Fiber optic vs cable internet differences

[RWilliams79]

Hi.  So, a local agency I volunteer at has been looking into upgrading their internet.  As the 'computer person' I'm expected to know everything about everything digital.  The sales rep for our local ISP is really pushing fiber optic versus just faster cable internet speed.  We currently have about 10Mbps cable, and are looking to upgrade to the 600Mbps cable tier.  They are pushing 20 or 30 Mbps fiber.  They keep saying fiber and cable speeds are apples and oranges.  That they can't be directly compared.  But they can't give anything detailed.  They just keep repeating the 'apples and oranges' comparison.  So, I'm hoping someone here can explain some actual, specific, differences?

 

Here are the things I've found myself.

Fiber bandwidth is dedicated , where as with cable we share bandwidth with others in our area.

Fiber speeds are synchronous, where as there's a HUGE difference between what we get up vs down for cable.

Fiber is more reliable.  (Though I haven't found any explanations exactly WHY it's more reliable)

 

Any information that's given would be greatly appreciated.

[DrMacintosh]

6 minutes ago, RWilliams79 said:

They keep saying fiber and cable speeds are apples and oranges.  That they can't be directly compared.

This is BS. The speeds of cable and fiber internet are directly comparable. 

 

The biggest differences with Cable vs Fiber is that Fiber usually offers symmetrical speeds where as Cable does not. You can have a 600Mbps cable internet service but you'll only get at most 10% of that as the upload speed. However, with fiber speeds that slow, the cable tier will probably have comparable upload speeds while beating fiber on download speeds. 

 

In your situation I would probably not go with the fiber option as those speeds are incredibly slow. 

[RWilliams79]

Thanks Doc, I appreciate the reply.    I'm naturally wary of ANY sales person, but especially so when they give generic answers or cliched phrases in response to my questions.  I'm glad to get a bit of confirmation to my BS sense going off.

[dilpickle]

20Mbps fiber is like driving a go-cart on the autobahn. Some places have 5000Mbps now.

 

Internet is internet. Go with whoever is offering you the best speed for the best price. And you want a reputable company with good service.

 

29 minutes ago, RWilliams79 said:

Here are the things I've found myself.

Fiber bandwidth is dedicated , where as with cable we share bandwidth with others in our area.

Technically true and I've heard that for decades now but I've never seen anyone show any real world drawbacks. Maybe if every single person in your entire neighborhood is downloading torrents 24/7 you might see some slowdown.

 

29 minutes ago, RWilliams79 said:

Fiber speeds are synchronous, where as there's a HUGE difference between what we get up vs down for cable.

True. This is why you should check both upload and download speeds. But with what the fiber company is offering you it sounds like cable will beat it either way.

 

29 minutes ago, RWilliams79 said:

Fiber is more reliable.  (Though I haven't found any explanations exactly WHY it's more reliable)

Way too generalized to make a conclusion. If you have a really bad ISP backend then it doesn't matter what type of wire is coming into your building.

[Blue4130]

4 hours ago, RWilliams79 said:

Fiber speeds are synchronous, where as there's a HUGE difference between what we get up vs down for cable.

 

Fibre is not always synchronous. That is up to the service provider. As crazy as it sounds, I am on fiber with 400/50.

[Alex Atkin UK]

42 minutes ago, Blue4130 said:

Fibre is not always synchronous. That is up to the service provider. As crazy as it sounds, I am on fiber with 400/50.

Its actually a gamble selling synchronous fibre as a lot of the PON technologies are asynchronous (as its cheaper to roll out).   So you end up with a lot more contention on the upstream than the downstream.  GPON for example is 2.4Gbit down, 1.2Gbit up (link rate, so more like 2Gbit down, 1Gbit up)

Of course this makes a lot of sense as people will generally use more down than up, so it means you get the benefit of faster upstream when its free rather than being artificially limited when there is plenty of spare capacity on the PON.  But this also confuses customers when their speedtests show faster down than up during peak hours.

Point is moot however as with speeds as low as mentioned by the OP I don't think its REAL fibre at all, I think its VDSL being missold as fibre, as is often the case sadly.

 

4 hours ago, RWilliams79 said:

Fiber bandwidth is dedicated , where as with cable we share bandwidth with others in our area.

Fiber speeds are synchronous, where as there's a HUGE difference between what we get up vs down for cable.

Fiber is more reliable.  (Though I haven't found any explanations exactly WHY it's more reliable)

Most broadband fibre technologies share bandwidth just like cable, however fibre is able to carry a lot more bandwidth depending on what technology they are using. (though most likely wont be doing)

Technically almost all broadband is shared bandwidth, its just not necessarily shared with your local neighbours like cable is.  To have a guaranteed chunk of bandwidth to your ISP is exponentially more expensive and generally referred to as a leased line.  This might be what they are offering you given the low speeds, but I'd wager its probably not fibre at all but VDSL - unless they specifically said it was symmetrical.

 

Fibre is more reliable as it can carry more bandwidth and wont necessarily needs as many active components along the way.  Copper can fail from water ingress or bad joints whereas fibre will generally just not work if a joint is bad so its an easy obvious fix whereas on cable you might be stuck with a poor signal causing problems for months.

[FlappyBoobs]

I have gigabit fiber, my father in law 5mins down the road has gigabit cable. The only user end difference between us is that my speedtest ping is <1ms and his is 5.

[PyCCo_TyPuCTo]

17 hours ago, RWilliams79 said:

Fiber bandwidth is dedicated

Indeed true, for pure fibre there is no reason not to have symmetric speeds. Ask them sales guys why they are pushing for such a slow plan, 20-30 Mbps, as you were saying, and whether or not it's symmetric speeds up/down. Pure fibre should easily offer up to a 1Gbps connection on a dedicated line. Since they are offering only 20-30 it sounds like not a pure fibre line.

 

18 hours ago, RWilliams79 said:

Fiber speeds are synchronous, where as there's a HUGE difference between what we get up vs down for cable

Your ping response times should also be slightly better than on a cable, thus improving web surfing.

 

18 hours ago, RWilliams79 said:

Fiber is more reliable.  (Though I haven't found any explanations exactly WHY it's more reliable)

 

From physical layer perspective, light travelling over fibre glass is reliable in a sense that it is immune to electro-magnetic interference. No copper technology can offer that.

This means less packet loss, almost none actually if light levels are good and there is no saturation, you should have no PL and retransmissions.

 

 

 

 

[Blue4130]

12 minutes ago, PyCCo_TyPuCTo said:

Indeed true, for pure fibre there is no reason not to have symmetric speeds. Ask them sales guys why they are pushing for such a slow plan, 20-30 Mbps, as you were saying, and whether or not it's symmetric speeds up/down. Pure fibre should easily offer up to a 1Gbps connection on a dedicated line. Since they are offering only 20-30 it sounds like not a pure fibre line.

 

 

I have a pure fiber line sitting right next to me, asynchronous. It's just the way it is in some countries. There is no reason for it, but it exists.

[RWilliams79]

I really appreciate everyone's responses.  The sales person pushing the fiber is actually also the cable representative.  It's for Spectrum internet.  Our cable internet speed and price was just OBSCENELY bad.  That 10Mbps was costing us $100 / month.  So I decided to make it my quest to get better speeds.  I knew faster cable speeds were available in the area, but as I said they started pushing the fiber.  Giving the mentioned 'apples and oranges' sales pitch.  I don't remember exactly what they were wanting for the 20 meg fiber, but it was something like $200 a month.  I have no clue what they'd want for something like gigabit fiber.  I finally got a quote for 600Mbps cable, and it was supposed to be a bit over $200 itself, though we were able to get a temporary deal for just a bit over $100, basically no increase in cost.  Even at the $200 I think it's worth it, since we actually have multiple internet connections coming into the building, and I'm now trying to get us to just use the one fast connection and thereby save the money from the multiple bills.  All I have to do is get some networking cable run.

[Blue4130]

11 minutes ago, RWilliams79 said:

I really appreciate everyone's responses.  The sales person pushing the fiber is actually also the cable representative.  It's for Spectrum internet.  Our cable internet speed and price was just OBSCENELY bad.  That 10Mbps was costing us $100 / month.  So I decided to make it my quest to get better speeds.  I knew faster cable speeds were available in the area, but as I said they started pushing the fiber.  Giving the mentioned 'apples and oranges' sales pitch.  I don't remember exactly what they were wanting for the 20 meg fiber, but it was something like $200 a month.  I have no clue what they'd want for something like gigabit fiber.  I finally got a quote for 600Mbps cable, and it was supposed to be a bit over $200 itself, though we were able to get a temporary deal for just a bit over $100, basically no increase in cost.  Even at the $200 I think it's worth it, since we actually have multiple internet connections coming into the building, and I'm now trying to get us to just use the one fast connection and thereby save the money from the multiple bills.  All I have to do is get some networking cable run.

Is this a business tier that they are pushing for you? 

[RWilliams79]

1 hour ago, Blue4130 said:

Is this a business tier that they are pushing for you? 

Yeah.  We are a business.  Just not a very large one comparatively speaking.

[Blue4130]

3 hours ago, RWilliams79 said:

Yeah.  We are a business.  Just not a very large one comparatively speaking.

I mean the internet package, are they selling you a business package or residential package? 

[Alex Atkin UK]

6 hours ago, RWilliams79 said:

Yeah.  We are a business.  Just not a very large one comparatively speaking.

The thing is there are business packages and there are high-end leased line fibre business packages.

Your average business broadband is not at all that different to residential, they generally just respond to problems quicker, may have different speed tiers or offer different add-on services.  The delivery medium is still shared amongst a given number of customers so no speed guarantee is generally given as they CAN'T guarantee it.

 

Leased-lines guarantee you the bandwidth between you and the ISP as its a dedicated fibre link between you and the ISP.

Of course in general a 100Mbit cable would dramatically outperform 10Mbit fibre, although performance will vary and perhaps more importantly for many businesses who use Voice over IP,  latency and upstream bandwidth can too.

[RWilliams79]

Yeah, it's a business package.  The sales rep is from the Spectrum Enterprise department.  Now I don't know about the whole business package vs high-end leased line fiber thing.  The only thing that's been discussed is speed.

[Donut417]

On 3/12/2022 at 11:32 PM, RWilliams79 said:

Any information that's given would be greatly appreciated.

Coax based services can be delivered fully over Fiber. As crazy as that sounds. Cable companies generally have Fiber to the node, but in newer communities some Cable providers such as Comcast were doing what was called RFoG. Basically they would run Fiber to a customers home and then put a Micro node in and convert it to coax. 

 

On 3/12/2022 at 11:32 PM, RWilliams79 said:

Fiber speeds are synchronous, where as there's a HUGE difference between what we get up vs down for cable.

Cable can be synchronous if the cable co wanted them to be. You should check out the Docsis 3.1 and 4.0 standards. Comcast for instances has a market where they have been testing like 1.2 Gbps down 1.2 Gbps up.