Broadband over Fiber

Based on type of deployment these are classified as:

FTTN - Fiber-to-the-node - fiber is terminated in a street cabinet up to

several kilometers away from the customer premises

FTTC - Fiber-to-the-cabinet or fiber-tothe-curb

- the street cabinet is closer to the user's premises as compared to FTTN

FTTB - Fiber-to-the-building or Fiber-tothe-basement

- fiber reaches the boundary of the building

FTTH - Fiber-to-the-home - fiber reaches the boundary of the living space

Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH)

One emerging technology in this sector has been Fiber-to-theHome (FTTH), also called Fiberto-the-Premises (FTTP) or Fiber-to-the-Building (FTTB). FTTH brings fiber optics directly to homes/buildings. As a medium for telecommunications, fiber optics is much faster than conventional wire, because it uses light instead of electricity to send information. Currently, two major service providers are rolling out FTTH fiber optic access plans: AT&T, with U-verse, Verizon, with FiOS .

Cable Modem

A Cable Modem is a digital modem that uses a coaxial cable connection for the data transmission. This data connection is received by a cable modem that decodes the signal into your PC. Cable modems are up to 10-20Mbps downloads. Typical downloads are over 300Kbps, or close to 600Kbps, but the speed of the cable modem depends on a few things. First it depends on how many users are on the system since the cable technology is a "shared" bandwidth. Too many users using too much throughput can drain this shared technology. The second factor to cable modem speed is a limit on the cable modem itself. Some cable providers will limit the upload or download speed on the cable modem, and this could affect your connection speed.

A Motorola cable modem