Verizon FIOS vs Comcast (1 Viewer)

[RichM]

I am currently using Comcast but have a question on Verizon FIOS. I understand that Verizon FIOS is more bandwidth capable because it use Fiber Optic technology, however, how does this help if once the connection is made to my house it has to use the existing cable that is already installed?

It seems to me that once this connection is made, any advantage of Fiber Optic technology is eliminated and the bandwidth is the same between the two technologies. unless fiber optic cable is intalled in the house, and you can make a direct fiber connection, there is no benefit of one technology over the other for watching HiDef programming.

Am I missing something?

 

[JeremyErwin]

Fibre Optic cabling allows more more bandwidth over longer distances. If you plan your home network well, you can install Gigabit Ethernet using Cat6 cabling, which provides a bandwidth of 1000Mb/s. The catch is that your cables can only be 100 metres long.

This suffices for the majority of home installs. However, if you happen to live in a larger home you might find this limit to be objectionable. ANd that's when fibre comes in. 1000Base-LX is good for distances up to 5km. 1000BASE-ZX is good for distances up to 70km.

Since verizon's switches likely are more than 100 metres away from your home , fibre optic is a sensible architecture.

BTW, the verizon head box is a Fast ethernet device. Since the service only offers 50 Mb/s down and 20 Mb/s up, this is more than sufficient.

Now, if your visions of a home network don't extend beyond "one computer connected to the internet," Gigabit ethernet would be a bit of a waste. If you have several computers in your house, the ability to transfer data between them at several hundred megabits per second could well be of some use to you.