Recently we got fiber installed at our house raising our connection speed up to a gig. We could have went higher (2/2.5?) but honestly a gig seems like so much (8x faster than our theoretical top speed on coaxial, which we never actually hit – 200 mbps) that it seemed crazy to punch it up, like having a car that could potentially reach speeds of 2000 mph. Sure that’s impressive but unless you’re Batman when are you ever going to be able to utilize that? Of course even as I type that I realize that I’m dating myself…if future me ever reads this I will probably be laughing at my own awe over gigabit speed while never dreaming I could possibly utilize more. And sure, when they invent the Star Trek transporter you’re gonna need more bandwidth. But for now, in 2023, a gig connection is an embarrassment of riches. It’s a car that can go a mere 1000 mph.
Fiber is twisted strands of glass more fine than a human hair, transmitting data via light pulses. The technology has actually been around for years, forming the backbone of the telecommunications pipelines all around the world. It was that “final mile” to one’s house where everything slowed down on antiquated infrastructure (phone lines, coaxial cable). It would be like if the interstates crisscrossed the country connecting every city but then the roads within those cities were all narrow gravel roads. Only now are we starting to close the gap and build an interstate exit right up to your front door. And the technology is actually way cheaper to maintain once it’s in place. Light can travel much, much further distances without needing to be amplified so it consumes less power from the grid. Also the cables themselves are far more robust.
The guys who did the installation installed a black box called an “Optical Network Terminal” or ONT, which is technically not a modem (although I think it’s splitting hairs as it does the exact same thing – translate data into electrical signals for use in your home by your router(s)). The word “modem” is apparently reserved for phone lines, DSL and coaxial cable (I think?). At any rate the ONT connects to your home router(s) and the devices I used in my house is a cool technology I’ve wanted to play with for a while – mesh routers. You can have as few as one or daisy-chain several together. I went with 2 since my house is little but the 2 of them essentially act as one network (hence the word “mesh”). I did Amazon’s Eero Pro 6 (ct. 2) which was absurdly easy to set up and is then managed via an app on my phone.
I would be remiss if I did not pause to take an old man moment of reflection on how far we’ve come. We first got the internet when I was a freshman in high school using a 56k dial-up modem that was built into our HP desktop computer set up in the family room (we had to upgrade it from 8 MB of RAM to 16 as the ISP required a minimum of 16). It was 1995 and we were on what in hindsight is thought of as “Web 1.0”. That essentially just means basic, static web pages. The internet was still seen as a novelty (a stat I found stated that 14% of Americans had it in the mid-90s) and it really was then. It was very interesting but hardly anyone really “needed” it. It wasn’t integrated into everyday life and we were still many years from broadband (minimum 25 mbps down/3 up) or the first smart phone (2007?). That was all part of “Web 2.0” which was defined by things becoming faster and more interactive with social media, user generated content and cloud computing. With fiber connections now entering the ring some folks are saying we will eventually hit Web 3.0. I dunno, we’ll see.