Upgrading fiber between buildings

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wizdum

[H]ard|Gawd
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I touched on this a little in my last thread, I work for a school district that has internet access delivered to our high school via Time Warner Cable Fiber, which is then distributed to two other schools and a few offices over our own private fiber. The fiber is currently terminated on each end with 10/100 media converters. We have most of our critical servers located at the high school, as it is the newest building and has the nicest NOC.

I would like to start upgrading some of these fiber links to gigabit or higher speeds.

Most of our links are just using the 10/100 version of these: http://www.amazon.com/MC200CM-Conve...sr=8-1&keywords=gigabit+fiber+media+converter

My first thought was to simply get some of those and drop them in place, however, the gigabit version has a 550m limit, and 3 of our buildings are at least 650m away (with one being close to 2 miles). I know very little about fiber, but from a quick look it appears that this is a limitation of the type of fiber (multi-mode), and not the converter, correct? Is there any way to get gigabit speeds over multi-mode fiber at longer distances?

We do have several pairs of single-mode fiber between a lot of the buildings, but I have never worked with it, it pre-dates my employment. Are there any pitfalls to watch out for when buying single-mode media converters? Are the fibers designed for a specific frequency that I need to ensure the converter supports?
 
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what do you have for fiber in the ground? gigabit on OM4 is rated at 1000m with good optics. not sure cheap converters would be up to the task.. probably a good reason they're only rated for 550m, hah.
 
tacos4me said:
what do you have for fiber in the ground? gigabit on OM4 is rated at 1000m with good optics. not sure cheap converters would be up to the task.. probably a good reason they're only rated for 550m, hah.
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I honestly have no idea. Would it be printed on the jacket somewhere?
 
550m is pretty much the limit on MM, At least best practices. I'm surprised the 100M converters are working.

If you've got single mode stands available, Use it. You should have no problem bouncing Gig down it at that length. There's a lot of options that go into both SM and MM fiber. But I assume you're not terminating this fiber. You've just got strands hanging already terminated. In which case, no as long as you get the right connector type (SC is what your existing stuff is). You should be fine. Wavelength or anything else like that shouldn't matter. As long as it matches on both sides (You buy two identical media converters).
 
NickOlsen8390 said:
550m is pretty much the limit on MM, At least best practices. I'm surprised the 100M converters are working.

If you've got single mode stands available, Use it. You should have no problem bouncing Gig down it at that length. There's a lot of options that go into both SM and MM fiber. But I assume you're not terminating this fiber. You've just got strands hanging already terminated. In which case, no as long as you get the right connector type (SC is what your existing stuff is). You should be fine. Wavelength or anything else like that shouldn't matter. As long as it matches on both sides (You buy two identical media converters).
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Yes, the strands are already terminated for us. We do have some new stuff that is terminated though (every time they dig up a parking lot, bury as much as we can get away with).

We have two buildings that are terminated with multimode only, and more than 550m apart. We do own all the property between them, so we could trench more, just not in this financial situation.
 
I'm just curious if you have true gigabit equipment to hook it to? Least for the first ( dont know correct terminology but switch/router)
 
Romale23 said:
I'm just curious if you have true gigabit equipment to hook it to? Least for the first ( dont know correct terminology but switch/router)
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"Sort of".


We have a mix of true gigabit switches and some 24 - 48 port gigabit switches that can only pass 17gbps of total throughput. Its pretty much a flat network, one /8 for the whole district, so we don't have routers at every school, only at the ones where an internet connection comes in. The fiber converters plug directly into switches.
 
How many strands? You might just be able to do LACP for now on 4 pairs until you can budget for single mode.
 
bman212121 said:
How many strands? You might just be able to do LACP for now on 4 pairs until you can budget for single mode.
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I'll have to check tomorrow. Theres at least 2 pairs (since its a flat network, we needed separate runs for DMZ vs LAN). The patch panel in the NOC has 12 pair on it, so I want to say they probably ran 6 pair to each building.
 
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