Hacker News Reader

Microwave signals travel from the transmitter to the receiver in a straight line. Whereas light bounces off the walls of the fibre optics cable, which increases the distance. Furthermore, the material that fibre optics are made out of attenuates the signal much stronger than air, so you have to place more repeaters and electronics in between your endpoints.

View on HN

> light bounces off the walls of the fibre optics cable

This is true of multimode fibre, but not single mode. Long haul communications cables are single mode.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-mode_optical_fiber

Even for multimode fiber it's a huge simplification of the actual physics. The actual cause of the speed difference, for both single and multimode fibers, is the index of refraction of glass.

Look up refractory index. That’s all you need to know. The above is meaningless in this context.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com