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Today in our world change is slowly taking its place and in this case for cables as well. Conventional internet, telephone and LAN cables are bit by bit being replaced by glass cables sending data via light. Normally a copper wire would send information by electromagnetic current. At times though, they are affected by other sources of electricity such as lightning and other electromagnetic interference. Fiber Optics or Optical Fiber is faster, has higher bandwidths, less data loss over distance and will eventually replace copper wires wholly.
Reminiscing junior high school, a physics book may have showed you a light fountain experiment where a small hole is applied to a bucket. As water leaked from the side a laser was pointed at the other end. The result is that the laser bends following the flow of water thus causing the ground to be illuminated by the lasers light. This phenomenon called total internal reflection is the principle that brings optic fiber together. Light passing through surfaces either reflect or refract. Wikipedia’s definition is this:
“If the refractive index is lower on the other side of the boundary and the incident angle is greater than the critical angle, the wave cannot pass through and is entirely reflected.”
Basically the type of medium determines whether light will refract of reflect. Refracted light is data that is lost. To minimize this optic fiber cables are made up of a core made of glass covered by a cladding with a lower index than the core to let the light reflect all the way. The cable itself without external shielding is small, about the width of a human hair. Light rays travel 50km before needed to be amplified. This is because of attenuation (reduction in the strength of a signal) as the light rays diverge and do not meet the critical angle and they escape by refraction. The other 2 attributes that limit the speed of information passing through fiber is dispersion and bending the fiber too intensely that light escapes.
The 2 types of Optical Fiber are single mode and multi-mode differentiated by the width of the core. Single mode has a smaller core thus having lower attenuation for long distances. Multi-mode being wider can transmit multiple light rays at once. An example is faster copying speeds from computer to another. For short range it is more cost-effective being used in LAN and data centers.
Optic fiber is faster because it transmits data at the speed of… well, light. The speed of light through a glass medium, however. The speed of light is universal but given the nature of glass light rays bounce off the glass particles causing the light to exit the glass at a slower rate compared to light traveling through a vacuum. Because optic fiber transmits light, it is immune to outer electromagnetic forces like lightning strikes and electrical faults. Ground loop is excessive unwanted current in a conductor and is the cause of the static noise when hearing through a home telephone or headphones. Yes, optic fiber is null of that as well.
As of today, an abundant amount of optical cables have already been deployed under the sea. This is what the internet is basically, a bunch of cables and satellites connecting to everyone. Because of high demand internet cables are constantly being deployed restlessly by ships that drop them as they sail.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VmA2S2XiCo