Connecting 2 Offices with Fibre and Procurve 2500 Series Switches

[Sergio Ricci_1]

Hi,

I hope this isn't a silly question but to connect 2 offices via multi-mode fibre with SC type interfaces (offices are approx 400 meters apart), is it essentially a simple case of using, say, a 2524 switch at each site with 100-FX transceivers installed in each switch and running the fibre between the two? Is it that simple or is additional hardware required?

Thanks for the confirmation or otherwise in advance.

Serg

[Martin_251 · Accepted solution]

Hello Sergio,

Well, yes, it could be that simple. If you put a 100Base-FX tranceiver in each 2500, you can go up to 2 kilometer distance. If you do not have the tranceivers yet, you'd need one 'HP ProCurve 100-FX SC Transceiver' (J4853A) in each 2500 switch. The cabling type should be MultiMode Fiber 62.5/125 µm or 50/125 µm, fitted with SC connectors.

The question is: will a 100Mbit connection be enough to handle the traffic between the offices? Depending on the traffic load you could also consider a 1Gig link, aggregated 1 Gig links or even (aggregated) 10Gig link.

You also may need redundancy to cover link failure so an aggregated link or some spanning tree solution could be in order. It depends on what hardware you already have, what the topology looks like and what budget is available.

Ma

[Les Ligetfalvy]

Well... I doubt you would run one 400 metre long fibre jumper between the switches. I presume the fbre will run outdoors so it would be loose tube terminated in wiring closets. You would then use jumpers in the wiring closets to connect the switches to the building fibre.

[Sergio Ricci_1]

Martin and Les,

Thanks for your replies. 100Mbit should be sufficient as there will essentially be no more than 3 users in the new office and traffic between the offices is nothing exceptionally high.

The two offices are actually in seperate buildings but I have had confirmation that there is a cabling route between the two sites and a 400 meter run of fibre should do the trick. The explaination I gave of running the fibre was simplistic just to keep the post short. As Les mentioned the fibre will be run via appropriate routes and in appropriate protective shielding to a fibre patch panel in each office.

Budgets are small (it's a small business) but I have already put forward the option of running 2 diverse fibres between the buildings to the client and as I understand it he is awaiting a quote from the cable installer before making a decision on this.

Just one other question: what kind of cabling is used for 1Gig and 10Gig links? Are they again fibre of some sort of wire? This would be useful to know as a wired solution in this case may potentially be dangerous as the two buildings each have their own building earths and linking two buildings with a wire may potentially be an issue.

Thanks again to both for your time.

Sergio

[Les Ligetfalvy]

The fibre requirements for gig is very different from 100FX. While you can push 1 gig over that distance on MMF, you would have to use expensive mode conditioning jumpers. 10 gig has severe limitations on MMF unless you install very specialize 2000 MHz laser-optimized fibre. You should run single mode fibre for gig.

[OLARU Dan]

Serg,
You can cover the 400 meter distance at 1G using 850 nanometer transceivers (SX), without the need for mode conditioning patches.

[Les Ligetfalvy]

Dan,
I stand corrected... my bad... was following the premise of 62.5 =< 200 MHz MMF.

http://www.hp.com/rnd/products/switches/switch2524-2512/accessories.htm#J4131B

[Antoniov.]

Serg,
look carefully at distance. SX transceiver can work with 500mt cable.
Because installing cable between two buildings may be expensive, you could ask for LX transceiver.

Antonio Vigliotti