Definition of Fiber Exhaust in the Network Encyclopedia.
What is Fiber Exhaust?
Fiber Exhaust is a term referring to the potential saturation of the fiber-optic backbone of the Internet due to the exponentially increasing demand for Internet services.
As high-speed residential Internet access using cable modems and Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) technology becomes available, more and more of the Internet bandwidth will be used up.
Another factor contributing to fiber exhaust is the move toward high-bandwidth services such as IP telephony and video multicasting technologies on the Internet.
Strategies telecommunications carriers use to avoid fiber exhaust include the following:
- Creating additional high-speed, fiber-optic backbone lines for the Internet by laying down more fiber
- Using dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) technologies to enable existing fiber backbones to carry additional traffic
- Upgrading existing time-division multiplexing (TDM) fiber backbones to higher bit rates
