Since the advent of ADSL some 20 years ago one could say that the internet connectivity market is undergoing its biggest change. We’re bombarded with banners advertising ultra-fast connectivity, unheard of gigabit speeds in a full-fibre future. At the end of it though, what are we all going to get out of this and how can you filter through the multitude of products available?
It’s no doubt that fibre will be replacing copper wires in the future. Many countries are already undergoing the conversion from copper to fibre and even though NBN may be sticking with copper wires to an extent, for now, at some point we’ll also make the switch.
The most evident and fundamental weakness that copper wires have compared to fibre is distance. The rate of signal degradation on a copper line is hugely significant. When FTTC (fibre to the cabinet) replaced the copper between cabinet there were significant improvements over ADSL. When eventually all copper wiring is replaced with fibre, A.K.A. FTTP (fibre to the premise) we expect to see even further improvements to the speed at which data is transmitted as well as the reliability and efficiency. “Up to” will be an indication of the provider’s network capacity rather than the length of a copper wire.
GPON, Gigabit Passive Optical Networks is what FTTP is made of. Imagine GPON somewhat like organisational charts where multiple sites are converging at a single “PON” that consolidates the traffic up the network to the next node. From this, it’s clear that you have shared infrastructure so when it gets busy performance will drop. This means that you’re likely to have a connection that varies in not just bandwidth but other metrics such as latency and packet loss depending on how busy it gets.
To avoid this from happening you can choose FTTP Ethernet. FTTP Ethernet has guaranteed speed as well as minimum latency and packet loss within the network it’s installed on.
Therefore, for environments which rely heavily on a fast, effective and efficient internet connection Ethernet is the way to go. With NBN Enterprise Ethernet you’re guaranteed continuity, higher bandwidth and the ability to connect your LANs to the public internet to streamline the performance of your wide area network (WAN).
The internet connectivity journey over the next few years is going to force decisions for many. These decisions could be driven by fibre availability or demand of additional bandwidth. If you want to stay ahead of the game, you should look at switching to a reliable broadband service that meets your needs now.
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