The race to upgrade our communications networks has started. The increasing demand for Internet bandwidth and more and better (HighDefinition) video can only be met by replacing copper with fiber, in the final stretch between your home and the rest of the global network (Fiber-to-the-Home).
But if fiber is superior to copper, why don’t we use fiber inside buildings as well? For instance in office buildings with large LAN’s? Wouldn’t Fiber-to-the-Desk be the logical next step?
The answer is in this Fiber to the Desk white paper.
The large scale deployment of Fiber-to-the-Home
networks in urban areas with highrise MDU’s has led
to significant improvements in materials and processes.
The similarity between highrise MDU’s and large office
buildings raises the question if full fiber LAN networks
could be an alternative for hybrid CAT/fiber based
LAN’s. A comparison has been made for a greenfield
situation in a relatively small office building. The Fiberto-
the-Desk (FttD) solution shows a significantly lower
CAPEX and lower OPEX. The consumption of energy is
lower. The FttD solution with a star-topology has
several important advantages with regards to security,
management of the network, and future bandwidth
upgrades
