July 26, 2024

What are the differences between Optical fiber and ADSL?

Why is optical fiber faster than ADSL? And above all, what to choose between optical fiber or ADSL when you have the choice? The answers are not always obvious and we explain why below.

The French government has set itself an ambitious goal: by 2020, most of the population must be able to access very high speed networks. For the Internet operators involved in Why is optical fiber faster than ADSL? And above all, what to settle on between optical fiber or ADSL once you have the choice? The answers aren’t always obvious and that we explain why below.

The French government has set itself an ambitious goal: by 2020, most of the French population must be ready to access very high speed networks. For the web operators involved within the deployment of those networks, it’s a nightmare. except for the user, it’s a blessing: not only does their speed increase without their bill increasing (too much). However, it remains to understand the difference between the technologies offered. So ? optical fiber or ADSL?

You could spend hours technically explaining what differentiates ADSL from fiber optics. But the simplest thanks to determine which fiber optic or ADSL is best is to run an online speed test. On a fiber connection, the speed exceeds 100 Mb / s, its low limit, or a download speed of about 12.5 Mb / s. A speed which will go up to 1 Gb / s (or 125 Mb / s for download) with the simplest offers.
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On the ADSL side, it all depends on your situation. With luck, the ceiling is around 80 Mb / s (or 10 Mb / s for downloading) … With luck, because your line must indeed be eligible for VDSL2 technology and thus be close ( but 3.5 km) of a DSLAM (among other constraints). Without VDSL technology, the user is then satisfied with a “simple” ADSL connection, the speed of which is capped at 20 Mb / s (ie 2.5 Mb / s for downloading). Which is now considered very low.

Why is Optical fiber faster than ADSL?

There is no need to draw you a picture: optical fiber, with its big numbers, is by far the best option whenever possible. If it is far superior to ADSL, it is quite simply because it is based on newer and more efficient technology. ADSL dates back to the end of the 1990s. At the time, ISPs had the only option to rely on the existing infrastructure in all homes: the telephone line, built on a good old copper cable.

The telephone cable has many advantages. It is cheap, it is installed in almost all French households and above all it has the advantage of being able to transmit several types of information – waves in fact: those of the telephone, but also those of the Internet network. With a major flaw: the waves passing through copper suffer from a physical phenomenon well known to electronics specialists: attenuation. In practical terms, the further away you are from a telephone center, the more the signal strength decreases with the length of the copper cable. With the consequence of a decrease in the flow of the line.

What are the differences between Optical fiber and ADSL?

Point of comparisonOptical fiber (FTTH)Optical fiber (FTTLa)ADSLVDSL
Support physiqueGlass or plastic threads conducting light– Glass or plastic wires leading the light to a hub

– Then coaxial cables (copper) on the last meters
Copper wiresCopper wires
Internet speedFrom 100 Mb / s to 10 Gb / sFrom 100 Mb / s to 1 Gb / sFrom 1 to 15 Mb / sFrom 15 to 80 Mb / s
Download / upload flow symmetryPossibleImpossibleImpossibleImpossible
Download time of a 1 GB file27 sec (with a speed of 300 Mb / s)27 sec (with a speed of 300 Mb / s)13 min 40 sec (with a speed of 10 Mb / s)2 min 43 sec (with a speed of 50 Mb / s)
Download time for a 30 GB file
13 min 40 sec (with a speed of 300 Mb / s)13 min 40 sec (with a speed of 300 Mb / s)
6 h 49 min 36 sec (with a speed of 10 Mb / s)
1 h 21 min 55 sec (with a speed of 50 Mb / s)

3 thoughts on “What are the differences between Optical fiber and ADSL?

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