What is Digg?70 Comments
- nagumi, on 10/12/2007, -6/+73So the internet really IS made of tubes!
- yukevster, on 10/12/2007, -5/+30Well mine runs right into my house. I live in Japan.
- theone3, on 10/12/2007, -0/+16When a fiber optic cable is bent, it actually loses some light. This is the principle behind the 'mandrel wrap', a preset coil which you bend fiber around to create a preset loss of light. When fiber optic cable does break, its usually due to seismic shifts or shoddy construction. It can be very hard to find the break, because it's light! There is a really cool (literally) way of doing it though. There's this test instrument that sends a light pulse down the fiber and looks for reflections. Kind of like a one-directional sonar (an OTDR). You use that to figure out approximately where the problem is, then you go an area just before the fault, and cool the fiber with a 'cold clamp' that literally cools the fiber with liquid nitrogen, The 'cold clamp' changes the dynamics of the fiber and sends back a reasonably large reflection to the OTDR then you use that as a reference point to dig up the cable. If you don't do that, you can end up digging up kilometers of cable because some stupid installer left a coil in the ground. There's some really cool (but very technical) info on how they test fiber here. http://kingfisher.com.au/ApplicationNotes.htm
- rmassie, on 10/12/2007, -2/+17@yukevster
A great majority of cable providers run fiber optic to the box before "the tap", in other words the box that sits one step beyond the one your home plugs into. Cable internet runs on fiber, just not the last 500 feet of it. - nrvous250gt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13Optical fiber at those diameters (microns) are quite flexible. The fibers are extruded into a jacket tubing that includes plastic coating and Kevlar strengthening members.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+13I never would have thought that making fiber optics was that involved, but why does the final product bend instead of shattering?
- Mengoxon, on 10/12/2007, -4/+13I still think it's more like a dump truck...
- JackQuack, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9I wonder how it is mass produced. There is no way they could do that to make all the world's FOC.
- randomvictim, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8I have fiber optic internet and I live in Florida. A lot of Florida and New York are getting home fiber lines from Verizon now.
- theone3, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8Whoops. Meant here. http://kingfisher.com.au/appnotes/A11.htm
- drmonkey, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7It doesn’t brake because it's so thin,
Glass only shatters because it doesn’t compress or expand very well. When you have a very thin piece you are only expanding or compressing a small cross section and so you can bend it a in a very tight circle before it will break.
The optical fibre they where talking about (125 micron diameter) can be wrapped around the head of a match. It’s also ridiculously strong lengthwise (I remember hearing it a single fibre can support 50kg although I don’t know how true this is) - devoinregress, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8Seems kind of crude. Did he just use masking tape?
- irchs, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Bloody hell, with a process as complicated as that, I wonder what the successful yield is :)
- Ciph, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I spend my days splicing this stuff together. Currently ATT and Verizon are creating Fiber To The Prem (FTTP) areas to provide higher bandwith on a residential basis. Most of your Cable/Telco service providers in the US currently have Fiber to a "node" , or feeding a copper network. The potential of fiber is boudless. Cool vid nonetheless.
- theone3, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7"Well mine runs right into my house. I live in Japan."
Probably not. While the Japanese like to think they have fiber to the home, most have fiber to the node and copper to the home. You may be the lucky one who does have it, but most likely you're sharing a fiber connection with up to 32 houses. - cmiller1, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8Oh man, I gotta deal with this stuff all week at work and now it shows up on digg on a sunday morning?!? No digg because it's been a looong week and I've had enough photonics for now.
- clownx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4No matter what the story is about, it'll all come back to tubes... It's suprising. The internet, in some places, is really just a series of (glass) tubes
- Bansuri, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Wow,
How'd they figure that out in the first place? Surely the production facility they picture is not a modern mass-production plant. Good vid.
Digg! - karmabandit, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3There are different, and in some cases more interesting, ways of making the preform (like if you want photonic crystal fiber), but all preforms are basically drawn out using large towers like this.
Think of it this way, if you draw it out on its side, gravity will make the circular cross section slightly squished. So, you're forced to draw it out vertically, and so long as you're doing that, why not let gravity do the work!
Don't let the simplicity of the setup make you think this isn't a *very* highly controlled way of engineering these fibers. There's no "hoping" about it. - SimonGray, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Transcontinental communication is made possible using fiber optics, so most people will have accessed parts of the Internet over fiber optic cables.
- dipdog21, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Wow that is quite a process. As an AV installer I use optical cables every day and will now look at them with alot more respect:)
- DyMndSkiR, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Wow, what a complex hands-on process.
Amazing how such a large tube becomes such a small strand of flexible glass. - cmiller1, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I'm actually an IT guy at a small photonics distributor, I don't have any prior experience in the field but I do have to pick up a LOT of information for doing internal application development, not to mention being such a small company I have to fill in for other people putting together assemblies (coiling, terminating ends with all sorts of connectors, etc.) If you wanna check us out we're at http://www.berkshirephotonics.com/ our website is kinda cruddy right now, we have a new one we've been working on but right now its completion is pending the development of a database driven datasheet generation system I'm working on.
If you're just getting into the industry, the first thing you should do is decide wether you want to work in general photonics or specialty optics. We're a specialty optics house and try to work on all of the optical jobs other than what is considered general, the long end of the tail. General optics are one thing and one thing alone, telecom, working with the phone company and internet companies. The two fields are so different they are practically two separate industries in themselves. If you're interested more in the proliferation of fiber as a technology you'll want to look into telecom, maybe we can finally start using all of that dark fiber, but if you want to work with cool new optical technologies you must go with specialty. My boss has a few old friends, whom he still keeps in touch with, that are now working for Intel on some top-secret NDA optical computing projects, if that's the kind of thing you're interested in the only way to come near it is by working in specialty optics companies. Good luck :) it can be a lot of fun, a lot of the work is a lot more hands-on than you would think for such a high-tech industry. - drmonkey, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5cmiller1 what do you do for a living, I’m just about to finish a Photonics degree it'd be nice to know what's around
- AnotherBrian, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2That is how it's mass produced. It takes a while to draw out one tube but the factories can just set up as many drawing towers as necessary.
- jcidiotashram, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2that is so cool. never even thought about the manufacturing process of these fiber optic cables. was aware that it must be complicated.
- 0crabby0, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2About 1:00 in - did the narrator say a hydrogen-oxygen flame?
I wonder if it's a oxyhydrogen flame?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxyhydrogen_flame
Or maybe Brown's gas?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown%27s_gas
I'd hate for someone trying to make FOC at home, mistaking one for the other... - Lumiras, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2This has to be some sort of low output operation. I mean, there has to be a much easier way to do this. I don't know how exactly, but I'm sure that there are more efficent ways than just letting the glass drip down with gravity and hoping that it produces a fiber
- jerr0328, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@randomvictim
wtf, I live in Florida and theres no Fibre to the home here. But I'd really love to see workers come to my house and install the fibre optics so we can scrap this crappy cable service (paying ***** of money for TV channels we never watch (besides Discovery channels) and paying waay too much for 4Mbps Down and less than 1/2 Mbps Up). - LucasVB, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I'm amazed that the process is so much of handcrafting. I thought it was a lot more automated than this!
Great vid, thanks for sharing! - hags2k, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Didn't think so? I think it was pretty cool.
Did anyone else recognize that music? It sounds like it's from the soundtrack of Chrono Cross for the PlayStation. - FlunkedFlank, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Well, it's not like coax cables and twisted pair cables are unshielded from electromagnetic interference (thanks to basic physics):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coax
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twisted_pair
But sure, fiber is ideal as far as that's concerned. - JordanAustin, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3My apologies, I just have a format that I copy/paste to all the diggs that aren't bad, but websense blocks.
- RedHairedMan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Was wondering the same thing myself. From the amount of glass tubing they used to make it, it sure looked like they got a very small percentage back as usable fiber. Plus the whole process looked REALLY slow, and considering the amount of fiber around the world and the amount people still want/need to deploy, I should hope there's a better way of making it.
- justinmt7, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"Unlike copper cables, they're immune to electromagnetic interference."
I never thought about that before. This is becoming more important, due to the increasing number consumer electronics that are taking up more space up the electromagnetic spectrum. - spectre_25gt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2There's another video on there of the same show that goes through the process of making contact lenses. Very interesting.
- mastercheif, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2New York is the best place in the US for internet! Cablevison has one of the largest fiber optic networks in the world, the only part that isnt fiber is the wire from the telephone pole to your house. I am paying $40 dollars for a 30mbps/5mbps connection right now. Also, verizon has just set up FIOS here, wich is 100% fiber, but is actually slower for the money.
- cmiller1, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I have another post on this article where I actually described my experience in the photonics industry as surprisingly hands on for such a high-tech, cutting edge industry. Not only the making of the fiber, but coiling, terminating connectors, and more are all still very hands on and take a lot of human intervention. Some things like polishing fiber ends just come out better when done by a human hand with some lapping film and some elbow grease ;)
- chickenselects, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Very informative, thanks for the video. I wonder how many are broken by mistake? Not much room for error in this process.
- FBMGriever, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3I found it to be very interesting. Great watch.
Thanks man. - Linkage155, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Nice, just got FiOS (from verizon) Installed like 2 weeks ago, very interesting to see how its all made, and man, it must be a pain in the ass to make miles of these things.
- kd1s, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Dictionary: For those that don't know what an OTDR happens to be, it's an Optical Time Domain Reflectometer.
TDR's have been around for quite some time, used in both telephony and radio work. For example, an open conductor will reflect energy back to the transmitter. Based on knowing the difference between the time the signal went out, the time the reflected signal was observed, and the speed of light you can then calculate the distance to the reflection point or break. When you cut a fiber optic line chances are it isn't a clean cut - so some energy will reflect back along the fiber.
I'd used TDR's to check for network cabling issues and to diagnose feed line problems for RF transmitters. - cr3ative, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4This isn't MySpace, stop trying to reformat the page.
- tw0bit, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1BEST SHOW EVER!! I am in love with this show
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2What I gathered from the video was that that one glass tube stretches out to form a large roll of cable as shown at the end of the video
- foovo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This is pretty much how it was made back in about 1984. I'm guessing this is really old video or it's a small scale university lab. Modern fiber plants are far more automated and the size of the glass preforms are seriously about 100x what you see here.
- gd007, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1process seems very slow to produce miles and miles of fibre. but i am no expert.
- gravylookout, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The whole process seems really involved and not very precise. you'd think this would be a little easier or more automated. Gravity? Come on, that's so 16th century.
- biometricks, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I've never seen this one. I usually see the crappy episodes of them showing how toothpicks and canned corn are made.
- archerx, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1it's not tubes... durrr
-
Show 51 - 70 of 70 discussions
Browsing Digg on your phone just got easier with our enhancements to the 
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is