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fiber optic cable

toyinsekoni
Level 1
Level 1

I am about to design a network, and the owners are arguing that fiber optic cables will be better and faster for the network, i say not neccessarily. Am i wright? I proposed CAT6 to connect all switches, routers and servers (internet) which will be carrying more of data for now, and the internet backbone is not even fibre (it's VSAT through LMR/cat5 cablingg). My question is, will it make any significant difference if i use fiberoptic cables rather than CAT5/6?

Thanks

Daniel

2 Replies 2

mohammedmahmoud
Level 11
Level 11

Hi,

To connect all your equipment with fiber cables, you shall require Gigabit/fiber interfaces on all your equipments (expensive), fiber cables are for sure better than copper cables but not within a LAN environment where the cables are not that long and the speeds are not that high (copper cables can traverse to a max of 100m, while fiber cables can go for KMs), accordingly to a certain level you are correct and there is not really a significant difference.

HTH,

Mohammed Mahmoud.

semper_rabbit
Level 1
Level 1

it doesnt matter whether you have fiber or utp connections, it matters whether you have 100baseTx/Fx or 1000base Tx/Fx. sure fiber is nice, but if you could get gigabit over cat-5e or cat-6, it would be much less expensive, but you would get the same bandwidth. also, if you run out of gigabit ethernet interfaces, you could ether-channel up to eight 100baseTx ports to get in essence, 800baseTx. so if you have the right types of, or enough interfaces to suppport the network's backbone, it shouldnt matter whether you use fiber or not

-- Allan B

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