Networking between 2 buildings?

[ChrisC]

I'm gonna go with, it's old a slow..........(I know this isn't the case, but it could be an opinion).

Chris

[Disease]

Fibre does not auto sense speed and is more of a pain in the arse to upgrade than Cat5. Cat5 is not slower unless you pay to have top of the range fibre which I doubt a school could afford it.

I have fibre here and am slowly replacing it with cat5. Best thing I ever did.

[webman]

I have fibre here and am slowly replacing it with cat5. Best thing I ever did.

Doesn't sound very future-proof to me.

[CyberNerd]

I have fibre here and am slowly replacing it with cat5. Best thing I ever did.

'll be doing that just as soon as we've replaced all the athlonXP machines with 486's and then downgraded the servers to OS/2

[Jake]

To be fair though, future-proof is something which is pretty hard to guarantee regardless of whats chosen. Especially in an industry which develops as fast as ours does at times. Essentially imo , "future-proof" is a term thrown about by the marketing bods, much like "user-friendly" and "paperless".

Who knows what developments will come along in the next year, something could arrive which makes fibre, catv and everything else obsolete. Fibre 2 or Catpro or something.

*runs off to patent his Neural net*

[Jake]

'll be doing that just as soon as we've replaced all the athlonXP machines with 486's and then downgraded the servers to OS/2

Again..to be fair...your sarcasm assumes that the newest version of something is always better than the existing or previous versions. Which all of us on this forum...perhaps more than anyone else...know is not always the case.

[Disease]

Whats future proof about fibre, nothing really. It's future proof if you can afford the infrastructure to upgrades, so unless you are able to install fibre yoursleves it's very costly and very costly to upgrade. In the Becta Tech Spec for Institutional Infrastructure its states that Fibre shoul;d only be used for lengthy spans (i assume over 100m) but the downside to it is that it cant carry power and is expensive.

Sarcasm I love it.

How many on her actually install their own Cat5e or Fibre, or do you just pay someone to do it?

[webman]

Depending on the type of fiber cable you get, you can theoretically get a maximum of 10Gbps speed (depending on end devices). With CAT5, this is 100Mbps; and with CAT6 is 1000Mbps/1Gbps. Copper cables can and do suffer from interference and have a sub-100m distance limit tied to them. We have a fiber backbone with Cisco catalyst switches which will "future proof" us for the next 5-10 years.

Providing you have the correct equipment and knowledge you can run fiber and other networking cables yourselves. However, due to time constraints we get all of our structured cabling installed by a company called Conex.

I think that being able to send power over cat5 isn't really a selling point except for Wireless access points in remote places, which usually run at half the speed of CAT5 anyway.

[Blanka]

I'll be doing that just as soon as we've replaced all the athlonXP machines with 486's and then downgraded the servers to OS/2

In that case why dont you replace your existing telephone system with a collection of old Baked Bean Tins and String? A most cost effective tarrif don't you think?

[CyberNerd]

I'm sorry I'm in that sort of overheated mood today.
I'm not one to rush into upgrading for the sake of it - I'm still trying to fathom the benefits of upgrading our W2k servers to 2003 - apart from the support issue I can't think of a single benefit to the college.
But fibre vs cat 5 is somewhat of a different story.

heres' my quick pros and cons (I'm sure its not complete, so please add)

pros:
faster speeds (>1GB/s if you can afford the transievers)
more robust and secure
takes less space and is lighter
not affected by RF
no crosstalk
runs longer distance -low loss

cons
price
maintenence

[Jake]

But 10m is sub-100m, I do admire you for being able to predict what will last 5-10 years though, I am never fully confident of anything lasting for 2 years, let alone 10. Hell , 10 years ago I was being told by adverts that "80mb hard drive !! All the space you will ever need !!"

[Disease]

5-10 years, yea I would tell you that as well if I was trying to sell you a load of kit.

And funny but last time I checked my Cat5 backbone was running at 1gig not 100mbps. Have you not heard about cat5e Gigabit switches in them parts yet.

[webman]

Twisted-pair copper wire has its limits, and these limits would prevent our school from moving forward with the whole school IT plan.

(Yes, meant cat5e.. unless you're running PoE of course)

[Jake]

I guess the end result of the discussion is that every school is different, whats perfect for one isnt for another. Which I guess we probably all knew at the start

To cover a distance of 10m with fibre...with our severely restricted budget would quite likely simply never happen. Maybe if we were a bit more flush it would be possible, but then if we were more flush I doubt I would be working here as I am no IT genius (goes without saying really..cause if I was, I sure wouldnt be working in a secondary school )

[Disease]

In what way would it prevent you going forward with the ict plan, no one has given a single reason as to why you have to go fibre (apart from the obvious distance limitations), we have had grounding thrown up and even the amazing theory that cat5 can only go upto 100mbps.

Please someone give me a decent reason apart from fibre being used as a buzz word for not using Cat5.