CABLES

How To Avoid The 7 Most Costly Mistakes Of Upgrading Your Network To Optical Fiber – Part 1

Mistake #1: Throwing the Baby out with the Bathwater

Even if they accept the argument that fiber is the way to future proof their network, too many managers see migration to fiber as an all-or-nothing proposition. That is an expensive strategy. In fact, the cost of a massive upgrade is the main reason so many companies are going with the “nothing” strategy and are still installing Category 5E, Category 6 or looking at Category 7 cable. The common complaint is that, while they see the advantage of going to fiber, they simply cannot do a forklift upgrade or throw out so many miles of installed copper.

So what’s the problem? Do the upgrade on the installment plan, a department at a time. There is no reason to toss the installed copper base along with all of its associated electronics. Keep it in place, let it do its job, and plan to keep downgrading the importance of the copper plant as technology advances. Meantime, install optical fiber each and every time the network has to be upgraded. Simply link the copper cable with the fiber cable (using media conversion technology) and rest assured that those on the network are enjoying the best and fastest networking available without worrying about a call from the financial department about wasting money.

Before the advent of media conversion, this was a bigger deal. However, in the past couple of years many people who are upgrading to high speed backbones have discovered that media converters work, work well and work cheaply. Since humans began using machinery, they have been adapting one thing to another. Media converters can solve the problem by providing a transparent link between twisted pair horizontal cable and the fiber backbone without requiring new cable or replacement of expensive equipment.

For most applications, the economical answer to linking fiber, copper and/or coax is media conversion. Media conversion is the means by which one media type is converted to another media type. Changes in networking equipment driven by the ongoing quest for increased bandwidth, and structured cabling limitations, have helped define the need for media conversion technology. As routers, switches and other network devices evolve at a furiously fast pace, network administrators must develop ways to keep up. This constant migration places demands on both human and financial resources.

Put simply, media converters make one cable “look” like another cable—without changing the nature of your network. A media converter is a small device with two media dependent interfaces and a power supply. They can be installed almost anywhere in your network environment, expanding, rather than limiting your options. Your networking infrastructure, and thus, your investment is protected. Adapting new media types, such as fiber optics, does not require costly hardware upgrades.

The end user has an investment in fiber or twisted pair and is understandably reluctant to toss that investment out the window to achieve a faster network. Even going from copper to fiber or copper to copper presents a challenge. Most enterprises are not financially prepared to put in an entire new infrastructure to meet the needs of a new application. Media converters ease that transition by converting a variety of media to another: coax to twisted pair; coax to fiber; twisted pair to fiber and single mode to multimode fiber.

The device itself has two media dependent interfaces and a power source. The style of connector depends on the selection of media to be converted by the unit. For example, in a Fast Ethernet environment a 100BASE-TX to 100BASE-FX Media Converter connects a 100BASE-TX twisted pair device to a 100BASE-FX compliant single or multimode fiber port that has either a ST or SC fiber optic connector. Converters are small enough to fit in a hand and can be stand-alone units on their own. Don’t be one of those network managers who says, “I wish I’d known last month that it was possible to link TX and FX.”

Check into media conversion. Prioritize the network links which will be upgraded. Use media conversion to bring the different technologies together, keeping the installed base while upgrading on a pay-as-you-go basis. Even if you don’t save money on the actual fiber run, you will save a considerable amount by using the existing electronics.

The alternative to using media converters would be expensive; to put many more hubs out in the network, run new fiber plant, and make sure it would transition from one hub to the other while still maintaining the purity of the signal. Fiber can be connected to almost any legacy environment. Equipment equipped with an AUI or MII port can also make use of fiber transceivers. Media converters can also be used to link single mode to multimode fiber.

Media converters are as simple to install as patch cables and connectors. Media converters function as physical layer devices. As such, they do not interfere with any upper level protocol information. This allows them to support both QoS (quality of service) and Layer 3 Switching.

A fiber media converter can reliably and inexpensively extend the distance between two 10BASE2 devices or two 10BASE-T devices up to 2,000 meters. This function is done without the monetary expense of a repeater or the use of a portion of your network repeater budget. Using media converters in a 100BASE-TX to 100BASE-FX back to back configuration, provides a single method of extending the distance between a full duplex switch and a fileserver up to 2,000

Don’t be one of those network managers who says, “I wish I’d known last month that it was possible to link TX and FX.”

About the Author

Paul Smith is an expert in the networking field having worked for several major networking hardware vendors. He is currently business development manager for Gen-x IT, a leading distributor of Network Hardware based in Manchester, UK. They can be reached any time on +44 (0)161 274 1444 any time for all your networking hardware needs.

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