Hi-Rise Building Fiber Suggestions

Wed Feb 26 04:45:47 UTC 2020

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> On Feb 25, 2020, at 18:34, Norman Jester <nj at jester.mx> wrote:
> 
> I’m in the process of choosing hardware
> for a 30 story building. If anyone has experience with this I’d appreciate any tips.
> 
> There are two fiber pairs running up the building riser. I need to put a POE switch on each floor using this fiber. 

In my experience with retrofitting existing structures, if you have access to the riser at each floor as it sounds like you do, you would typically drop in a new duct,  blow micro duct through it with a branch for each floor, have an MDF  or two In a utility spaces  and them you have the ability to reconfigure  the fiber as necessary to meet your present and future needs. 

You didn’t specify if the existing fiber is single or multi-mode however it is unlikely that the was enough slack built into two fiber runs to make 30 additional splices so that approach seems dubious as a premise.

As you correctly surmise daisy chaining 30 switches is not an advisable network design practice.

> The idea is to cut the fiber at each floor and insert a switch and daisy chain the switches together using one pair, and using the other pair as the failover side of the ring going back to the source so if one device fails it doesn’t take the whole string down.
> 
> The problem here is how many switches can be strung together and I would not try more than 3 to 5. This is not something I typically do (stacking switches). I have fears of STP and/or RSTP issue stacking past Ethernet switch to switch limits (if they still exist??)
> 
> Is there a device with a similar protocol as the old 3com (now HP IDF) stacking capability via fiber? 
> 
> I’d like to use something inexpensive as its to power ubiquiti wifi on each floor.  Ideally if you know something I don’t about ubiquiti switches that can do this I’d appreciate knowing.
> 
> Norman
> 
> 