"John BORIS" <[email protected]> writes: > So my question is this. IS there any benefit > (other than an upgrade path) to stay with the fiber between the switches > or stay with the copper. The distance between switches is about 150 feet > as you walk the hall in a straight line, not sure how much cable is used > in the wall.
So some of the other people have gone over some of the reasons why fiber is superior in theory. However, it sounds like you are using old gear, like I did when I was using fiber, and personally, I found fiber, for short runs with old equipment to be significantly less reliable than copper. The reason, for me, was twofold. 1. I was using old hardware that was poorly maintained by the previous owner, so there was dust, I believe, on the mating surface. There's only so much compressed air can do. 2. multi-mode fiber pulls out when jostled /much/ more readily than cat5/6, and this was in a rack where the clearance between the back of the rack and the chain-link was less than the girth of my largest sysadmin. Now, for the reasons other people on the list have stated, I do prefer fiber for long runs, or through electrically uncertain areas, but my personal experience? copper usually wins in terms of reliability, for the two above reasons. Of course, if you do fiber /right/ those two things aren't problems. But, in the case of me five years ago, well, I wasn't doing it right, but when I switched to copper, my problems in that department largely went away. -- Luke S. Crawford http://prgmr.com/xen/ - Hosting for the technically adept http://nostarch.com/xen.htm - We don't assume you are stupid. _______________________________________________ Tech mailing list [email protected] https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tech This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
