Preferred Gigabit fiber uplinks for ProCurve 2610-48 units

[BrianMilo]

Is there a preferred route to go when utilizing Fiber Uplinks between ProCurve 2610 units?  We've been using Ethernet but we're in the process of building a server room so I though this would be a great opportunity to bump up to the GB Fiber uplinks.

Any advice?

[Vince_Whirlwind]

I don't think there is any particular reason to prefer fibre over copper: copper is cheaper and runs at the same speed. Where you want fibre is where you have a connection that's 100m or more in length.

In the data centre, you should have 1Gb connections for individual servers, and therefore 10Gb uplinks to the rest of the network. If you have 1Gb uplinks, you could easily get congestion, although trunking a few 1GB uplinks together would help reduce that risk.

[paulgear]

One data centre we're considering moving gear into provides only single-mode optical links to the cross-connect area.  It makes their above-rack trays very clean since the cabling is much less bulky.  That's definitely the way i would go if i were building from scratch.  But if you've got a budget and space isn't a concern, you'll likely find copper a more viable choice.

[Vince_Whirlwind]

Single-mode would be attractive from the point of view that it could be used for everything, so you don't need an annoying and unwieldy mix of single-and multimode.

On the other hand, you will need to buy singlemode transceivers which are much more expensive than multimode ones. If you have a hundred 10Gb links to put in, that cost difference would be serious: looking at the last prices I've had, 100 10Gb MM would be $13K, whereas SM would cost $52K.