10Gb Ethernet being standardized.

[Wombat]

If the market expanded, there is no reason why fiber would not become competitive in the future. Chances are it will be many years before 10Gb ethernet hits the average user, at which point things more than likely would have changed. Cat7 does not appear to be a terribly cheap cable either

Fibre still has many more components to its manufacture than copper does. Also, there's still no really cheap way to do the optical-electrical conversions that are required for actually connecting the fibre to devices. And on top of all that, copper can take a beating much better than fibre.

[TransformX]

Well, in telephony (nortel) systems, they use fiber optics for all kinds of short distance stuff (cables rarely go past 3m). Those cables aren't that expensive. Speaking of audio systems, an SPDIF cable costs less than hi-grade mumbo-jumbo 'pure copper' yada yada cables. And no, I don't care about the horrendous 'jitter monster'. Point is, a single optic fibre leads 8 channel DTS sound from a DVD to a HT receiver. I don't know exactly how many KB that makes per second, but AFAIK that's quite a lot and rather cheap.

[Jon P. Inghram]

The Ugly: There are already talks about a 100 Gb Ethernet standard to be approved in 2011-2012.

That's 11.6 gigabytes/sec, more than the HyperTransport bus on AMD processors can handle currently. Nobody needs that much bandwidth, it's just plain obscene!

[Wombat]

Well, in telephony (nortel) systems, they use fiber optics for all kinds of short distance stuff (cables rarely go past 3m). Those cables aren't that expensive. I don't know enough about those.

But even Nortel's own retail cables are 10m for $20, and 1m for $10, retail. That's far more expensive than CAT6 (at about US$0.25/ft). Plus, I'm unaware of any way to run your own lengths of fiber. With copper, you buy a spool and a crimper. With fibre, you buy a fixed-length cable because you can't terminate it yourself.

Speaking of audio systems, an SPDIF cable costs less than hi-grade mumbo-jumbo 'pure copper' yada yada cables.

Not sure what you're talking about here. SPDIF is an interface. And optical digital connections are still far more expensive then a short length of co-ax.

Point is, a single optic fibre leads 8 channel DTS sound from a DVD to a HT receiver. I don't know exactly how many KB that makes per second, but AFAIK that's quite a lot and rather cheap.

How about "almost none?" DTS is less than 2Mbits/sec. You could run that across a noisy Wi-Fi. Don't need very good metal (or plastic, I believe the home audio opticals are often cheap plastic instead of glass) for that.

[agallag]

That's 11.6 gigabytes/sec, more than the HyperTransport bus on AMD processors can handle currently. Nobody needs that much bandwidth, it's just plain obscene!

I don't think anyone is suggesting pulling 100Gb ethernet to every desktop.

On the other hand, if you have a server farm with a few hundred servers, serving a few million clients, you may want this kind of bandwidth on the backbone. There is no such thing as "too much bandwidth". There will always be a way to fill it up.

[Sasq]

wet welds, sorry I forget the technical name.
we used to use them for temp splices if a single mode trunk cable was cut.

for around the office, short runs of less then a few hundred meters multi mode is fine, they can also get away with visible light lasers.

As for using fiber in nortel equipment even for short runs, its simple, a pigtail is about 3mm in diameter, cat6 is closer to 8mm. when your talking a few hundred links, I'll take the pig tails thanks.

splicing fiber is not that hard, as said above, wet welds are fine, as long as the db drop is no more then 3db it is not an issue for the sort of networks were talking about here. hell I have multimode fiber running into my house.

The real problem is lack of commercial/consumer demand.