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To: Doren who wrote (25257)	5/24/2000 4:29:00 PM
From: John Walliker	Respond to of 54805

Doren, ...light waves can pass through each other unchanged...multiple streams of data can pass through a single fibre concurrently without disturbing each other. Can't do that with electrons/magnetism. Well, actually you can! It happens on every telephone line where speech travels in both directions at once. Wavelength division multiplexing in fibre is exactly equivalent to transmitting multiple television channels in a cable TV distribution system. However, I think Rose summed it up very well. The electrons do move very slowly, it is the electromagnetic wave which moves at the speed of light in the transmission medium. Fibre has much more bandwidth available than copper, in large part because of the higher carrier frequency but also the very low losses over a wide range of frequencies/wavelengths. Another key factor is that dispersion can be made very low in fibre. Dispersion is the variation in propagation velocity with frequency which smears the timing of the data transmission. Modern fibre is chemically doped to make the lowest dispersion coincide with the lowest attenuation. It is clearer than air at the best frequencies, which happen to be in the infra-red region. Signals travel in copper at about half the speed of light in fibre. John