Steven Watkins wrote:
On Sun, 04 Nov 2018 19:43:53 -0000, Unsteadyken
wrote:

In article ,
says...
Not sure why they seperate the two boxes.

One is the modem and the other the router/switch.

Nowadays, they are combined in one box,such as the BT smart hub.

I don't understand. Back in the old days, you had say a USB modem. One
end was for the telephone line, one end was for the computer. Two boxes
simply does not make sense. The outer box I have connects to the phone
line (fibre) on one side, and produces something on an ethernet cable on
the other side. Why can't that plug directly into the computer?

You don't really want customers handling fiber optical
cable and connectors.

As a result, some high-speed services are "partitioned"
into multiple boxes.

Perhaps the provider trusts you to plug in an RJ45,
as an RJ45 is reasonably hard to damage. The biggest
source of damage, might be your cat chewing through
the CAT5/CAT6 cable.

I used to work with fiber patch cords in the lab,
and the facet on the connector is easily damaged.
I even had the proper cleaner for them and everything,
and after a few days, I'd pop one on the optical power meter,
and the light output would be down 20dB and it
would be cooked. The problem there, was multiple people
handling them. And some fiber connectors are just a
bad design, and destined to be broken. You can never get
people to put dust caps on stuff when it's not in usage.

You really need a microscope to see how you're ruining
them. The working aperture is only 50u on single mode fiber.
And two things 50u wide, have to line up for light
transfer. Single mode is used for transfers over
longer distances (unlike the TOSLINK you use for
your AV Receiver, which is dental fiber and uses
red LED light).

About half way down the page here, you can see four
connector types. There are many more types than this
in the lab.

https://www.newport.com/t/fiber-optic-basics

In addition to fiber connectors, there's splicing, and
that's how we used to do stuff at first, was make permanent
connections between items. We even had big rolls of fiber
optic cable in the lab at first, for simple distance tests.
Rolls big enough, you'd bring them in with a fork lift.
I wasn't there when they were delivered, which is probably
a good thing. It's still possible that telco stuff is
using fusion splicing for connections, with excess fiber
stored in splice trays. And I see the price hasn't come down
all that much. The ones we used, used to cost $5K per unit.
The nice thing about a splice though, is really low loss.

https://apollotech.com.au/shop/a-118...usion-splicer/

Paul