copper versus fiber

When trying to decide between copper and fiber cabling, there are several things to think about for which one best will fit your needs. A few things you will need to take into consideration when making your decision are what do you need your cable to be capable of, how far do you need your cable to run from point to point, what is your budget, and always think about the future with room to expand your business. Both copper and fiber cabling have pros and cons.
Copper cabling has been around ever since electricity was discovered and utilized in a day-to-day fashion. It was used mainly for telephone lines in the beginning of its “birth”. Copper cabling comes in many forms such as coaxial, CAT5e, CAT6, UTP (Unshielded Twisted Pair), and STP (Shielded Twisted Pair) to just name a few. Coaxial has been in use for the longest period of time and one of the first types used in networking. CAT5e is the most common used today in networking with the bandwidth it supports and is available in UTP or STP. CAT6 can support any application that “lower” cables can and also has a higher bandwidth and is available in UTP and STP as well. UTP is unshielded twisted pair, which means that the cables twisted together do not have any extra protection again EMI (Electromagnetic Interference). STP shielded twisted pair, which means that the cables twisted together have and extra metallic foil or multi-wire screen mesh that is used to reduce EMI. Copper cabling is much more cost effective than fiber, easy to install, and the components/equipment are cheaper than what fiber requires, but there are many more down falls with copper when it comes to comparison with fiber cabling. Copper has a maximum distance of 90 meters if you exceed the 90m meter limit you will start getting attenuation problems which means you will start losing signal strengths.
Fiber optic cable have many more advantages than copper cabling. It is much more secure and has complete immunity to electromagnetic