Determining the proper physical media

[carlsonk]

Physical media come in two broad categories: conducted and radiated. Within these broad categories are many different physical implementations. Some professionals indicate that once you have determined your basic media---wiring, fiber optic cabling, etc.---the decision on the specific implementation is based on required bandwidth and distance.

I'm wondering what criteria professionals use to choose between the broad categories. When to cost and security factor into the equation? Do the higher level OSI layers have much of an impact on the choice of a physical media?

Kris Carlson

 

[jimbopalmer]

some knee jerk reactions from the (ethernet) trenches:

Never wire copper between buildings, it is quick and easy and you will hate yourself forever (my largest building still on 10 meg is copper, so is my second largest; both the times lightning took out my server it hit another building connected by copper) "Forever" is a long time, so buy the best copper that is currently available

Fiber is always the first to go to any new speeds, install twice as much as you need, the main cost is the labor anyways shorter than two football fields go multimode, more than a mile go single mode, so far I have no horizontal runs in the middle, but I went multi mode straight down 1240 feet

I tend to use wireles as redundancy and to do the impossible, if it was easy some other way, do it some other way I tried to remain child-like, all I acheived was childish.