Magnifying Visors

Can someone explain to me what makes fibre optics go much faster than DSL lines in accordance to internet?

I'm wondering if it is light that travels through the cables?

Public Comments

1. yes...and the data transfer rate is alot faster...cheers
2. DSL is carried by an electrical signal over phone lines; you have a limited bandwidth because of the way signals are encoded into electrical current. Fibre optics work by having a special "tunnel" that keeps light coherent down the length of the fibre. Since there are many different wavelengths of light (infinity of them, actually), the only limit on the number you can send at the same time is your capacity to pick them apart - if they're too similar, you can have problems. This means that a single thread of fibre can carry dozens or hundreds of signals simultaneously, whereas a copper cable can only carry a handful. You can imagine which is faster. For more detail, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_subscriber_line http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_fiber
3. A typical DSL line runs by normal insulated copper cables, the data is transfered as electricity pulses, the cable then connects to your wireless router, and is transmitted to a receiver on your computer, giving you the internet. A Fiber-optics cable has extremely thin strings of glass (each about the size of a human hair) inside the cable, and a laser that blinks millions of times a second is used to transfer the data. As the glass in the cable bends, the light is also bent. At each end there is a device that receives the data converts it to the traditional electrical pulses and then that is sent to the router the same as above.