Fiber links

Forum,
I am having a hard time understand this, and really never gave it much thought until now.

I have a Dell 5424 switch, which has 4x fiber links to cross-connect the switch to other switches. The switch is 1GB, but my question deal with the fiber links. what are the benefits of linking two switches together with a fiber cable? The switch will only have a max. throughput of 1GB whether or not the fiber cable is use right? The only reason i ask is because someone told me that using a Fiber cable would relive a bottleneck. I don't understand because the switch's max. throughput is 1GB.

any help

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srg

datchcha wrote:

Forum,
I am having a hard time understand this, and really never gave it much thought until now.

I have a Dell 5424 switch, which has 4x fiber links to cross-connect the switch to other switches. The switch is 1GB, but my question deal with the fiber links. what are the benefits of linking two switches together with a fiber cable? The switch will only have a max. throughput of 1GB whether or not the fiber cable is use right? The only reason i ask is because someone told me that using a Fiber cable would relive a bottleneck. I don't understand because the switch's max. throughput is 1GB.

any help

It depends. You don't gain any speed or throughput with 1Gbit fiber vs copper, but with fiber you loose some of the drawbacks of copper like the length of the cable (copper ~100m, fiber ~5-70km), the effect of electro-magnetic fields, interference etc.

learningtofly22

Distance would be my first guess. That's the reason we're using fiber on our current project, some switches are thousands of feet apart in different buildings. Also, you're not supposed to link 2 buildings together with copper anyway, as you can start a ground loop that will cause really strange intermittent faults (my recent trip to Mexico comes to mind where that very thing happened, nearly impossible to troubleshoot).

Last but not least, there's interference. Motors, generators, etc. will screw up a UTP link. STP helps, but fiber is completely immune to EMI.

networker050184

Propagation delay is less on fiber than copper, but I'm not sure of the specific amount. I'm sure you could probably find it with a quick google search. It probably wouldn't be much of a difference on a small patch but as the data travels over a distance it would start to make difference in time sensitive data such as voice.

datchcha

Hey,
Thank you all...i was thinking along those lines, but when the individual started to become combative and argumentive, i just gave up.

thank you.

rossonieri#1

but when the individual started to become combative and argumentive, i just gave up.

hey ... that is what studying is for

so we can have enough confidence