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Cell Relay Retreat>List Archive>month:1995-Apr> msg00106



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Re: Bandwidth or Latency?

  • From: roodh@dds.nl (Hendrik Rood)
  • Date: Sun, 9 Apr 1995 07:50:35 -0500, Sun, 09 Apr 95 15:24:46 GMT

In article <D6GCwu.A0y@madge1.demon.co.uk>,
   jobroin@madge1.demon.co.uk (Jason O'Broin) wrote:
>Bill Halverson (William@Netpros.net) wrote:
>
>: Well ... the speed of light is the speed of light - photons in fiber or
>: electrons on copper ,,, it's about the same.
>
>Ahem! I don't think so!
>
>The speed of light through fibre or copper is significantly less than the
>speed of light in a vacuum - the refractive index is different.

Optical fibre: refractive index = 1.47, 
the propagation speed is therefore roughly 200.000 km/s (2/3thd of vacuum)
Copper twisted pair: depends on Capacitance and Inductance
the propagation speed I normally see is above 150.000 km/s
Copper coaxial cable: depends on Capacitance and Inductance
the propagation speed I normally see is around 200.000 km/s
Radio wave transmission: Free air!!
the propagation speed is just below 300.000 km/s (the maximum)

So indeed the speed is about the same, you normally do not notice the 
difference. Especially when your transmission is a mix of copper and 
radio-links!

Hendrik Rood

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