With a few exceptions, most of us get our home Internet access through a cable m

Question

With a few exceptions, most of us get our home Internet access through a cable modem or a DSL modem, and the wires that connect our modems to our ISPs are made of copper. Let’s assume you are streaming a Netflix movie. The nearest Open Connect appliance, which Netflix uses to host and deliver movies to customers (see Chapter 1, pg. 7-8), is 3 miles from your home. Let’s also assume you have already found the movie to watch and is ready to start. You click on the Play button, a one- bit signal is sent over the 3-mile copper wire to reach the Open Connect appliance, which then starts sending the digitized movie frames back to your home, also over the 3-mile copper wire.

Questions:

A. Given the quoted speeds above (i.e., 1,125 feet per second vs. 984 million feet per second), from the moment you click the Play button, to the moment the first bit of the movie appears on your screen, how long will it take (round-trip time) over a copper wire? Over a fiber optic cable? Note: 1 mile = 5,280 feet.

B. How does your calculated result over a copper wire compare to your own experience of streaming movies on the Internet? What is your conclusion?

Explanation / Answer

Total Time taken is as follows:

3 Miles = 3 * 5280 = 15840 feet
Complete round distance = 2 * 15840 = 31680 feet

Time taken by copper wire = 31680/1125 = 28.16 seconds

Time taken by fibre optic = 31680/984000000 = 3.219 * 10 ^-5 seconds

Conclusion is copper is very slow. Fibre optic is very fast.

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