Cisco Catalyst 2950 - Fiber

[bdonals]

I have someone telling me that they can take a converter and use it on a Cisco Catalyst 2950 Switch so that it can use fiber cable.

IS this true and can it be done, and what is the pro's / con's of this. Nothing else we have is a gigabyte speed so is it really a benefit??

bdonals@martorifarms.com

Thanks

 

[vipergg]

When you say a converter what are you talking about ? There are many copper to fiber converters . If you don't have a gig backbone then you are not gaining anything .

 

[bdonals]

That's what I told them as well. We have nothing to support fiber. The switches we have are 2950's. The routers are only capable of handling 100 mps. etc..

What I want is some substantial information to go back to this guy with and say he's full of it. Running fiber from our Rad Megaplex to another building that has only switches and no routers makes no since. The switches as I said are 2950s and from my understanding don't support fiber. Also all the workstations are thin clients, and they can't support gigabyte speed.

 

[eurobadger]

Hi

The only point I can see in running fibre is to enable it to run through an environment that is hostile in terms of EMI between switches/end stations.

EB

 

[baddos]

You can use media converters with any switch. You simply plug your cat5 patch cable into the media converter and plug your fiber in the other side of it. Look into a company called Allied Telesyn for a good mix of different media converters.

Running fiber to your switching closets is common practice. The reasons behind it are as follows:

Overcome the distance limitation of CAT5 cabling
Eliminate any noise/cross talk on the line
Support speeds > 1gb