computer systems engineering. We cut & spliced fibre, in the classroom. (Tip ~ it isn't all that hard to do, but you have to get the two ends in the jig, and properly aligned, and they have to be precise.) and then checking the splice with an optical time domain reflectometer. That is virtually the same set of hardware you find in a police LIDAR unit. If your join doesn't come up to standard, at least you will know about it before you bury it again. The OTDR can tell you if there is a break, blockage or interruption, (which includes a kink or sharp bend where there shouldn't be) and locate it down to about one metre ~ which is handy. The major take home, for me, (TLDR) was just how fantastically good fibre optic communications are. Which contributed to my massive face-palm when the Australian government (under the new prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, who had been the opposition spokesman on telecommunications & IT, because he had once been a lawyer / attorney for a major telco, not because he knew did-ley-squat about IT or computers) decided to renew / upgrade continue the copper wire network and gradually expand the fibre network only as fast as required. ie ~ to replace stuff that was too old to keep fixing. That stopped the previous government's project to make the Australian Broadband Network, in fibre, all the way to the premises ~ (your front gate) which would have been massively better, if somewhat more expensive to initially install. Predictably, what we have now is slower, more costly, more error and breakdown prone, and in need of replacement anyway, which it mostly wouldn't have been if we had done it with fibre the first time. Measure twice ~ cut once. And don't take anybody at face value who tells you they can do some new development at half the price, using an existing technology rather than a new one. Optical fibre is pretty near miraculous. The sheer amount of data / information you can pump through one strand of glass not much thicker than a human hair, is mind boggling. It has the potential to transmit millions, billions of times more information than a twisted pair copper cable. It does age, and will need to be replaced one day, but it ages 3 ~ 5x slower than twisted pair. The cost to install is greater, but over the whole life of the network, it's actually cheaper, and the capacity can be hugely increased by upgrading the send & receive at the ends. The more tightly you can control your colours / wavelengths, at the ends, the more channels you can pump through one fibre. Your potential bandwidth is limited by the quality & sophistication of your transmit & receive equipment, not by the glass fibre itself. The better your transceivers, (and repeater stations) the more you can pump through it. The theoretical upper limit is pretty much infinite.

[@luayuahmed]

I recently took an electromagnetics class that introduced me to how fiber optic cables work. The technology is very cool, and based on how you tune the material properties along the light's path, you can take advantage of certain behaviors as you pointed out in your video. There is still interesting engineering to be done to design more advanced systems that can communicate in novels ways. As a field, fiber optic engineering is not something a lot of people think about.

[@TheOwlGuy777]

My father was an engineer with AT&T back then. I remember as a child him bringing home a bundle of fibers from a conference and saying this was the future.

[@shanent5793]

Latency is due to permittivity, not resistance. The dielectric used limits the velocity in both fiber and copper cables. Vacuum- and air-cored fiber and coax all have velocities close to the speed of light in vacuum

[@samgeorge4798]

15:00 da clAOUD

[@JoaoPedro-ki7ct]

De plane, de plane, de plane

[@victormgv]

This is the only way I'm going pronounce it from now on. LMFAO 😂

[@Alexi0]

LMFAOOOO

[@blu3_enjoy]

The claude

[@ceber54]

Great video! This subject is really close to me, including those EM fiber modes solutions. Maybe too close to me, because I made a lot of numerical simulations on those. In the lab I use EDFAs, DWDM and CWDM in experiments about photon pair generation through SFWM, in deed we have the record for the narrowest bandwidth for SFWM photon pairs. Also, I know how to taper those fibers down to sub-micron diameter so use their light confinement (and generate 3rd harmonics) and use their evanescent EM field to couple light into optical microresonators (microspheres, microtorii and microrings). Also, we make photon pairs using pulsed laser and polarization maintaining (PM) fibers. And finally we have some experimental samples of spacial multiplexers, so once a college make photon count coincidences in the spatial regime using a 2D intensified camera, some non linear crystals, and a spatial light modulator.

[@TheOnlyDamien]

I have never felt as dumb as I do now when reading this comment. Genuinely insane the levels of complexity at play here .

[@ceber54]

​@TheOnlyDamien Don't be afraid, many details on the subjects this channel talks I really find difficult to understand. So, more often than not , I feel the same.

[@nycrsny3406]

@@TheOnlyDamien Same lol

[@TheOnlyDamien]

@@ceber54 That actually is a great way to look at it! I appreciate it

[@HenkPoley]

That shark biting the cable footage is actually the only time this has been observed. Many camera’s have been set up to monitor how large this issue was. But it has never been observed in the ocean since.

[@7wingsaseagles89]

One of the things that you may want to touch on later on which was missed here was polarized optic fiber transmission. Polarization is used in microwave transmission having a vertical and horizontal positioning This was also developed for fiber optic and is currently being used to double the capacity of fiber optic transmission. The other technology that is being used is still wavelength transmission one fiber can transmit and receive. There is one downside to this it means you need a wavelength to transmit in a wavelength to receive. Another good topic is on the development of terminating fiber and on the development of ribbon fiber. Ribbon fiber offers extremely high density. Overall this video was very informative on fiber optics cable and I enjoyed it. I have worked in the industry for over 30 years.

[@davecool42]

I first accessed the internet when I was in high school in 1994. The dream of optical was still well away on our level even then. Now I have fiber at my door. It’s incredible!

[@Weisior]

Im jealous, still waiting for any ISP to build the infrastructure. They are close though! Maybe a year or two away.

[@kashdiscovers1050]

I love this channel, no music, just monotone voice about interesting boring material that puts me in a deep coma every night. God bless you.

[@rollsroyce4249]

It's a shame that this video doesn't talk about Father of Fibre Optics Narendra Singh Kapany.

[@kanwarsingh0]

True, Fortune named him one of seven unsung Heroes of the 20th century.

[@Phosphor66]

great video! I'm currently an Outside Plant engineer, and I really enjoyed this video about fiber!

[@Sacto1654]

that's great if we're talking about _backbone_ data transmission. But what about the issue of last kilomoter/last mile connection to places of business and residences? That's a very interesting story in itself, especially with how former state-owned telecoms like those in Europe, Nippon Telephone and Telegraph in Japan, and Korea Telecom in South Korea were able to connect users in metropolitan areas easily. Here in the USA, connecting everyone to high-speed Internet took longer, mostly because the growth happened after 2015 when companies started to roll out DOCSIS standard data connections using already-installed TV cable lines. And there was an attempt to do high-speed wireless Internet using a somewhat forgotten technology called WiMAX (802.16). And now the final fast growth of fiber in recent years even out to rural areas.

[@doujinflip]

Fiber would be promising because considerably more strands can be pulled in the same amount of space that a single coaxial or twisted-pair cable would take up, meaning time and costs saved. I recently worked on a building that incorporated all three, and the fiber was by far the easiest to pull.

[@LinearMotorsRsuperior]

One correction: you describe the IVD process of making blanks, but the photos you show are for the OVD process. There are many common processes to make the glass blanks. Including VAD and PCVD as well. OVD and VAD are especially well suited to high volume production. IVD and PCVD are generally better suited to lower volume specialty fibers as it is easier to tightly control the vapor deposition. Most manufactuers specialize in one proecess. Like Sumitomo Lightwave primarily uses the VAD process, while Corning primarily uses the OVD process. As someone who designs fiber making equiment, it was cool to see a video talking about it. Most people dont even know it exists. Meet people all the time that say they thought it was all satellites when I describe what I do for a living.

[@chriscork2513]

I worked at British Telecom research in the mid 1980s as a fresh graduate. There they were working on TAT-8 the first fibre-optic transatlantic cable. There was so much research there in opto-electronics that is just now coming available on Silicon wafers platforms to enable Quantum computing and data center inter chip communication.

[@petergerdes1094]

Are you saying they were doing work keeping quantum states coherent over fiber? For some reason I assumed that would be hard but I guess it must have been done to allow some of the fancy EPR experiments.

[@tswtx]

I design DWDM networks for a content delivery network. I still haven't heard a good reason for multicore fiber in a metro or long haul network. Having more strands of fiber isn't a big constraint... when you run out of capacity on a rail you get an IRU for more strands. Now in the data center I can see some value as density matters. Everyone hates MPO/MTP cables, so having a multicore LC would be really nice if there comes a time when the thermal and power requirements lessen to allow for high density optics that would benefit from multicore fiber.

[@mattholden5]

@Asianometry Jon, brilliant piece. This is one of my favorite topics. I hope you're cooking up more bit per second content. It is now central and essential to how we disseminate every facet of knowledge.

[@thegamefanaticshow]

Here in the Midwest Charter has been laying rural FTH at an impressive pace for 3 years now. I went from 25mb/s satellite straight to symmetrical GB a welcomed improvement.

[@kva7922046]

"Just the tip."

[@ricardokowalski1579]

It's hot. 😂

[@nwalsh3]

I almost spilled my coffee on the last pun. :) Very interesting video as always. In the mid 1990s I was empoyewd by a defence company that was expanding with new offices and we, the what you'd call now, IT Department, were tasked to investigate what options we had for the new installation and make a technological choice: Copper or Fiber and GigabitEthernet or ATM. Internet connectivity was spoken about, but because of the way that the business worked those days, we ended up having a seperate network for it.

[@dieselphiend]

You wouldn't believe how hard it is to get backbone providers to give you a quote for service. We paid for a majority of the infrastructure, and we still continue to pay.

[@MkadinA01]

I used to work with fiber optics running lines and splicing and have seen entire buildings have to be reworked cause it was installed with too many bends or micro fractures. And compared to cable, splicing is a much longer process. It has nearly replaced copper entirely in banking data centers other than management ports that use copper. Sadly the industry sucks in a America, bad pay and few options due to guys getting the few jobs available and keeping them into their 60s

[@martinbruhn5274]

Maybe you could do more videos in the future, that focus on the role of material sciences in tech. I find it really interesting, how crucial developments of materials, like pure glass for optical fibers are for the development of new technologies.

[@wolterjulian2607]

Freaking love your videos! Thank you so much.

[@jackking5567]

The use of railroad land for fibre cables reminds me of my local city here in the UK. Around a century ago the railway company realised that their routes could supply electricity to outlying industry and households by utilising the cable routes they already had along the local railway system. This method of supply only lasted a decade or so until the use of pylons over local land became a thing but the initial supply did generate (bad joke!) an extra income for the local railway system.

[@TommyPrime4]

Narinder Singh Kapany and Peter C. Schlutz were the real inventors of optic fibres.

[@0MoTheG]

The Modems deserve their own video. There are many ways to modulate other than turning a diode on and off.

[@johndoh5182]

Even with fiber optics running into this home near the beginning of the time that started happening which was early 2000s, the speed has increased a LOT. Our first service was 25Mbps/25Mbps. Then it went to 50/50. Then it went to 100/100, then 200/200, then 500/500 and now it's 1Gbps/1Gbps. So, the increase in about 20 years has been 40X. This of course is not a doubling in speed every year, however the need for these speeds is pretty low, even if you're watching 4K HDR movies streaming on some service. Well, that's not even 100Mbps. Indeed one of the main reasons for having that speed is for downloading games or other very large downloads. With gaming systems, a game might be 60 - 120GB in size. If you have a few games and setting up a new system with them, this can quickly be over a terabyte of downloads. But after you set up the gaming system, then the need for that bandwidth drops dramatically. So we're at the point now where available bandwidth in larger markets is PLENTY. The main issue as is always the case is managing resources and cost for getting service to more rural areas.

[@MarkMichon7]

Nowhere near the speeds of fiber yet, but at least Starlink has greatly improved accessibility to those rural areas.

[@agoatmannameddesire8856]

MMwave transmission is still useful for low-bandwidth, low-latency applications. An old network engineer colleague at a High Frequency Trading firm would spin up MMwave paths to cut down on latency over their fiber paths just a couple years ago.

[@rolandet]

'light headed' made me chuckle ever so slightly 😊 As did your "the cloud" remark. 😂

[@Ossian477]

In 1952: Narinder Singh Kapany, a British physicist, invented the first practical fiber optic cable, building upon Tyndall's work. He coined the term "fiber optics.

[@JaviSoto]

Underrated channel.

[@WillN2Go1]

Terrific Video. Thanks. I well remember the 1990s, fiber optic crews all over Los Angeles running lines. They must've had an open street closing permit because they once shut down Third Street while at the same time the road department shut down Melrose for resurfacing. These were the two main east west arteries for that area. Total chaos for a week. I don't think anyone ever thought Global Crossing was a bad idea, just over extended. I would like to see what happened after the bankruptcy and just how soon all that GC over capacity was finally utilized, when it turned profitable, and when the network needed to be further expanded.

[@James_Knott]

That Level 3 picture is an interesting contrast. It has fibre installation in the foreground and the old open wire lines in the background. On those open wire pairs you'd get 15 or 16 voice channels per pair.

[@drtracking]

I think the information in the video at 16:00 is misleading. Single mode and Multi Mode refers to the amount of path the light takes in the core. Multimode has a bigger core 62.5 or 50 Microns vs 9 microns in single mode. You can transmit bidirectional wavelength with out interference in single mode, example is TX at 1310 and RX at 1550 nanometers. Now Multimode uses 850 nanometers and because the core is bigger you have more multi-path, increased reflections, dispersion, and attenuation, limiting distance capabilities. More reflections with the cladding, more path. The best way to understand this concept is to think of laser transmissions and RF ( You can transmit in 2.4 GHz and receive in 5.8 GHz ( The Fiber tunnel is the Wave guide, Coax, etc ). Now in multimode you can easily use multi polarization and have higher bandwidth. Of you can think on other techniques like OFDM, but in light or fiber-optics . I'm not a technical writer , hope you understand

[@JohnnieWalkerGreen]

Indeed misleading.

[@acmefixer1]

I think the single and multimode part needs further explanation. Confusion leads to misperception and people are misled.

[@Z80Fan]

Yep, this is often a point of confusion when explaining fiber optics to non-technical people: they hear "multi" and they think it's better than "single". Also the fancy "mode multiplexing" explained in the video would require higher purity multimode fiber like OM4 or higher which is vastly more expensive than standard OS2 single mode fiber by length.

[@feedmytv]

I always enjoyed EM-wave knowledge easily lets you step to waveguides and then optical fiber. It's a good basis for your layer 1 if you IP.

[@bigvinny333]

Graded Index Multimode (GIMM) optical fibre also operates at 1300nm wavelength. Optical fibre propagates at 2/3 the speed of light in a vacuum as the Refractive Index (RI) of the core is around 1.5. OF is optically more dense than a vacuum hence the slower propagation speed. The other commonly held myth is that OF (Optical Fibre) actually uses light it does not, it uses operates in the Infra Red (IR) in the region 850nm to 1300nm for GIMM and 1310 nm to 1625nm for singlemode (SM) optical fibre.

[@Ahnii]

I'm a simple person, I see a new Asianometry video, I click like! Jokes aside, as always awesome quality!

[@musicdev]

The video was amazing, and the comment section somehow matches the quality. You guys are great

[@dmacpher]

But of course! The IEEE standard test photo, Corgi in Urinal! 😊

[@Ilegator]

What a wonderful video. An ode to knowledge and work division. Thanks a lot. Finally a video that explains how fiber optics really work.

[@edwardhewer8530]

Great video and world view analysis. The heroes we never knew existed and yet another example of the good that can come from University’s and their collaboration and then from the private sector understanding what the research can do for them.

[@elforeign]

You’re a champ for that closing joke! Great video on such a critical piece of infrastructure that underpins most of human advancement today.

[@boballmendinger3799]

As a recently retired telco tech, all I can say is great video!

[@mr.takethingstooseriously]

I’m sad not to hear about my west African brother Thomas Mensah in the video. Modern fiber optics manufacturing would literally be nothing without him.

[@yogimew]

When someone is clearing his throat at the beginning of the video, you'd know that there is some good content ahead.

[@drupiROM]

Superb video as always, thank you very much !

[@x2ul725]

It takes a whole lot of 48v batteries for power off protection in these DI sites when I go in them. Lots of testing and the AC is really important to function of sites in heat. A bad AC unit can reroute a fiber network many miles out of the way setting alarms off at desks all over. Modules and the chassis are pretty problem free, if you keep them cool. I will give them that, no doubt.

[@dawidkrol1]

Great video as usual. These videos refresh my knowledge from my studies at university of technology. 1:28 Could you elaborate this thought? Why transmitting data through 5g network has iffy results? Is it to do with milimeter radio waves' attenuation?

[@TheVanillatech]

Many years ago, in the late 90's, my friends went backpacking to Thailand and Australia after finishing school. In Australia, a couple of them took a temporary job on a ship laying fibre in the sea. It was stored on these giant spools, they told me, and slowly uncoiled as the ship moved. It was hard work, a full 12 hour day, but it paid something ridiculous like £300 a day. So they did that three days a week, financed an extra 2 months in Australia for each of them. One of my friends never left. Married an Australian girl, got a job as an electrician. Still there to this day, renting boats to people. I never figured they would have been laying that so early, especially off the Australia coast.

[@Typhonnyx]

in 1952, UK based physicist Narinder Singh Kapany invented the first actual fiber optical cable based on John Tyndall's experiments three decades earlier

[@SaiSS961]

Yes, he was an Indian physicist who moved to the imperial College for his grad studies. Times listed him as one of the unsung heroes of the 29th century. He deserved a Nobel prize for his discoveries. Unfortunately he didn't, even this video doesn't mention his name. What a shame!

[@williamholmes7529]

We stand on the shoulders of giants 🙏

[@vagellan_8842]

12:02 Curious... Do you remember, from the sources you referenced during your research for this video essay, why the "optical" cable in the timestamp I've referenced was even emitting electrical fields that attracted sharks? Maybe particles in the sea water currents flowing around the metal cladding inducing current? Interesting topic I think, unless the same cable bundle included traditional electrical signal elements for other purposes...?

[@megalonoobiacinc4863]

this was a brilliant video, thank you!

[@fakech]

0:00 *clears throat*

[@saintkamus14]

Insightful, it sheds some light on the exponential advancements in telecommunications. 😉

[@JoshuaC923]

Awesome tech that keeps the world moving. Can't imagine going back to pre optic fiber internet

[@bigvinny333]

No mention of George Hockham, the other co author with Charles Kao of the pivotal 1966 paper on optical waveguides ?????

[@kevin_2468]

Another excellent video, thank you!

[@quinnocent]

I think the story of the fiber boom, and the rise and fall of industry giants built around it, is one of the most interesting stories in business. There's a great video series out there on the story of Nortel. I can't remember who did it, though.

[@mrhassell]

1995-1996, was a very special moment in the 20th century. The advancement of fibre networks, which made the World’s largest network possible, was made viable at that time. Which just happened to coincidence with a young researcher at CERN, called Tim Burners Lee, deciding to create a better solution to sharing data with FTP evolving from Email, Newsgroups and Bulletin Boards, to a variation on the SGML Language protocol, which he called Hypertext and the Hypertext Transport Protocol HTTP, which required a few patches of code made to the original NSCA FTP server, a patch here and a patch there, Apache Web Server, was born.

[@canonest]

while watching I keep thinking if he is going to mention this or that and indeed you are! great research!

[@paulbush7095]

That was a poignant presentation of the “father” of fiber optics, Dr. Kao. Well done and eloquently executed as usual.

[@Ironrodpower]

So Gratful for dudes like this!

[@excelmesoftly]

i always like your closing words "That's it for tonight". It's like i'm in a class or something.

[@sporefergieboy10]

11:00 resistance in a wire does not increase latency

[@arkerstater8856]

Great video. Tcp/ip and multi protocol routers would be good topics

[@valeriopreite7573]

Well, after WDM the next innovation was coherent communications, to improve the spectral efficiency (how many bit/second are transmitted for Hertz, or unit of light frequency bandwidth): the idea is that, instead of modulating just the light intensity, also its phase can be used to encode information. So, instead of the intuitive On Off Keying (OOK), where the laser light is ideally switched on and off, one can act on its phase shift or use more than 2 power levels. This means that, as the format has more than 2 symbols (say 4 or 8), each symbol carries/is equivalent to multiple bits (2 or 3, following the example) However, we are close to the theoretical limit, that derives from non-linear effects: because of noise, to distinguish one symbol to another with a sufficiently large probability, a minimum "spacing" must be used. This corresponds to larger power/intensity for the symbols at the edge of the constellation. But, as the signal intensity grows, the material properties (refractive index/speed of light) vary and this causes a series of effect that distort the signal, both inside a single channel or among multiple ones. Personally, I would say that mode division multiplexing is a technique of its own, not a subset of spacial division multiplexing (i.e. in its most basic form, increasing the number of cables in parallel) because it corresponds to different way of spacial vibration of the light in the fibre cross-section, more than it travelling different paths (that is in the ray-optics picture, which however is simplistic); I would say that it's more the wavevector equivalent of WDM.

[@GegoXaren]

I actually met an engineer who installed some of the first fibre optics cabels in Sweden in the 1960's. I think he said it was Experimental at the time.

[@locusgaudi]

Thanks! One thing that was new to me is that optic fiber was used before the internet age to transfer analogue signal. Seems like a completely logical idea, especially for TV -- after all it's OPTIC fiber, but somehow I never made the connection. Another fascinating story is that those cables that carry so much information concentrated in one place provide a very juicy target for spying. Superpowers have been doing this for years during the Cold War, although mainly the cables that were tapped were not the optic ones but the more commonplace coaxial military communication cables. See Blind Man's Bluff, it's a fascinating story. It's safe to presume that this sort of activity is continuing until now, using underwater ROVs and, in cases of rich and powerful nations, specialized submarines built entirely for spying.

[@shanent5793]

Cable TV companies already had fiber and coax networks in place so they were often the first to offer high-speed internet services

[@James_Knott]

@@shanent5793 Yep, I had a cable modem in the late 90s. However, IIRC, cable modems and ADSL were rolled out at roughly the same time. In my work, I first saw fibre in 1989.

[@Sacto1654]

@@James_Knott But cable modem technology using DOCSIS didn't really roll out until DOCSIS 3.0 started to really roll out in the early 2010's, which resulted in speed ups to 250 mbps at minimum and over 500 mbps as modems improved.

[@James_Knott]

@@Sacto1654 Yes, I know DOCSIS 3 came out later, but I had a pre DOCSIS modem in the late 90s and got 10 Mb/s IIRC. Another thing I got back then was cabling. When I got the modem, I wanted it in my "office", which is at the opposite end of my condo from where the cable comes in. My ISP actually fished the coax up the wall, alongside some air ducts, over my bathroom ceiling, along my laundry room ceiling, down the wall behind my water heater and through the wall into my office closet. While they were at it, I had them pull in 2 runs of CAT 5 cable, which I supplied. It took 2 guys 3 hours to do that. They even patched the drywall where they cut it.

[@top6ear]

You should do a episode on Nortel or JDS uniface. Used to make dual mode fiber for Nortel and JDS I worked on the lasers too.

[@mennowitteveen3313]

I have been 'enlightened' by this video (10x)

[@adrianlindsay3194]

Great video thanks for making

[@alexis1156]

Are there physical limits to how much data you can pass through fiber optics?

[@Weisior]

Still going on pair copper ADSL in 2000 fucking 24.

[@ajs1998]

I see the internet as an evolved superorgan. We have lungs for gas exchange, capillaries for nutrient transport, and now fiber for communication. All subject to various selection pressures.

[@punditgi]

Brilliant video! 😊

[@bassmechanic237]

Great as always

[@ivoryas1696]

12:05 Is _that_ what they call a laser shark?

[@Ayo22210]

Do a video on electrical wires with cladding. I think they should try a graphene clad wire. Efficient transmission lines are going to a big part of a renewable energy economy

[@bobjonson143]

That last line in the video. Butiful pun.

[@hurricanemeridian8712]

The moment when you live in germany and they still haven't managed tou make fiber standard

[@KokkiePiet]

Germany has become an open museum for industrial history.

[@jfkastner]

" Pinhole Cameras " can give you an Idea how much information can go through a tiny opening. Photons are pretty small.

[@ChrisFEJackson]

I remember watching Football world cup matches, even into the early 90's, the commentators were live over the phone networks :) Now the broadcast are as if they are next door, fibre really improving the quality of transmission due to bandwidth. I sort of miss the old style sounding commentary. It's probably why the Goonhilly Sation (Cornwall, UK)) with it's large dishes stopped tx/rx television signals for live comms.

[@labmate9452]

you did not mention Narinder Singh Kapany in this video.

[@fffrrraannkk]

He won a half nobel prize? It looked like a whole one to me.

[@nomadhgnis9425]

I am actually using fiber for internet. 200 Mbps for about US$65 per month.

[@PhenomRom]

You are getting scammed

[@nomadhgnis9425]

@@PhenomRom I do not live in the usa. I live in guyana.

[@James_Knott]

???? I'm still on coax and my ISP provides 1.5 GB, though I'm limited by my hardware to 1 Gb. I can't break out the Internet charges, as I'm on a bundled deal, but my Internet, TV and home phone come to about $190/month. 200 Mb is really slow for fibre. BTW, back in the late 90s, at work, we had fibre connecting multiplexers that handled 3 DS3s. That's 3 x 45 Mb. A few years later, we had OC48 SONET over fibre @ 2.488 Gb.

[@nomadhgnis9425]

@@James_Knott I think you are confused. Coax cannot transmit data at that speed. No one has a 1.5 GB connection. It looks like your monthly data capacity. Download speed is measured in Mega bytes per second. Do a speed test to see your Mbps. Fiber is always faster then coax.

[@James_Knott]

@@nomadhgnis9425 No, I am not confused. While my ISP had fibre connections, much of their network is still hybrid fibre/coax. The run fibre to the vicinity and then coax to the customer. I still have only coax coming into my home, the same coax that was installed when my condo was built over 30 years ago. I have a Technicolor CGM4140COM modem. BTW, my career in telecom goes back over half a century and I have done some work for my ISP

[@y_x2]

At the beginning you skipped or mixed up microwave and millimeterwave. Microwave are still in used today easier to deploy but low in capacity.

[@grizwoldphantasia5005]

Seems a little light on views too, but not content value. Thanks.

[@rogerrinkavage]

Lol how is your comment a month old?

[@autohmae]

@@rogerrinkavage was not yet published, but was linked from patreon or something is my guess.

[@grizwoldphantasia5005]

@@rogerrinkavage Probably patreon saw it early.

[@autohmae]

As they say: over 90% of all wireless connections are wired (and most of those are actually fiber optics). So the next video is on silicon photonics ?

[@fanBladeOne]

Chad and Wojak. Why wasn't I subscribed before???

[@dewinmoonl]

My dad works in photonics. Growing up he'd tell me everything about fiber and laser. Still do in fact. It's a great bonding moment when we discuss technical problems he faces and see which can be addressed with ML. Thanks for covering this amazing technology.❤

[@ketfoen]

No wonder my connextion is so slow, we still dont have enough bandwith, my ISP is a crook.

[@Napoleonic_S]

one of the many technologies that literally change how humanity lives...