Would a gigabit fibre switch work with 100mb cards

[jasonyates]

Hi,

I have three 100mbps fibre PCI cards and I've found a 4 port netgear gigabit fibre switch however before I buy the cable etc I was wondering if fibre is downscaleable like traditional ethernet is. If I plug 100mbps cards into a gigabit switch, will it operate at 100mbps or will it just break.

Regards

[FN-GM]

it will operate at 100mbps.

[localzuk]

I'm not sure it would work properly. What switch is it?

[jasonyates]

Hi,

Its a Netgear GS504 4-Port Gigabit Fibre Optic Switch and I've got three D-Link 100mbps PCI cards.

Regards

[FN-GM]

I should have thought it would behave the same as Ethernet when you connect a 100mbs device to a gigabit switch.

[jasonyates]

Yeah thats what I thought however I don't really want to spend the money buying the gear if it wont work

[FN-GM]

Understandable

[FN-GM]

Why can't you use Ethernet?

[m25man]

No. 8O
Fiber modules are speed specific.

[jasonyates]

Thanks m25man. I thought that might be the case but wanted to check first.

Thanks for your help folks.

[western]

Fibre modules aren't 'speed specific', it vary from one to another. Some are 1000Mbps, others can be 1000/100/10!

[localzuk]

Fibre modules aren't 'speed specific', it vary from one to another. Some are 1000Mbps, others can be 1000/100/10!

Can you give an example? I have never seen such a fibre module! And google searching isn't turning up anything either.

Every fibre switch I've come across has been specific 100Mbit or 1000Mbit (or now 10Gbit)

[enjay]

Localzuk is right - fibre modules don't auto-negotiate in the same way as Ethernet, i.e. 10/100/1000. The converters are single speed and the speeds at each end of a fibre run must match, either 2x100 or 2x1000.

Not sure about the 100 card into a 1000 switch question though - having not worked with fibre switches, I'm not sure if they can auto-negotiate or not.

[kylewilliamson]

Don't forget they need to be the same type of fibre too.. (singlemode, multimode, all the other various sub categories)

[m25man]

Fibre modules aren't 'speed specific', it vary from one to another. Some are 1000Mbps, others can be 1000/100/10!

And my dog is green and comes from venus!