Media converters (copper/fibre) - are they any good?

Soldato
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I'll be moving to a new house soon, and one of the things I'm looking to do is put my lab environment at the end of the garden in a separate small building. I need to get gigabit connectivity back to the house, and have a number of options.

Option 1 is to get some Procurve 1810-24 switches and a couple of fibre GBICs and run 1000SX between the two, carrying various vlans between them. This is expensive.

Option 2 is to just run copper, but I've questions about how well copper cables cope when buried outside, and also how well they'll perform over distance.

Option 3 is to send fibre outside, but then use media converters at each end and go with cheaper switches that don't have fibre capability (1810-8s - I don't need the port capacity).

My main question is - are media converters any good? Will I expect to get the same performance as if I went with option 1, or are they problematic?

Any advice welcome :)
 
I've used Allied Telesis media converters quite a few times. Not sure how much they are these days but they never gave me any trouble.
 
100m is at the end of copper's reach, you may not get the throughput you'd like at that length.

I've used verious fibre to copper converters, the part they are fine but you may want to pick up a gig veriant and you may have to nail it to full duplex. They tend to like to default to half.
 
Fibre definitely.

The cost for a pair of good quality media converters will be more than cheap SPF GBICs (2 GBIC, or even 3 for the price of 1 media converter)

1810-8G x 2 + 2 x Media converters x (however many links you want)

or

1810-24G x 2 + 2 x SPF GBICs x (However many links you want)

Do you have any existing equipment you can redeploy? (Switch / SPF wise)
 
No existing kit, all I've got at the moment is a couple of 1800-8s, so I'm familiar with the procurve stuff. I know how much the 24s are, but how much would some mini-GBICs set me back?
 
I just took a punt on a couple off that place at £14 a pop. I'll pick up a 1810g-24 as well and see how they work out.

Random question, can I aggregate fibre inter-switch trunks, to get 2Gbit?
 
Surely if you're using fibre then one is Tx and one Rx? So you'd never have 2 fibre links.

No wait I have the wrong end of the stick.. I'll let someone who knows what they're talking about have a go :p
 
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