What is Fiber to the node?

Fiber to the node (FTTN), also called fiber to the neighborhood or fiber to the cabinet (FTTCab), is a telecommunication architecture based on fiber-optic cables run to a cabinet serving a neighborhood. Customers typically connect to this cabinet using traditional coaxial cable or twisted pair wiring. The area served by the cabinet is usually less than 1,500 m in radius and can contain several hundred customers. (If the cabinet serves an area of less than 300 m in radius then the architecture is typically called fiber to the curb.)

Fiber to the node allows delivery of broadband services such as high speed Internet. High speed communications protocols such as broadband cable access (typically DOCSIS) or some form of digital subscriber line (DSL) are used between the cabinet and the customers. The data rates vary according to the exact protocol used and according to how close the customer is to the cabinet.

Unlike the competing fiber to the premises technology, fiber to the node often uses the existing coaxial or twisted pair infrastructure to provide last mile service. For this reason, fiber to the node is less costly to deploy. In the long-term, however, its bandwidth potential is limited relative to implementations which bring the fiber still closer to the subscriber.

A variant of this technique for cable television providers is used in a hybrid fiber-coaxial (HFC) system. It is sometimes given the acronym FTTN for Fiber To The Last Amplifier when it replaces analog amplifiers up to the last one before the customer (or neighborhood of customers).

May 11, 2012

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