You've probably heard this term before; it's very common in telecommunications, and today we're going to tell you what it means. As you know, there are several ways for internet, telephony, and television to reach our homes: via coaxial cable, antennas, or fiber optics. This last medium has gained a lot of traction in recent years, and for good reason—it can achieve high speeds, is considered a secure medium, and holds the potential to drive quantum communication in the future.
FTTX stands for Fiber To The...X, which means Fiber to…X, where “X” represents the location the fiber reaches. The most common variants are Home, Building, Cabinet, and Node, but we can also find Antenna and Office. So, we can say that FTTX refers to the topology or architecture of a fiber optic network. An example of this connection is shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1. FTTX
Usually, different mediums are combined for a telecommunications network; possibly, fiber reaches a node and from the node to our homes the communication is via copper cable, or fiber can reach an antenna; the information that the antenna transmits is received by another antenna, and this in turn continues the communication via copper and can then reconnect with fiber optics. For these types of mixed solutions, media converters, like the one shown in Figure 2, are used to make the entire system compatible.
Figure 2. Media converter.
Figure 2. Media converter
While FTTX is the topology and defines how far a fiber optic link reaches, there are various technologies and protocols for transmitting and receiving information. There are also two main types of networks: active and passive. Active networks and their devices are those where the equipment requires electrical power to function; passive networks and their devices do not require power to function. There are also active networks combined with passive ones to leverage the best of both.
In future posts, we will tell you about the most common technologies and protocols used in FTTX networks. If you find this information useful, share it! We also invite you to read the rest of our blog and visit our page to learn about the products and solutions we have for you.
