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Pat Horridge - 24 Aug 2004 14:40 GMT

Looking at upgrading our network switch to a 1Gb switch.
Currrently have a 1G Fibre (sc) card in my server connected to a 3com 3900
100 meg switch (which has a 1G SC module fitted.
I now have a lot of 1G XP machines in use and the 100meg switch is a bottle
neck.
Ideally I would add a second 1G Fibre (sc) adaptor to my 3900 switch (I have
a spare on hand) and then feed this into a new switch that has a SC fibre
input and 16 or more RJ45 1G ports.
I've looked around and can't see any 1G switches with a fibre SC port.

The other option is to replace the server NIC with an RJ45 1G card and then
go with a standard 16 port 1G switch but ideally I'd still like to go into
my current 3900 switch on the Fibre SC connection.

Any advise or thoughts?
Thanks

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Jeff Middleton [SBS-MVP] - 25 Aug 2004 03:38 GMT

Hi Pat,

I'm thinking that investing in a fiber GBic is probably not the smart move.
Gbit over copper is really where it is happening now, and you probably
should look at that first. Fiber isn't really needed to solve the
performance requirement.

Of course the problem also is that Gbit performance isn't alwasy the total
solution. Once you start getting into that range of LAN performance, you may
find that your backend system is the real bottleneck.

My suggestion is to take a tour on the cheap purchase isle for Gbic copper
parts and see if you really see what you are expecting. If you have huge
volume continuous transfer, Gbit is the answer. Most people don't see an
amazing difference, at least, not worth the cost of fiber in a small LAN.

> Looking at upgrading our network switch to a 1Gb switch.
> Currrently have a 1G Fibre (sc) card in my server connected to a 3com 3900
[quoted text clipped - 12 lines]
> Any advise or thoughts?
> Thanks

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Pat Horridge - 31 Aug 2004 11:06 GMT

> Hi Pat,
>
[quoted text clipped - 31 lines]
> > Any advise or thoughts?
> > Thanks

Thanks Jeff
If I was starting from scratch I wouldn't hesitate to go copper Gbit but the
problem is trying to maximise the kit I have. We did notice a significant
performance improvement when we went to Gbit fibre for the SBS2K NIC and a
Gbit fibre port on our 100MHz Switch.
Although our SBS network doesn't generally move a lot of big data files
around I dod do remote images from the SBS server to a workstation and we
use storage space on the server for multimedia work which is often 1G or
bigger data files.
I suspect the best plan will be upgrade the Server NIC to copper Gbit go for
a copper Gbit switch and then possibly a media convertor from copper to
fibre to give a Gbit hooking to my 3com 100MHz sitch with it's Gbit fibre
port.
The big question is managed or unmanaged. Chewing on that now.

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Jeff Middleton [SBS-MVP] - 31 Aug 2004 15:02 GMT

It's sort of a trivial point, but it's possible for Gbit fiber to out
perform Gbit copper due to lack of transmission noise and echo...but I don't
think that's a marketable value for the price difference, more of a
rationalization for the current fiber owner. ;-)

> > Hi Pat,
> >
[quoted text clipped - 51 lines]
> port.
> The big question is managed or unmanaged. Chewing on that now.

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