The train of time moves forward slowly, and things in the world change quietly. People twenty years ago would never have imagined the speed of social development today, just as people today cannot predict their lives twenty years from now.

Twenty years have changed people’s entertainment and travel methods, as well as countless people’s perception of the world. It is difficult for children today to understand the bitterness of the previous generation’s telephone dial-up Internet access, and children twenty years later may not understand that we use “stuck and slow” network cables and WiFi routers to access the Internet.

Compared with the technology of ten or twenty years ago, the network cable WiFi router is not bad, but compared with the technology that will be popularized in the future, the network cable WiFi is like the dial-up Internet access in the past, with slow speed and poor stability, which is difficult to meet people’s needs. . And this technology, which is about to replace the network cable WiFi, is the core of the second optical fiber revolution, the whole house gigabit technology.

Replacing copper with light, from entering the house to entering the room

Modern life is inseparable from WiFi, but few people understand the source of WiFi signals. In fact, today 94% of home network signals come from fiber to the home, and only 6% of homes still use copper wire to enter the home.

More than ten years ago, my country’s fixed broadband access mainly adopted copper broadband technology represented by ADSL, which can provide a starting bandwidth of 512K, and above 2M will face considerable pressure. In 2016, Shanghai Telecom announced the official launch of the gigabit broadband scale promotion plan. It was the first time in the country to propose a plan to realize “gigabit Internet access” in the whole city, and the first “optical fiber revolution” was launched. By 2018, 10 million households in Shanghai will achieve full coverage of fiber -to-the-home, and bid farewell to copper broadband.

In the field of communication, the frequency characteristics and modulation technology of the transmission medium are the most important, and the transmission medium is the cable material. The frequency of single-mode optical fiber made of optical fiber is around 35THz, while the frequency of copper dielectric cables is between 100MHz and 1000MHz. Even the highest frequency Cat7e network cable has a bandwidth capacity of only 1/35,000 of that of optical fiber.

In addition, optical fiber has long transmission distance, low attenuation, strong reliability, and is not susceptible to electromagnetic interference and crosstalk. Since the popularization of FTTH, the experience of fixed-line broadband users in China has been greatly improved. Now, we use the network cable to surf the Internet at home, and rarely encounter stuttering and disconnection, and the effect of replacing copper with light is remarkable.

Unfortunately, the plan cannot keep up with the changes. With the popularization of the mobile Internet, mobile devices such as mobile phones and tablets have become mainstream Internet terminals. Fixed broadband speed and stability are solved, but WiFi networks are not so easy to solve.

▲ Fiber optic cable

For various reasons, copper medium network cables are still the mainstream of home internal network cables. The well-known five types of network cables, six types of network cables, and seven types of network cables are essentially copper medium network cables. In other words, from the backbone network of the operator to the city network to the household weak current box, all use optical fiber network cables. On the contrary, the backward copper medium network cables are still used inside the home. The core of the second optical fiber revolution is to replace copper with light in the home, so that high-bandwidth and high-reliability optical fiber networks can be directly connected to every corner of the home, and completely solve the problem of WiFi network stability.

The ultimate gaming experience, using the whole house Gigabit

In theory, everyone needs gigabit in the whole house, because it is the trend of technology development and can provide a higher level of network experience.

Of course, in real life, everyone chooses home broadband packages and supporting equipment based on their own needs. So, what kind of people especially need gigabytes in the whole house?

First, of course, are gamers. As Xiaohei introduced in his previous article, mainstream games do not consume much traffic. During the game, the stability and delay of the network are the key factors.

The traditional network cable WiFi network first converts the optical signal into an electrical signal through the optical modem, and then transmits it to the router through the copper cable network cable, and then connects the home equipment through the WiFi signal sent by the router. As mentioned above, the copper medium network cable has limited capacity and high delay. In addition, the WiFi signal does not penetrate walls well and is easily interfered by other devices. The stability of the WiFi network at home has thus become elusive.

Reflected in the game process, you will encounter various unexpected problems. Take Xiao Hei himself as an example. He was playing mobile games in the room farthest from the router at home, and was about to show off his skills. Unexpectedly, the signal froze suddenly, the game screen stagnated, and he lost the initiative of the game.

However, under the whole-house Gigabit solution, such scenarios will not appear at all. Because the whole house Gigabit realizes fiber optic entry, each room can install a slave gateway, which is equivalent to a router connected by fiber optic cable in each room, the WiFi signal will not be attenuated, and the delay will be greatly reduced.

Before the emergence of the whole-house Gigabit solution, wireless bridging, power modems, and Mesh networking have appeared on the market to improve the wireless network at home. Unfortunately, none of the above solutions can change the signal transmission medium. There is only a whole-house Gigabit solution, which uses optical fiber to enter the room to improve the network signal from the source.

For experienced gamers, especially those who often participate in e-sports competitions, it is imminent to order a whole-house gigabit package. After all, under the background of the epidemic, many e-sports competitions have been transferred to online. At this time, the performance of the home network will directly determine the results of e-sports players and e-sports teams.

High-quality life, worry-free for twenty years

In addition to gamers, those who pursue a high-quality life also especially need Gigabit for the whole house. In recent years, emerging technologies such as 4K video, cloud games, virtual reality, and augmented reality have emerged in an endless stream, but they have been difficult to popularize. Most of the reasons are due to the stability of network signals.

Taking 4K video as an example, the requirements for network bandwidth are not particularly high, and a few hundred megabytes of bandwidth is enough to meet the demand. But in real life, playing 4K video with a gigabit bandwidth often encounters a freeze problem. Imagine turning on the TV, clicking on the 4K zone, choosing a movie, watching it for two minutes and freezing for 10 seconds, and watching it for another two minutes and then freezing for 15 seconds. Stablize.

To give a simple example, a fiber optic network is like a highway, and a copper network is like a country road. The traditional fiber-to-the-home and optical cat-to-router network means that the expressway is repaired to the county seat, and it is necessary to walk a section of rural road to go home. And the whole house Gigabit is to repair the expressway directly to the door of the house, from getting on the car to getting off the car at high speed, without the slightest delay.

Under the whole-house Gigabit solution, those products that require higher network quality can achieve the best experience. In addition, for smart home equipment, the whole house Gigabit will also give it an unprecedented experience. Traditional smart home devices are interconnected through routers, gateways and other devices, and the connection stability is poor. The whole house Gigabit supports up to 17 Wi-Fi hotspots connected by fiber optics, and realizes “one network in the whole house”, without channel interference, roaming Gigabit slowdown, channel switching jitter, and reduced WiFi strength. .

Theoretically, Gigabit in the whole house can support hundreds of networked devices to access the Internet at a high speed and stably. Even if the smart home develops faster in the future, Gigabit devices in the whole house can also be satisfied. In the current technology, optical fiber is already the best transmission medium, and there will be no better technology for at least two decades. It is no exaggeration to say that upgrading the whole house to Gigabit now can ensure a high-quality life for the next twenty years.