The difference between fiber jumper and copper wire in delay

The optical communication market has developed rapidly in recent years. In order to meet the needs of higher speed and high bandwidth, in many applications, optical fibers have replaced copper wires as the mainstream connection equipment. Many people think that the delay of fiber optic line is shorter than that of copper line, so it can replace it. Some people don't think so. So what is the truth?

Fiber Patch Cords and Copper Wires

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1. What is delay?

The delay can literally be seen, it is slowing down, which is caused by the speed limit in the physical system, the waiting time of the signal from one place to another place, it is divided into network delay, audio delay, WAN delay, etc. types.

A key factor affecting latency is the signal speed of the transmission medium. Optical fiber and copper wire are two transmission media, and their distance and bandwidth determine when to use them.

2. How about the delay of fiber?

Because optical fibers are currently used in many applications, let's first take a look at the delay of optical fibers.

Little knowledge of physics, the speed of light in vacuum is 3*10 8 m/s, under air conditions, the speed of light will be slower. Therefore, when an optical signal propagates in an optical fiber link, there are five steps to wait: the electrical signal is converted into an optical signal to generate two; the optical signal is passed through the optical fiber to generate one; the optical signal is converted into an electrical signal to generate two.

3. How about the copper wire delay?

The signal quality of copper wire is not as good as that of optical fiber, especially in long-distance transmission, the signal is easily interrupted by the surrounding environment. The longer the distance, the more serious the attenuation. It often causes client loss, page errors, and slow user opening speeds.

4. Latency difference between optical fiber and copper wire

In theory, the signal is transmitted faster in the copper wire, but in the long-distance demand, the processing and repetition requirements of the signal are less, the delay of the optical fiber will be lower, the copper wire is susceptible to external interference, the loss is large, and the delay Also bigger.

In fact, we do not use delay to describe optical fiber and communication network, but to describe it in terms of distance and speed, and different distances and speeds have different delays. For example, it takes 8ms to serialize a 150-byte data packet on a 1.5Mbps link, but only 1.2us on a 10Gbps link, and the delay will be less at high speed.

5. Summary

That is, the difference in delay between fiber and copper is affected by speed and distance. When the distance is short, copper wire can be selected as the transmission medium, and the cost is much lower than that of optical fiber; in long-distance transmission, optical fiber can be selected as the transmission medium, and the performance is more stable. ZR Cable supplies different lengths of optical fiber and copper wire to meet different requirements. the needs of the situation.