Twisted pair or Coaxial (kind of technical, see details)
Asked by
Strauss (
23829
)
November 10th, 2013
I was recently contacted by the latest acquirer of our local landline provider, with an offer of “really, really fast” internet service, resulting from a build-out of their fiber-optic network. They now offer fiber-to-the-neighborhood (node), with a twisted pair cable running less than 1000 yards from the node to my house.
In contrast, the cable company I currently use as my ISP completed their fiber build-out about ten years ago (I was working for them at the time). The node is also about 1000 yards or less from the house, but it is connected to the house with coaxial cable, rather that twisted pair.
If all other factors are the same, what would be the difference in data quality between a twisted pair cable and a coaxial cable, run about 1000 yards between node and my home network?
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5 Answers
There are economics that get into the picture here, too. The cable company will have bandwidth caps (300gb/month) whereas the fiber provider is less likely to.
At a distance of 1000 feet, coax is still the wider pipe, and probably more resilient to environment concerns (nicks, etc.) and the heat of the summer, in which wires tend to expand.
Will you see a difference in speed at that distance? Probably not.
Coaxial cable is the better choice but it’s more important how your provider divides up the bandwidth. I have the twisted pair from the switch but my provider does not throttle my speed when there are heavy demands on their network. The cable company does so even though they have a better pipe there are often other restrictions. With the company that uses twisted pair I get the advertised speed 24–7, with the cable company I NEVER saw it and at 6:00 it would slow to a crawl.
I find the cable companies far less reliable just as companies. They throttle arbitrarily, and generally don’t give great service whereas the phone people at least give you your own personal line with full bandwidth at all times.
@elbanditoroso 300GB/month is only really a limitation if you use your PC as a TV every night or are torrenting 24/7. My wife and I do a fair bit of streaming, a lot of gaming, and download ISO files, yet hover around only 50GB/month.
Coax has the edge for having the higher (much higher) theoretical Bps. Also less susceptible to RF interference. That is the solution I selected. With twisted pair, while capable of nearly the same speeds, at the build time you describe they were probably still pulling cat-5 with a lower theoretical top speed. Over the distance you describe, I doubt you would notice the difference, but I would be leaning toward the cable solution due largely to the robustness of the platform. I look forward to LAT to the house. I might be tempted to even do VOIP then. I am sticking to POTS until that time.
@majorrich That is basically what I thought. We got tired of cable’s outlandish TV costs, and went to a satellite service for that; we kept the 2-part bundle, VOIP and broadband, mostly for the bandwidth and speed. I’ve had sales people from RBOC come by since they were acquired (merged) with another phone/tech company, and evidently their fiber build is now complete to the neighborhood.
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