Comment on The plan for nationwide fiber internet might be upended for Starlink
JollyGreen_sasquatch@sh.itjust.works 3 days agoThe speed of light through a medium is what varies, since I have to deal with this at work, and the speed of light through air is technically faster than the speed of light through fiber. But now there is hollow core fiber that makes this difference less.
Between Chicago and New York the latency of the specialized wireless links commercially available is around about 1/2 of standard fiber taking the most direct route. But bandwidth is also only in gigabits/s vs terabits/s you can put over typical fiber backbone.
But both are faster than humans can perceive anyway.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
Yes, but transmission loss causes packet retransmission, which adds to perceived latency, and fiber usually doesn’t need to travel as far physically as a satellite, so there’s less distance to cover.
So yes, the “speed” of light through fiber is technically slower than via air, the data transfer is usually faster.
JollyGreen_sasquatch@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
Transmission loss/attenuation only informs the power needed on the transmission side for the receiver to be able to receive the signal. The wireless networks I am talking about don’t really have packet loss (aside from when the link goes down for reasons like hardware failure).
I mention Chicago to New York specifically because in the financial trading world, we use both wireless network paths and fiber paths between the locations and measured/real latency is a very big deal and measured to the nanoseconds.
So what I mention has nothing to do with human perception as fiber and wireless are both faster than most human’s perceptions. We also don’t have packet loss on either network path.
High speed/ high frequency Wireless is bound by the curvature of the earth and terrain for repeater locations. Even with all of the repeaters, measured latency for these commercially available wireless links are 1/2 the latency of the most direct commercially available fiber path between Chicago and New York.
Fiber has in-line passive amplifiers, which are a fun thing to read about how they work, so transmission loss/attenuation only applies to where the passive amplifiers are.
You are conflating latency (how long it takes bits to go between locations) with bandwidth (how many bits can be sent per second between locations) in your last line.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
That’s why I put “speed” in quotes. When lay people say “speed,” they mean a mix of latency and bandwidth, and lay people are the target for a discussion comparing Starlink and fiber internet.
Point to point wireless can be incredibly “fast” and reliable, at least until a storm interferes or knocks something out of alignment. We used point to point wireless at a previous company for our internet needs, and it worked really well, and I’m guessing more industrial installations are even better.
But your average person will have a much better experience with fiber to the home than fixed wireless. That’s the point I think the OP is making.