| I’m not personally aware of statistics on construction techniques. I strongly believe that most all single family homes built in the last 60+ years have used wood stud walls in most parts of the US (I believe Canada is similar but am less confident in that assertion). As Mr. Thompson noted, Florida may be the exception. where block construction is much more common (Florida has a reasonably strong justification for construction resistant to hurricane force winds).
Condominium and low rise apartment buildings also are likely to be wood stud construction. High rise apartments are much more likely to use conduit. Unfortunately, I don’t personally have data on even this distribution of the US population (single family home verses multi-tenant, though a web search might provide some data).
My main point on the second bullet was that what you ask about is a vendor product issue to the 802.3 working group, not a standards project issue. A GEPOF amendment to 802.3 would not even mention the types of devices that might exist at an electrical wall outlet. Informing members of 802.3 of the possibilities for such products helps them understand how use of the electrical conduit (where it exists) is very practical for building a full coverage home network. I personally don’t think whether the POF termination at an outlet is only a Wi-Fi device, or if it is a converter to 10/100/1000BASE-T, or if it is both Wi-Fi and BASE-T is important to project approval. The important point is how POF solves a real and serious installation problem for building an Ethernet home backbone in various geographic regions (e.g., Europe).
— Bob
Thanks Bob.
I find your email on bullet#1 very informative. Do you know of any resource where I can find some statistics on how many homes in the US have Romex vs conduit vs something else?
Do we have similar information for homes in Europe?
On bullet number two, my question is:
Since we are solving a real word problem, for POF enabled homes what will the outlet look like? Is this active? Do we expect to have media converter on each outlet? Do we expect consumer devices to have media converter or support POF natively?
Thanks,
Vikas
1. The first question is certainly relevant to market potential. But construction techniques make POF and Cat-5 equivalent for most homes.
Most current US home construction does not use conduit. The houses I’ve owned over the decades in California, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Utah didn’t have electrical conduit. Electrical wiring for all was with a product called romex. Widely
used since the mid 20th century. Walls, both interior and often exterior, are wood stud. Exterior walls will be insulated, but interior walls rarely are insulated.
Romex is typically stapled to wood studs (code specifies how close to outlet, junction and switch boxes the electrical cable needs to be stapled). For horizontal runs, a hole is drilled in the stud and the romex is threaded through. There is no way to
use the routing of romex in walls as an aid for network cabling installation after construction is finished.
Multi-dwelling units are much more varied in construction techniques. Some apartments, condos and town homes have cinder block, brick or other solid wall separation between units, but they might also be build with wood studs and insulation between units.
Depending on building height, floors might be wood or poured concrete. For concrete, conduit would be common. (Many California homes are built on a poured concrete slab, and conduit may be used there.)
Business buildout of large spaces is often done with metal studs. An alternate electrical cable is often used here, a flexible metal jacketed electrical cable. This isn’t a conduit and therefore when used in business or home construction doesn’t provide
any aid for network cable installation.
Because of the size of POF, it has a similar installation for the US. Rather than going into walls, sometimes it is easier when installing a home theatre system to simple gouge into the wall (usually wall board, install the cable and then seal in the
cable. This isn’t an option with standard Cat 5 because of cable size. Similar for under carpet installation, though flat cabling is an option. I believe POF is a viable option for the US, but it won’t have as much conduit to utilize as it will in other
markets.
2. Not sure how your second point relates to an 802.3 standard. We would not specify outlet box Wi-Fi APs, nor any other elements of the home network architecture. The only relevance is in the number of POF ports involved in a home network.
3. Future POF is in the presentation, and will be an item of interest.
—Bob
These are good points.
We should also look into:
- Are there any building code (e.g. in the US) issues related with POF?
- We should also look at home network architecture with POF? Do we expect a Wi-Fi AP in every room with this? Do we need POF to Ethernet convertor in every room? Do we expect consumer devices (e.g. Laptops and Tvs) to start supporting POF as well?
- What speed can POF support today and in the next 2-5 years?
Thanks,
Vikas
Dear all,
in my opinion, the main advantages of POF in the HN vs CAT 5e are:
+ For "in-wall" installation: POF can be installed in the mains conduit. vs CAT 5e can-not.
- By law, copper data can not share the same conduit than the mains. (Segurity and EMI / EMC reasons)
- Introducing POF in the conduit is straight forward, where CAT-5e is typically very difficult. ( flexibility and bending handling )
+ For "out-wall" installation, POF is thinner and easier to hide. ( Under the carpet, etc)
+ Easiness of installation:
- Connection a POF bare fiber connector is 10 s vs CAT 5-e 5-10 min (RJ-45 crimping).
- POF and Installation and connection can be done by a lower qualified person compared with CAT-5e. ( Even grandma can do it ;-) )
Regarding costs, POF bill of materials should be similar than copper to be competitive. I do not thing that has to be lower than copper, thanks to the operative cost reduction of POF vs copper.
Regards
Carlos Pardo
El 22/09/14 15:59, Dai, Eugene (CCI-Atlanta) escribió:
Hi Serizawa: Thanks for the comments. If we talk about office and /or business applications we certainly have to deal with the comparison of POF with CAT5 cables. However, CAT 5 cable is not really used home networking although we all have short CAT 5 cables here and there at home. The majority of home networking use either coax or Wifi today. With G.hn products roll out, twisted pair phone line may be used for home networking. If successful in home networking, POF could be extended to office/business applications. All that time the points you brought out have to be addressed. If GEPOF PHY is lower in cost than 1000BASET PHY, than it could compete with CAT5 for that market.
This remind me that if we that if we want to bring out the office application for POF, we had a brief discussions at Ottawa meeting, we may have to deal with POF and CAT5 comparison as you suggested.
Regards,
Eugene
________________________________________
From: naoshi.serizawa@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <naoshi.serizawa@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, September 22, 2014 1:18 AM
To: STDS-802-3-GEPOF@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [802.3_GEPOF] FTTH Council market study
Hello Carlos & Eugene,
Thank you for sending information for the FTTH. Also, I looked a material that Eugene presented at Ottawa.
Those information themselves are very good to explain about use cases of GEPOF. However it can be substituted for CAT 5/6 cables to those applications and it seems to be that they are not explaining about the necessity of GEPOF. In order to convince opponents, we should show them strong impacts and advantages of GEPOF technology. Otherwise, we can't answer if they ask us about it.
We should clarify the advantages / cons. against to CAT5/6 cables (cost, weight, relatability, supply chain, max length, workability, etc).
I am pleased you to take in to account the above situations.
Kind regards,
N Serizawa
-----Original Message-----
From: Hayato Yuki [mailto:hayato-yuuki@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Monday, September 22, 2014 8:23 AM
To: STDS-802-3-GEPOF@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [802.3_GEPOF] FTTH Council market study
Hello Carlos-san, Cc Menbers,
I understand that the European home network market has been growing more and more.
However, we should explain that the POF-cable network is superior to the category-cable network for home networking.
Thanks,
Yuki@Sumitomo
Dear all,
please find in this public link:
http://www.ftthcouncil.eu/documents/Webinars/2014/Webinar_27May2014.pdf
the latest information of the European FTTH-Council on FTTH deployment.
The FTTH deployment can be used as an indicator of the TAM for the
gigabit Home Networking market.
The FTTH deployment speed in Europe is around 5 Million houses per year.
In parallel with this values, we may add TAM values from ADSL/VDSL
deployment, and new/refurbish homes.
Best Regards
Carlos
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