Cabling and stuff...

[Vegito]

I actually do cabling and crap.. my question is anyone here do fiber to the desk ? Thats probably gonna be my next step.. I'm thinking of moving the office and if I do move, I rather do fresh fiber... any ideas or suggestions.. my other option was that 3COM NJ100, 3-4 port switch from 1 cable run. Except you need one for the phone also and a Power over Ethernet thingy..

was wondering if any of you guys have experience or seen it done ?

 

[RagManX]

Last place I worked had done 2 Cat5 ethernet and 1 single mode fibre pull to every endpoint on the network (well over 4000 drops - government site, added several percent to the final cost of the building). The original site planner (in 1993-1994) said that the day would come when fibre to the desktop made sense, the site would be in use long enough for that day to arrive, and the cost savings of doing it to a skeleton structure would bear fruit in terms of savings when the day finally came where everyone just used fibre.

Still hasn't happened, but the site will probably be in use for 10+ years still, so it may yet pay off. I still haven't seen compelling evidence that fibre everywhere will happen in the future on a timeline close enough to convince me that fibre pulls on a large scale make sense. For a small number of pulls, it might not be too bad, but I would not do fibre to the desk unless I had a reason and a near term plan to use it. But that's just me.

RagManX

 

[ScottMac]

It's looking like FTTD (Fiber To The Desktop) has once again been put on hold as network speeds across copper continue to climb. Who would have thought five years ago the you could do GiG+ speeds over UTP??

The government has a little more interest in FTTD for security reasons, some other R&D places as well.

Anyhow...regarding the phones...you could probably start integrating some flavor of VOIP into your next office. Even if you elect to pull FTTD, there are some adjunct systems you can use to do straight VOIP or Voice over IP trunk to get phone service to the desk over a net connection.

Spherecall started out as Voice over ATM, but I believe their systems have evolved to a mix of straight VOIP (Ethernet phone connection) to Voice over IP Trunks (an "adapter box" that connects to Ethernet, and uses POTS phones)....either are controllable from a PC application on the nearby computer (gives you conferencing, three-way calling, phone/address books, etc).

Cisco, Alcatel, and Nortel also have one flavor or the other of VOIP, Cisco being predominantly Ethernet phones (with a 100Meg Ethernet jack on the phone to plug your computer into, so you only use one datajack for both...and it'll do VLANs), Nortel has been predominantly VOIP trunks, but as of September, now can also support stright VOIP....or a mix, including PBX blades for VOIP phones or trunking.

I'm not that familiar with the Alcatel solution, I believe it's more "PBX Extension into VOIP" oriented.

3COM also has some stuff, including a very reasonably priced PBX, maybe I can get Doug/L3Guy to elaborate on that, I think he's got some more info on the 3COM system.

FTTD definately meets the "IWBC" specification (the "It Would Be Cool" Specification), there are a couple options for data and voice over fiber, unfortunatly, none of them are whatcha'd call "mainstream," meaning it costs (probably alot) more, and be harder to find, harder to order, and harder to find an integrator/supplier.

Of all the options, ATM would give you the smoothest integration. Maybe 100BASEFX with SpereCall nodes for the phones....You're gonna need to think a bit, and shop hard to come up with something that'd get ya more than a couple years down the road (IMHO) without having to suffer forklift upgrades.

FWIW, Good Luck, Happy Holidays

Scott