Fiber or Cat5e/6 for video server network

[theorignalAMD Overclocker]

We have a project going on that is going to require a fast network. This company is going to be recording some stuff in the basement of our data center. They want to be able to view it live in a conference room in the same building, so lan, and also be able to watch it over the internet. On the lan they want 30fps and over the internet 15 or so. With audio too. Right now we have a managed Netgear 24 port GB managed switch and need that plus more. So here is the question. Should we just upgrade to a 48 port GB copper switch OR get a 24 port copper with 10-12 port fiber gb switch OR just get a 10-12 port fiber gb switch and patch it into our existing switch? The key thing is going to be speed and latency. Each camera is going to be pushed 2-3MB/sec and we have 5 cameras as of now. That will probably increase to 10-15 but the additional cameras will only be pushing .5MB/sec each. What do you think? Fiber or copper?

 

[Wizkid]

5 x 3MB/s = 15MB/s
10 x 0.5MB/s = 5 MB/s

Double just to be safe and you are at 40MB/s with 15 cameras. Gigabit over copper should be able to handle that.

You could probably get away with a 10/100 switch for the .5mb/s cameras and patch that into the gigabit switch that you already have... maybe an expert can confirm this?

 

[melthemoose]

Both fiber and copper are capable of gig speeds on ethernet, but that may not be sufficient. the cabling will have less of an effect thatn implementing QOS on your network giving priority to your audio video application over the more mundane types of traffic. So i would look for devices that allow for and can act on layer 2 and layer 3 (if you have a multilayer network) tagging to give you the smoothest video and audio.

 

[spidey07]

yep, you'll have plenty of bandwidth with gig ethernet.

I'd highly recommend some quality of service for video - I run broadcast quality video over a lan and it works great.

As long as you have quality of service tuned right.

 

[theorignalAMD Overclocker]

Oaky, I figured that would have to be used. Do you think I would see any benfit of using fiber over copper? Our budget is quite big so its not going to matter on that end.

 

[melthemoose]

fiber really has the advantage over copper in terms of:

distance...copper is limited to 100m and depending on the fiber type it can reach out as far as 70km or so (I doubt that you will go that far).

Fiber also, with certain types of equipment, can have a speed advantage: fiber can do up to 10gbps, with the right equipment, but that is used for switch to switch backbone connectivity.

Another advantage to fiber is the low occurence of interference, data on copper can be corrupted if exposed to a sufficiently strong EM source, fiber does not have that weakness and unless you are in a manufacturing/power generation facility, this is not likely.

The final advantage of fiber is security. Short of compromising the integrity of the cable, there is no effective way to "read" the signals passing thru a fiber cable.

The downside is fiber is the cost. Fiber can cost significantly more to string and terminate than copper.