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Copper instead of fiber? WTF?
TheGreatOakley
Member
I was just searching for some dedis in USA and noticed that "psychz" got some unmetered plans and was happy at first.
But then I noticed that it's 1Gbps "copper". Why on earth there is provider in 2022 who are not using fiber yet?
I wonder is difference noticeable and will I actually get 1GBps unmetered with them? Anyone here used their dedicated server?
If there is no noticeable difference why specify that it's "copper". This is first time I see hosting providing specifying this.
Should I avoid copper?
- Should I avoid copper?84 votes
- Copper is poop, don't buy it7.14%
- Go fiber only19.05%
- I want to see results73.81%
Comments
You will not get 1 GB/s but you will get your 1 Gb/s. Most likely they do have fibre connections but the actual cables connected to the servers are copper cables. What do you think LAN cables are really made of? It's all copper to transmit electric signals. Fibre transmits light and you need something to convert it to electric signals.
Do you have or do you have fibre transceivers for every single router and device in your home? That's the type of poll you started.
This is why the US still has the to-the-home Internet speed that it does; the infrastructure was built out on copper. There are lots of neighborhoods with fiber now, but for the most part the "last mile" is copper. That is the consequence of being an early adopter, compared with somewhere like Singapore that was working on FTTH in 2009.
Theoretically with the same bandwidth, copper is faster than fiber because fiber using reflection for transmission which makes the longer actual distance. Fiber' benefit is for higher bandwidth.
Copper can do 10 Gbps. Few people use fiber to nodes, it is not economical and the speeds are okay with 1 Gbps connection to a node as long as the upstream is not oversold too much. People who need special high speed throughput are usually picking something specialized. That is not yet the mainstream, albeit I can get 10 Gbps at one of my homes.
90% of providers are using copper to connect servers to the networking equipment, as it is cheaper and just easier to deploy.
Actually 40GBase-T is a thing, albeit general adoption is yet to be seen given distance, power constraints and hardware availability.
Copper to the switch (short Distance same rack) while switch has fiber to router (in some other rack) and router has fibers connected/transit and/or is connected to mux/demux dark fiber/fiber of the building.
Why would do someone fiber for a 1g link?
Ethernet cables Aka Copper can do 10G.
Doesn't make sense for 1gbit only.
You should not worry. You can use full gbit on copper 1gbit link.
If you can't use the full gbit you should double check with your provider If the deploy any rate-limit or there is something else Internally I.e. they are too oversold.
Fiber is a meme, transceivers will rape your budget, just go with Infiniband.
My 2cent is that Psychz should only mention link speed, copper / fiber must be omitted to avoid such confusion.
Why on earth would they use fiber for 1Gbps? No gain, extra cost.
Damn...
This is just from the dedi to the switch. I'm sure they use fiber for their core network.
I don't think you will find any hosting providers that are connecting their rental dedicated servers with fiber or DAC cables.
If its the speed limit then don't worry, copper can handle up to 10Gbps with CAT6.
This has little to do with early adopter, it's rather that the US telcos have successfully lobbied the government and the fcc that what you have is good enough.
Copper can do 100 Gbps and 200 Gbps.
You use the same Ethernet adapters with either direct attach copper cables or fiber transceivers.
There's no performance difference.
Direct attach copper cables can reach up to 3 meters.
Fiber transceivers can reach up to 10 kilometers.
infrastructure $1 trillion Biden 。future？
most providers will be using ethernet cables which is of copper, when connecting to servers from switches
Not for 1G servers, but for 10G it's not uncommon
Yes, but there is little need for a regular VPS node, 10 Gbps network is usually enough, 100-200 is for switches, core routers, datacenters, few providers here contracted 100 Gbps but they might still use such things for NFS/NAS if they do not have a SAN with the associated fabric even as it is debatable if such a storage solution would be able to saturate multiple 200 Gbps connections.
Didn't some provider here have their fiber cut by copper thieves?
Can't cut the wires if it's wireless.. lawl..
I think it was @DataIdeas-Josh
Fiber optics can transmit data at speeds close to light, whereas copper-based transmissions are limited by 40 Gbps. It has been shown that fiber's bandwidth limits can be measured in hundreds of terabits per second, although they are primarily theoretical.
but what is the point to point distance limitation of copper? any difference in distance 1gbps or 10gbps?
Different standards = different distances
But for both 1 Gbps and 10 Gbps, you can do up to around 100 metres. There's different standards or types of cables that may do only around 50-60 metres. You could try to get longer distances with repeaters or other ways but that's just silly and you just go for fibre at longest distances. Copper is perfectly fine.
Those higher speed copper cables with 100 Gbps and whatnot are the ones that are severely limited by distance.
All electromagnetic waves travel close to the speed of light, we are talking bandwidth here, not speed. It is true that, only in the worst case scenario for fiber and best case scenario for twisted pairs the speeds are equivalent (about 70% the speed of light) rest fiber is faster than copper, but we are talking ONLY bandwidth as within the DC the distances are insignificant and the speed at which the signal travels is, as such, completely irrelevant.
Longer distances are also not comparable because the signal degradation in copper is orders of magnitude higher per meter than in optic cables, therefore it can only work at gimp data rates over more than a few meters, over 100m the Gbit signal is already hit and miss and over 200, even without noisy environment, certainly a miss, while optic fiber can work without repeaters for tens of kilometers without bandwidth loss.
Best to go all the way! Ensure your dedicated provider has fiber to the server. Same for your home; fiber to the router, fiber LAN, fiber to the wifi access points, and fiber USB cables for your mobile devices!
actually, they transmit at the speed of light, you mean they transfer close to speed of light in a vacuum, but vacuum or not it's still the speed of light
Light always travels at the speed of light. The speed of light isn't anything other than the measured speed that light travels. We compare things to that speed because it's the fastest known speed of anything we can measure.
Please, correct me if I'm wrong.
thats probably the limitation of copper, and why fiber is used over long distances i guess
yeah. it was us.
This will no longer effect us now if/when it happens again.
@TheGreatOakley To answer your question. Majority of servers still have a 1Gbps RJ45 port on them. That is why you will see that. Overall Fiber does costs more still compared to Ethernet when talking about 1Gbps unless on long distance (100m+).
How do you know this won't affect you in future? There's either some really stupid copper thieves around the DC or someone at the DC is telling their customers porky pies about the fiber connection.
I think they're using underground fiber as opposed to having it strung up on poles. Theives thought it was copper phone line so they cut it.
This won't effect us by us having redundant connections with multiple upstreams. We don't get "connection" from the DC it self.
We did have a bandwidth issue when that had happened and has since been rectified via upgrading our connections.
We supply multiple people in the DC connection both with our services and TXNet.