Instructor: In this lesson,
we're going to talk a little bit about fiber connections
for your small office and home office.
Now generally, when you get your fiber connection
from your internet service provider,
they're not going to bring the fiber
all the way directly into your house,
and instead, they're going to provide this
as either fiber to the curb or fiber to the premises.
Now we call this FTTX,
where the X means where is that fiber going to be connected to?
So if we have FTTC, this is fiber to the curb,
and a fiber to the curb solution means
they're going to run a fiber optic cable
from their internet service provider access point
over to some place in your neighborhood,
and generally, this is going to be to some sort of a pedestal
that's sitting in your front yard,
which is why we call it fiber to the curb
because that pedestal is usually sitting on the curb
or close to your curb
and not directly attached to your building or your house.
Now if you're going to be able to get that fiber
all the way to your house,
we call this fiber to the premises, or FTTP.
Generally, if you're working for a large organization
and you contract for a fiber optic cable,
you're going to get FTTP or fiber to the premises
where they're going to bring it all the way up
and into your demarcation point inside of your building.
Now when you're dealing with fiber to the premises,
you have that fiber optic connection
going all the way into your building
and it's going to connect into a device known as an ONT
or optical network terminal.
Now these ONTs or optical network terminals
are going to be physical devices
that allow you to convert the optical signal coming in
over the fiber optic connection to an electrical one,
and then, that is going to be connected
to your router using some sort of a patch cable,
normally an RJ45 copper twisted pair cable
or possibly a fiber patch cable
depending on your router and your equipment.
Now if you have fiber to the curb on the other hand,
you're going to have fiber only out as far as that pedestal,
and then, the connection from the pedestal
into your premises
is going to usually be done using a copper connection.
This copper could be a shielded
or unshielded twisted pair cable using an RJ45 connector.
Or in some hybrid fiber coaxial solutions,
it's going to be using a coaxial cable
to go from the curb up into your premise,
and then once it's in your premise,
it will connect to a modem that will then convert
that signal coming in over the coaxial cable
or the UTP STP cable
and convert it into something that your router
and your home network can then use.
As a technician, you're going to be seeing FTTC and FTTP
much more often than you have in the past
because there is a widespread movement
across the United States
to roll our additional fiber capability
to people's houses or to their curbs
to be able to provide them faster internet
from their home offices.
For example, in my home office, I have AT&T fiber,
which provides me with a one gigabit
per second connection up
and a one gigabit per second connection down
and that is actually fiber to the premise
where a fiber optic cable was run all the way in
to my home office on the second floor of my house.