Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Editor: Chongjia

Typesetting: KT

It is estimated that many people have heard of the concept of "fiber-to-the-home". About a decade ago, the domestic broadband network speed ushered in a big upgrade, and optical fiber entered thousands of households. In this process, the original ADSL copper cable is gradually replaced by optical fiber, carrying a higher network transmission rate. The abbreviation of FTTH is "Fiber To The Home". At present, except for a few old residential areas, most families are connected to FTTH broadband.

In recent years, the household broadband rate is still increasing, 500m / 1000m broadband is popularized on a large scale, and 2000m broadband has also begun to be piloted. At the same time, operators began to promote "FTTR broadband". There is only an one-word difference between FTTR and FTTH, but there is a big difference in meaning. Judging from the overwhelming publicity of operators, FTTR seems to be a more advanced technology that can bring users a better Internet experience.

(official of Tuyuan Telecom) so, is this really the case?

FTTR: fiber to the room sounds great. FTTR is an abbreviation for "Fiber to The Room", which means fiber to the room. In the general fiber-to-the-home solution, the operator installs a light cat, and its work is basically completed. Users need to deploy how to use the broadband network, such as access routers to achieve WiFi signal coverage. FTTR seems to be even more in-depth, with operators laying optical fiber in every room of their users to solve network problems more thoroughly.

Specifically, in the FTTR scheme, operators have to do more line laying and equipment installation work. First of all, the optical fiber route needs to be laid in the user's house; secondly, several optical routers should be laid according to the actual situation, including one master route and multiple slave routes.

This scheme seems to be very easy. Operators not only pull optical fiber into their homes, but also complete home networking. Users only need to pay the bill to achieve full coverage of WiFi signals and smooth networking of devices at home, saving the trouble of laying their own network cables and buying and debugging routers. Moreover, the operator optical fiber to replace the traditional network cable, it seems that the transmission efficiency is higher and the technology is more advanced.

(official of Tuyuan Telecom) however, the FTTR solution currently promoted by operators is not cheap. Take Guangzhou, where Xiao Lei is located, as an example. China Telecom offers a gigabit FTTR group network package with a broadband rate of downlink 1000Mbps and an uplink 50Mbps. The mobile phone card contains 40GB traffic and 600min calls at a price of RMB239 per month. This is still a relatively cheap solution, as operators in most provinces and cities do not provide specific details of broadband packages directly on their official websites, and the charges are much more opaque than mobile phone packages. From the feedback of some users who have already handled it, some FTTR installation fees cost 1000-2000 yuan, and some even have to pay monthly rent for optical routers (per-station charge).

Generally speaking, the current FTTR is more like a package networking scheme. From the point of view of decoration construction, optical fiber is easier to run, more beautiful in appearance, and less long-distance transmission loss. Moreover, the networking of multiple optical routers can indeed eliminate the dead corner of WiFi signals and greatly enhance the Internet experience of users. However, in terms of price, FTTR is still relatively expensive.

The whole house WiFi, it is not necessary for FTTR to read the operator's FTTR marketing plan, Xiao Lei personally feels that it has a certain meaning, just like what was mentioned above. However, for me personally, the traditional FTTH is enough to solve the whole house WiFi coverage, ordinary routers can also do it.

As we all know, due to the barrier of the wall, the dead corner of the signal is easy to appear in the home, and the distance will also lead to the attenuation of the WiFi signal. To solve this problem, the simplest and most effective way is to increase the number of routers, such as placing a main route in the living room, and then placing sub-routes in the room through the pre-buried network port to achieve peripheral signal coverage. For the dead corner of the bathroom, balcony and other areas, you can also add sub-routes by leading a network cable through the main router.

However, if you simply increase the number of child routes, the actual experience will still have an impact. Because different routers theoretically have different SSID, it is a terrible experience to manually switch WiFi hotspots to get the best signal from one area to another in a house.

However, with the popularization of Mesh technology, this problem has been basically solved. Through the network cable connection, we can have multiple routers form a Mesh, so that there will only be one major SSID. When roaming in different areas, the router Mesh system will automatically switch, this process is basically insensitive to the user. In the early years, Mesh routers were exclusive to tens of thousands of yuan products, but now they have spread to 100 yuan devices, and the cost of Mesh networking has been greatly reduced.

(Tu Yuan Xiaomi official) Mesh networking scheme generally uses common twisted pair cables and conventional routers, rather than optical fiber. This scheme is relatively more flexible and cheaper. For gigabit home networks, this solution is also basically sufficient.

FTTR has a broader technical prospect, but it may not be applicable to you and me, the difference between FTTR and conventional Mesh networking has been relatively clear. First of all, the former is dominated by operators and charges a certain fee, while the latter is solved independently by users, and the cost is relatively lower. Secondly, the former is the optical fiber scheme, and the latter is the traditional twisted pair scheme.

From a technical point of view, FTTR obviously has a higher upper limit. The transmission rate of household ordinary optical fiber can reach more than 10Gbps, while the general twisted pair wire speed is about 1000Mbps, the difference between the two is 10 times. In theory, after the FTTR line is laid, it can continue to be used for many years, and subsequent equipment upgrades can continue to be used. If you want to have a home network of more than 1000m, FTTR obviously has an advantage.

(Tuyuan Xiaomi official) however, for the average family, there is a limit to the Internet experience of home broadband. In terms of the most basic Internet speed, frankly speaking, the gap between 500m and 1000m broadband is not obvious to ordinary people. Large file downloads at a rate of tens of megabits per second can already meet the needs of most people. The theoretical download rate of gigabit broadband can exceed that of 100MB/s, but the shortening time is very limited, not to mention the fact that the actual download rate is often limited by platforms such as network disks.

In this case, 2000m or even 10 gigabytes of broadband is of little significance to ordinary users. After all, most of the daily application scenarios of home broadband are web browsing, video playback, online games and so on. Ultra-high-speed broadband has not yet brought killer and revolutionary applications commensurate with it. This leads to a paradox. On the one hand, FTTR needs ultra-high-speed broadband to give full play to its technological advantages, on the other hand, we do not need ultra-high-speed broadband. In this way, the FTTR solution is in a very awkward state.

In addition, Xiao Lei also wants to explain. For renters, FTTR may not be right for you either. After all, the general broadband solution, moving is very convenient, while FTTR is a big fight, the cost is much higher.

Office and business may be the future of FTTR. FTTR may not necessarily meet the needs of ordinary users, but you can also find scenarios that suit you, such as office and business space. Like large offices, a large number of employees, a large number of equipment have a huge demand and pressure on the network, but also put forward higher requirements for the coverage area of network signals. Complaining about Internet stutters may already be the daily behavior of many office workers. In this high-load scenario, FTTR can have more room to play.

In addition, such as shopping malls, buildings, airports, hotels and other places, network coverage has been a difficult problem to solve. Slow network speed and poor signal is a common experience, and the conventional networking scheme is powerless in the face of large numbers of people and access equipment. At this time, the technical advantages of FTTR are reflected. On the one hand, it is dominated by operators and can provide relatively professional networking technology and solutions, while being responsible for the actual results. On the other hand, operators can provide follow-up after-sales maintenance services for this scheme, and can also increase or decrease the number of routes according to the actual load.

Compared with individual and home users, business users are relatively insensitive to prices and have higher demand for services such as maintenance. For operators, from a commercial point of view, the FTTR solution will have higher profits and broader commercial potential in the B-side field. In this regard, we can get a glimpse of the price gap between commercial broadband and home broadband.

Generally speaking, in terms of technology, FTTR does have some advantages over FTTH, and it provides a more comprehensive solution, which makes sense for ordinary users. But at present, the price of FTTR is still relatively high, and the networking scheme has no obvious advantage over Mesh in experience. From the perspective of performance-to-price ratio and pragmatism, ordinary people and ordinary families, Xiao Lei personally will suggest the use of conventional router Mesh networking scheme. FTTR may be able to find a scenario that suits us in the business world, but it's not that right for us at this stage.

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: ID:leitech, author: AIoT Group of Lei Tech Home Appliances

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