Is Glass a Superconductor? Referring to Fiber Optics Networks?

No, glass is an insulator. Optical fibres do not conduct electricity. They provide a medium for light to travel between nodes in a network.

— — — — — —

understanding fiber optics layers architecture

You are confusing some things. Fiber optics uses a particular wavelength of light for signalling. WDM lets you use multiple wavelengths for separate signals, as if you had multiple fibers; each wavelength is a separate signal.SONET and ethernet are methods of framing the data on a signal, telling the other end where the data starts and stops. SONET is for circuit-switched networks, where each frame in a time period represents a different circuit. SONET was developed for the traditional circuit-switch telephone system to multiplex different calls onto a single circuit as if there were multiple circuits.Ethernet is for packet-switched networks. Ethernet frames can be encapsulated into SONET frames and de-encapsulated on the other end, or there are various ethernet on fiber standards, too, but the equipment for ethernet on fiber and SONET on fiber is very different. Either SONET or ethernet can be run over a fiber with only one signal, or you can have multiple logical links with WDM, and each wavelength looks like a separate connection.Circuit-switching is fading away in favor of packet switching, but remember that there is a huge installed base of expensive circuit-switching equipment that simply does not disappear. That is why you (can) encapsulate ethernet frames in SONET frames. In sites, e. g. data centers, you will find one of the ethernet standards because the equipment is so much cheaper than TDM equipment, and packet switching is more flexible and efficient than circuit switching

— — — — — —

Would it be possilble to light the dark side of a tidally locked planet using fiber optics from the right side?

Yes theoretically, but it would create a dark patch on the bright side, as large as the area you are lightening.Reason for this is that an optic fiber simply transport light with almost (mind this almost, it will become important in the following period you are going to read) no attenuation. But if you want to transport X amount of light from A to B, you have to take it from A. Thus, the light you cast on 100 square meter on dark side will come from 100 square meters of the bright side.On top of that, the tenuous attenuation of those fibers will become important over the distances involved in shining the dark side. Telco usually employ amplifiers after a certain distance in order to compensate the losses. But they do not shine large surfaces. The energetic cost would be prohibitive.

— — — — — —

Fiber optics & stock tips.....?

FNSR, LVLT - these are good companies

— — — — — —

How does interior lighting using fiber optics work?

Well hopefully I do not miss this question completely. I've never really seen fiber optic interior lighting... But the principle of fiber optics is based on total internal reflectance. It's a phenomena observed when light is passing in something of a high refractive index and attempts to leave into something of a lower refractive index but it is less than a certain "critical" angle. Basically this means you can trap light in plastic/glass tubes if you keep the angles gradual enough. So if you point these tubes at something, voila, lighting.

— — — — — —

What is material dispersion in fiber optics?

As pointed out fiber dispersion has two major contributions - material and waveguide dispersion even when there is only a single mode. What is that? a fiber has a core with one refractive index surrounded by a cladding of slightly lower index. Depending on the indices of core and cladding, the light wavelength and the radius of the core (assuming a very thick cladding), the resulting guided mode (assuming a single mode for simplicity) will have a propagation constant corresponding to an effective index that is somewhere between the core index and the cladding index. When the wavelength of the light varies a little both the index of the core and cladding will change (because they each are dispersive), but these changes will also result in the effective index changing. Therefore the total dispersion (the change of the effective index with wavelength has a material contribution (the refractive indices of the slightly different core and cladding indices) and a "structural" or "geometric" contribution (i.e., the fact that each wavelength "sees" a slightly different wave guiding structure). Material dispersion is always present (even when you do not have a waveguide or fiber), manipulating the waveguide dispersion allows you to engineer fibers where the zero dispersion point has been shifted, for example.Note that when you have a multimode fiber you have yet more dispersion as every supported mode has a different effective index