Network Cables

[alxian]

somehow I feel like I'm making fire with flint when cutting cat5 cables, where shouldn't current networking students be learning fiber cables?

 

I'm wondering what possible transmissions speeds could be achieve using spdif cables if such technolgy existed for local networks.

 

The scenario is having 10-20 workstations connect directly to each other using fiber instead of ethernet but the NIC having 10-20 ports for a direct connection to each machine in a workgroup.

 

If it more efficient for an OS to control 20 connections locally (room) or communicate with a DCE device (in the same lab)?

[alexander]

What do you think, just because you've heard about metro fiber and fiber back bones, that the majority of jobs in the networking world deal with fiber now days? If that is so, you are very mistaken, my friend.

no, you will deal with copper for quite a while longer, so, no, besides, fiber gets to be almost as easy now days, you prep it, stick it in a machine together with a term end, and it does the work for you, but making a good cat cable or checking a punchdown will most likely, unless you are working for a wimax or a metro ethernet project, be the thing you get to look at the most, trust me, all of that is to stay for the next 5-10 years for sure...

[alexander]

besides, fiber hardware (switches, routers, etc) are stil waay too expensive to do fiber intra company. nics might be going down in price, running fiber is cheaper then copper/foot though...