> This is correct, fibre runs between buildings prevent fault currents from > faulty equipment, and induced or direct lightning strike transmission > between buildings.
I've heard of some nasty incidents, though I've never been involved. > If you are paying someone else to lay the cables (most likely in this > situation) make sure they are data cablers who know what they are doing. > I've seen quite a few shonky jobs out there when an electrician thought > doing network cabling without any form of training or practice would be a > good idea (think cables terminated into Krone punch downs in any old order, > matching pins at each side, but not following colour codes printed on the > little labels, causing failure due to the twisted pairs being incorrectly > used. I think its worth spending serious dollars on good testing equipment like Fluke's. > Don't forget that 1Gb copper is also available, which is quite economical > for things like servers, as the NICs for it are now under $100 for some > brands. Gigabit copper requires that the cables be either good Cat 5 or Cat > 5e and up, but this shouldn't be a problem, as all reputable cablers lay a > minimum of Cat 5e for networks these days. Another thing to keep in mind is > that Gigabit copper uses all 4 pairs of the cable. I must admit I've not dealt with Gb copper. I use cat5e for all copper anyway, including standard patch cables. Its not much expensive. Have you used Gb copper much? I'd be interested in your views of it. I've heard that its pretty sensitive to cable flexing. Cheers Rob T > * Multimode Step Index (SI) - Cheap, widely used in LANs. > * Multimode Graded Index (GI) > * Single Mode (SM) - Good, widely used in telecommunications. > > Note there are quite a few other variants of fibre out there, but they are > not relevant to basic LANs, and would be more a concern on DWDM systems. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
