10Base-FL

On Feb 8, 13:32, Christopher Smith wrote: The usual concern is not capacity -- if the school already has copper it probably is 10baseT or 10base2/10base5 which is the same speed as 10baseFL -- but safety. You're not supposed to run copper between buildings for two reasons. First is that they may not be grounded at the same potential; there could easily be a voltage difference between them. Even a small difference can cause damage to interfaces, though if they're working at present, presumably that's not serious in this case. Tiny differences just cause increased error rates. However, if there should ever be an earth fault on one building, all bets are off. Second reason is inductive pickup, or change in ground potential due to nearby lightning. Even coax picks that up rather well. The cheapest way to do this is often to find a pair of hubs (like the 3Com Netbuilders or PSII range) which can take an extra transceiver module or two in the back. They're usually cheap, and the Fibre Link interfaces are very cheap because hardly anyone wants them. Standalone media converters, on the other hand, are much more expensive, even secondhand. Best way to buy the fibre for short runs (10-50 yards) is to buy patch leads from a trade supplier. Trade suppliers are typically 1/2 - 1/8 the price of end-user catalogues. Better still, sometimes you find people with surplus patch leads with ST connectors, which they've replaced with SC or even MT-RJ. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York