Optical fiber carries over 95% of terrestrial internet and private network traffic, and over 99% of international traffic via undersea cables. It is a miraculous medium, but it has fundamental limits in terms of the combination of capacity and reach. With almost 5 billion kilometres of optical fiber already installed, there is a strong incentive to extract as much capacity from existing fiber as possible.
In this tutorial we explain what those fundamental limits are, and what we can do to get as close as we can to them based on a hierarchy of lowest impact to highest impact on the network:
- The lowest impact implies using both the existing optical fibers in the ground today, and the existing line systems that are installed on those fibers.
- Involving more investment would be to use existing fibers, but to enhance and upgrade the line systems.
- And the highest investment option would be to deploy new fiber types.
We will explain each of these options, including giving an explanation of emerging fiber technologies. We will also attempt to show the potential increase in capacity from each of these options.
Speaker: Geoff Bennett
2 окт 2024
