Home / server / Questions / 357751
Accepted
Payson Welch
Asked: 2012-02-08 11:21:17 +0800 CST

Is fiber neworking as easy as getting a switch and a NIC?

  • 772

I have a handful of servers at home and I am wondering how feasible it is to network them together using fiber optic. Is it as simple as getting a fiber switch on ebay, and getting fiber NICs for each of the servers and hooking everything up? The servers only need to talk to eachother, I only have three of them so we aren't talking about anything too fancy.

networking fiber

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Pretty much, yeah. You just need to make sure that they're compatible.

    I.E. get ethernet fiber NICs, not FC-AL nic's.

    You also need to get the right kind of fibre cables with the right kind of connectors on them, and be consistent in everything you purchase.

    Note though you're not actually getting any advantage over running normal copper ethernet, unless:

    • You're going for Top Secret classification with a government (fibre is almost impossible to snoop on)
    • You're travelling very long distances with your cable runs (> 300m)
    • You're using 40Gbps or above transmission speeds
    • 5

  2. As long as you've got the same physical Ethernet standard (1000Base-SX for gigabit Ethernet over multi-mode fiber on short hauls, for example) on both ends and the right patch cables it is, in fact, that easy.

    • 2