Fiber vs. Copper For Short Lengths and Transceiver Reliability

Notice: Page may contain affiliate links for which we may earn a small commission through services like Amazon Affiliates or Skimlinks.

NTL1991

New Member
Aug 20, 2018
11
0
1
Rhode Island, USA
I'm trying to figure out if there are any benefits of going with Fiber over Copper for short runs, for example, to connect servers to a switch in the same rack, with all else being equal.

A Gigabit connection is a Gigabit connection, no matter what kind of media you're using. But would latency be noticeably different using one over the other?

My firewall (ASA5520) is currently connected to my switch using 1Gig SFPs and MM Fiber. I could also connect using Copper, and I could even do an EtherChannel of 4x 1Gig Copper instead, which would give me redundancy if one or more ports fail. This is not an option with fiber. If an SFP transceiver fails (How common is this?) then I'd lose all internet and VPN connectivity on my network.

Should I be concerned about reliability, and switch to a copper EtherChannel, or stick with the Fiber link that's already there? Same for my ESXi server. Any benefit in upgrading to an SFP NIC and running Fiber to the switch?

-Nick
 

Stril

Member
Sep 26, 2017
191
12
18
41
Hi!

I do not see much benefit on using fiber inside a rack if you do not have any "high-power-high-current"-cables inside your rack.

+ Fiber is thinner
+ Fiber does not have any problems with shielding (copper doesn't inside a rack, too)
- Fiber is harder to handle, clean, control

--> Use DACs instead of fiber :)