fiber optics
- Thread starter Cuthrose
- Start date
Yardos
Full Member
if i mem me lessions right the cards just need to be able to run um(in fac i think the cables have a convertor on the end where they plug in not sure) price double of normal twisted copper normaly and remember they have a short range that they can be used without a signal enhancer thing(cant mem the name)
Agro
Mighty Morphin Power Member
from what I've seen in comms rooms the fiberoptics are only really used to go between floors or to hook up a very high bandwitdh line. There's a rhumour that RT built RailTrack House in Euston with the equivalent of structured cabling in fiber optics. Said to have blown almost the entire IT budget on this only to find they couln't afford the network cards and had to use of UDP as a temporary ( and its still there years later) measure. Now that RT is dead, with executive desitions like that are we supprised, there's a whole building's worth of optics waiting for you in London.
Meanwhile, back at the wranch...
Effectively you need a big box to send and receive the signal, boosters if you go beyond a certain distance and network cards as Cuth pointed out. in mho its not worth the money/effort as 100-Base-T is so cheap atm.
Meanwhile, back at the wranch...
Effectively you need a big box to send and receive the signal, boosters if you go beyond a certain distance and network cards as Cuth pointed out. in mho its not worth the money/effort as 100-Base-T is so cheap atm.
K
Koz
Guest
Fiber cabling aint cheap. The cabling itself isn't too expensive, but the actual termination work that needs to be done to the end of each cable is stupidly bloody fiddly.
Fiber cards for a PC will generally set you back aroun 3-400 quid, whereas a 100Mb NIC will cost you under 20.
If you're desperate for more bandwidth, why not look at NIC teaming as a more cost effective answer.
Some of my servers have a cluster of 4x100Mbit network cards in that act as a single logical device, giving me 400Mbit access to that machine.
Only usefull if you've got lots of PCI slots in the server, don't mind a spiders-web of cabling, and have network cards and an operating system that supports teaming.
Fiber cards for a PC will generally set you back aroun 3-400 quid, whereas a 100Mb NIC will cost you under 20.
If you're desperate for more bandwidth, why not look at NIC teaming as a more cost effective answer.
Some of my servers have a cluster of 4x100Mbit network cards in that act as a single logical device, giving me 400Mbit access to that machine.
Only usefull if you've got lots of PCI slots in the server, don't mind a spiders-web of cabling, and have network cards and an operating system that supports teaming.
Merly
Full Member
From what I remember m8 yes you do need special network cards usually called Gbic modules, that stands funily enough for gigabit, the network cards usually come in two parts a board part that you plyg into the machine as per standard cards and then a small black rectangle in which you plug the fibre cable which slots into the card
As agro says you need boosters etc over a certain lenght as you do with any networking really, personally though I've used fibre through HA (high availability) Pairs, where basically there are two machines that sit next to each other, both sharing a RAID array, and the two machines keep an eye on each other via fibre running a "heartbeat" program between them, if the 2nd machine detects the 1st has died it kicks in and takes over.
Also Fibre can be tempremental at best, it's worth it if you NEED it but not if you are just doing it for something different.....
Why do you need to know this out of interest m8 ?
As agro says you need boosters etc over a certain lenght as you do with any networking really, personally though I've used fibre through HA (high availability) Pairs, where basically there are two machines that sit next to each other, both sharing a RAID array, and the two machines keep an eye on each other via fibre running a "heartbeat" program between them, if the 2nd machine detects the 1st has died it kicks in and takes over.
Also Fibre can be tempremental at best, it's worth it if you NEED it but not if you are just doing it for something different.....
Why do you need to know this out of interest m8 ?