RCDD · Question #346
There are three buildings approximately 400 meters apart and the customer wants to use 10 Gig Ethernet. What fiber should be specified for this application?
The correct answer is A. 8 - 9 micron singlemode. At 400 meters between buildings, only singlemode fiber reliably supports 10 Gigabit Ethernet because all multimode variants fall short of or are marginal at that distance.
Question
There are three buildings approximately 400 meters apart and the customer wants to use 10 Gig Ethernet. What fiber should be specified for this application?
Options
- A8 - 9 micron singlemode
- B50 micron multimode
- C50 micron laser optimized multimode
- D62.5 micron multimode
How the community answered
(36 responses)- A75% (27)
- B3% (1)
- C8% (3)
- D14% (5)
Why each option
At 400 meters between buildings, only singlemode fiber reliably supports 10 Gigabit Ethernet because all multimode variants fall short of or are marginal at that distance.
8-9 micron singlemode fiber supports 10GBase-LR, which has a reach of up to 10 km, making it the only unambiguously reliable choice for a 400-meter campus inter-building link running 10GbE. Multimode-based 10GBase-SR is capped at 300 m on OM3 or 400 m on OM4, providing no distance margin for a link specified as approximately 400 meters. Singlemode also provides long-term scalability for future bandwidth upgrades on campus backbone runs.
Standard 50 micron multimode (OM2) supports 10GBase-SR for only approximately 82 meters, far below the 400-meter requirement.
Laser-optimized 50 micron multimode (OM3) supports 10GBase-SR for up to 300 meters, which is insufficient for a 400-meter span.
62.5 micron multimode (OM1) supports 10GBase-SR for only approximately 33 meters, making it entirely unsuitable for this application.
Concept tested: 10GbE fiber type selection for campus inter-building distance
Source: https://standards.ieee.org/ieee/802.3ae/1397/
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