Fiber to the Building

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What Does Fiber to the Building Mean?

Fiber to the building (FTTB) is a type of fiber-optic cable installation where the fiber cable goes to a point on a shared property and the other cabling provides the connection to single homes, offices or other spaces. FTTB applications often use active or passive optical networks to distribute signals over a shared fiber-optic cable to individual households or offices.

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Fiber to the building may also be known as fiber to the basement.

Techopedia Explains Fiber to the Building

Fiber to the building is just one of a number of fiber deployment setups collectively called FTTx. Others include fiber to the home (FTTH), where a fiber cable may carry a signal to an individual home, or fiber to the node (FTTN), where the fiber cable carries a shared connection to a street box that is then distributed to several properties. Other fiber setups include local networks and methods like fiber to the desk (FTTD), where a fiber cable carries a signal locally from an onsite box to a particular workstation. Another choice is direct fiber, where an individual signal is carried exclusively to one customer from a provider’s central office.

Fiber-optic setups enable higher speeds of delivery and greater bandwidth than some other kinds of infrastructure. Some of the fiber networks deploying signals to the most sophisticated equipment can benefit from a multimode fiber connection, where a specific kind of fiber-optic cable may be used for optimal speed.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert

Margaret is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.