Fiber Optic Forum

new2fiber Wrote:i understand patchcords, they seem pretty basic, but i have been pulling fiber and helping with my boss setting up fiber backbones, that dispurse the signals to all the racks or boxes that convert the fiber signal to copper cable. Why dont people use fiber all the way, is there some sort of benefit to using the copper cable? are those boxes media converters and how do they convert the media? I want to expand my knowlege here and be able to do more and help my smaller contracting company be more efficiant, but i feel dumb asking my busy @ss boss to explain everything hes doing. i kinda know what a jack is, and every person on earth knows what a faceplate is, but what is the difference between cat 5, cat, 6, and i have even heard him say "they still are using cat 3" what the H double hocky sticks does that mean.

Any Help you can give me will be much appreciated.... PLEASE HELP!

You can visit this website to know much about copper system
http://www.npknetworks.com

You have many questions but I will try to address them all. There are two main reasons many network designers & engineers prefer to have a Fiber Backbone and Copper cabling runs from the Patch Panels to the computer workstation. One is because Fiber Optic Equipment is still more costly than Copper even if the copper cabling requires testing. Another has to do with the bandwidth requirements for the individual workstation. Copper cabling - Cat5e or Cat6 is sufficient to handle most bandwidth requirements. When the bandwidth requirements are so high then Fiber to the workstation may be required. Also copper cabling can be run up to 295 feet. A fiber backbone is typically a long cabling run so Fiber is recommended. Media converters simply change the signal from Electrical (voltage) to Optical (light) or vice versa. The technology for both Copper & Fiber continues to advance and maybe someday fiber may be the medium of choice.There is a lot of Copper cabling that exists in many Computer Networks and homes so to be able to reuse it would save an enormous amount of money. I hope this helps to clarify some of your questions.