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Network Engineer’s Guide to Servers: Types, Uses, Network Design and More

In this guide, we’re going to demystify one of the most elementary components of any enterprise network – servers.

What Is a Server?

A server is a computer program or device that provides a service to another computer program and its user, also known as the client. The term server can be used to describe both the hardware typically used to build server devices, and the operating-system software that delivers the service to the clients.

Although servers are designed to carry out a specific function, they’re not that different from other computers. They’re usually built with the same components (except for the operating system (OS) software, which will usually be function-specific).

Server hardware components include the following.

Motherboard

Central processing unit (CPU) – most servers use X86/X64 CPUs

Random Access Memory (RAM)

Disk space

Server OS software can include the following.

Windows

Linux

Red Hat Enterprise

Unix

macOS

As you can see, most of what makes up a server is identical to the desktop or laptop you may be using to read this article.

What’s The Difference Between a Physical and a Virtual Server?

We live in an age of wonder, where rapid technological advances are beginning to outstrip our ability to understand them. So, it’s kind of reassuring that a “virtual” server relies on the same set of components listed above and plugs into the wall socket just like any other computer.

The main difference between a physical and a virtual server comes down to who owns the server and what they’re using it for.

Think of a piece of server OS software as a commuter, who is looking to get from one location to another (to fulfill their function and provide their service).

We could build our commuter a motorbike – designed just for them – to transport them to where they want to go, which is how a physical server works.

Or we could buy a train ticket. There’s room enough for them alongside the other commuters, and if our commuter wants privacy and a good seat, we could go as far as booking a private compartment.

In this analogy, the train is a virtual server. Owned and maintained by larger corporations, our ticket allows us the functions of having our own server, without the need for a physical device of our own – which is the “virtual” part. 

Public and private cloud services are the equivalent of the general seating or private compartment on the train – although, thankfully, if you choose to go public, your cloud-based services are unlikely to include a guy manspreading while eating a tuna sandwich.

Which Server Deployment Do I Need?

That’s the trillion-dollar question – whole empires have risen and fallen attempting to provide the answer. To help you figure out what you need, we’ve summarized the three most common server deployment methods.

Physical Server On-Premise

Your machines, running your software, installed at your location. For businesses with multiple locations, the corporate headquarters is typically the preferred spot. On some occasions, though, distribution centers or satellite offices can provide geographical advantages, such as more diverse network routing options or better overall proximity to reduce latency across the wide area network (WAN).

Pros

Your internal IT team is in complete control. Your team can customize and upgrade the servers, according to changing business needs. Less downtime, support tickets, and general frustration, if you set things up properly.

Your server budget is under control. If you’ve built it, you own it. No stealth taxes, inflationary price hikes, or sneaky tiered plans that charge you over the odds when your traffic spikes.

Offline working remains an option. If your servers are on the same site as your staff, it’s possible to keep business-critical applications running on the local area network (LAN), even in the event of an internet outage. For some businesses, this is a game changer.

Cons

Equipment costs. You’ll have to buy and build your servers – or pay someone to do it.

Specialist IT staffing costs. All that extra control is only a blessing if you have the in-house tech talent to pull it off. You’ll need skilled staff to manage and maintain your servers – or (again) pay someone else to do it.

Energy supply costs. Your electricity bill is going to skyrocket (again). You’ll also need a generator, and battery backup. Not to mention sufficient AC.

HVAC costs. Too cold? Static electricity, condensation, and water damage. Too hot? Your CPU’s going to melt. Just right? Somewhere between 68 and 71°F. All day long. Did we mention this is expensive?

Security and maintenance costs. Assuming you have the physical space to do this, you still have to carefully manage access to the servers – otherwise you’re leaving yourself open to a whole new world of security risks, on top of your usual network security threats.

Your internal IT team is in complete control. Redundancy, support, and more are in your team’s control. If you set up your infrastructure with a single point of failure or with obsolete hardware, you’re in the driver’s seat to deal with issues that arise.

Physical Server in a Data Center (a.k.a. colocation)

Your machines, running your software, in a custom-built, rented data center space and “colocated” with other similar machines of other companies. Colocation allows businesses with data-heavy requirements to manage complicated network architecture without the necessity of owning their own data centers.

Pros

Stay in control of your servers. You’re still holding all the cards when it comes to building, customizing, and maintaining your servers – though you’ll need to set up a “smart hands” or a “remote hands” solution, to make sure data-center staff can resolve problems with your servers on-site. 

Location, location, location. You can optimize your network to reduce latency and provide routing diversity, by choosing the data center whose location most closely matches your needs.

Weapons-grade security. You’d struggle to match data-center standards of security at your own location – there’s widely adopted standardization models such as TIA-942 certification that offer tiered levels of additional protection, in accordance with zero-trust network philosophies.

Hardened power plant and industrial HVAC as standard. That’s what you’re paying for, right? Let the data center handle the additional energy and HVAC requirements (as well as the procurement, maintenance, and monitoring required to run these functions at your own site).

Cons

CapEx costs. Although you won’t be paying for HVAC, the initial server build costs are still substantial.

OpEx costs. Data centers offer their facilities at a significant mark-up, and you’ll be paying higher rates for their power than you would for your own. Knowing how to calculate your colocation power needs is essential.

No internet? No servers. You won’t be able to access your servers – or any of the associated functions – without a dedicated internet connection, so you’ll need to pay for connectivity in addition.

No instant fixes. The downside of all that extra security is the time and effort required to access and modify your server installation at the data center.

Virtual Server Installed in the Cloud

Their machines (meaning your cloud provider - AWS, GCP, Azure, etc.), running their software, in their location.

Pros

No CapEx required –no need to purchase any equipment.

No maintenance means no additional burden or responsibilities for your in-house IT team.

No additional power hardening, HVAC, or adaptation of location required.

Easy to upgrade server storage and performance. Just get in touch with your cloud-service provider and they’ll action the upgrade on your behalf.

Cloud provider app ecosystem. You can leverage your cloud provider’s application ecosystem to get all sorts of cool software running on your servers in a snap.

Cons

Lack of control. When you’re taking a ride on someone else’s train (server), you’ve got no input or visibility into what happens to the physical equipment used.

Vulnerable to an even wider range of points of failure. Your data’s getting routed wherever your cloud-service provider chooses. Extra care needs to be taken to ensure redundancy and uptime.

Latency is likely. You’ll have less choice over which data centers are used, so any extra geographical distance involved as a result is likely to impact performance.

Cost creep. At small scale, given the lack of initial capex and low per-unit entry pricing, cloud servers are cheaper than on-prem / colocated server deployments. However, as the scale of your deployment increases, costs grown nonlinearly, oftentimes significantly eclipsing the costs of physical server deployments. Andreessen Horowitz wrote a good piece on this phenomenon in 2021.

Different Types of Servers

Here are 10 common functions that a server provides in a business network environment.

AD (Active Directory Server)

A database of users, and the services they’re authorized to access.

DC (Domain Controller Server)

Works in conjunction with the AD server to authenticate domain users, acting as a gatekeeper.

File Server

Usually, a server with ample disk storage space, used to share resources too big for email between users on the same domain or LAN. 

Exchange (mail) Server

The server equivalent of the post office (or the old telephone exchange and operator), this server acts as a waystation for routing emails.

Print Server

Used to organize print requests from multiple users into a centralized print queue.

FTP (File Transfer Protocol)

Like a file server, FTP servers are used to store and share large files. However, FTP is an internet-based protocol, and requires connectivity to function, unlike file servers which operate within the LAN.

Web Server

Responds to HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) client requests by storing, processing, and delivering website content and web pages to users.

DNS (Domain Name System) Server

DNS is used to translate IP addresses (an unwieldy string of numbers) into friendlier-looking URLs and back again.

APP (Application) Server

Used to deliver business critical applications on the LAN (as opposed to SaaS applications).

DBS (Database) Server

Used to provide business databases on the local network – popular instances include SQL, Oracle, and dBASE.

Servers and Network Design

So, what’s the best way to incorporate your servers into your network? There are a few handy principles that will help guide your network design decisions.

Deploy your servers as close as physically possible to your users.

If your users are spread out, then look at distributing the network architecture and server deployment to suit.

Weigh up your usage of application and database servers – would SaaS alternatives provide a more effective network design?

Which servers will lead to network outages, should they fail? Identify any single points of failure, and implement redundancy and backup options accordingly. Then test your backups, regularly.

Servers and Security

Even if you’re running physical servers at your own location, it’s still difficult to fully isolate your servers from the internet and external security risks.

There are some bare minimum, best-practice recommendations we can make to help you sleep a little easier.

Keep all server installations safely behind a perimeter security firewall.

Network administrators should be the only users accessing the servers.

Incorporate multi-factor authentication for server access

Install endpoint protection, adding an additional layer of security for every server.

Use Data At Rest Encryption (DARE) to make sure all data remains encrypted, even when it’s not being transmitted.

Regular (preferably nightly) backups to a secondary site, isolated with an air gap.

Choosing the right server deployment, location, and installation type for your business network can be challenging – especially without the right data. Using Lightyear’s telecom procurement operating system, you can easily configure and procure internet connectivity to your server sites (or direct cloud connectivity if that’s your desire), OR even configure and procure an entire data center space.

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Operating a Dark Fiber Network: Use Cases, Complexity, Cost vs. Lit Fiber

Are you afraid of the dark? There’s no need because Lightyear’s here to shine a light on dark- fiber network connectivity.

If you’re investigating high-speed fiber options and looking for greater bandwidth and lower latency to improve the performance of your applications and services, then dark fiber or lit fiber could be the silver bullet. In this post, we’ll help you think through considerations on when to go with dark fiber.

What Is Dark Fiber?

Fiber-optic cables carry pulses of light which communicate data. So, if you’re procuring a dark-fiber line, you’re basically looking to rent an unused (or “dark”) set of fiber lines, without any of the additional transmitters usually included. To use technical parlance (according to the OSI model used to describe telecoms infrastructure), dark fiber is an unlit, layer-1 service.

Lit fiber is an adjacent service to dark fiber. With a lit-fiber service, the customer rents a dedicated fiber line, along with all the transmission equipment, from the service provider (billing for lit fiber services is also slightly different, with the cost increasing depending on tiered bandwidth usage).

At this point, you might be wondering why there’s all this fiber lying around unused, anyway? Surely, it’s expensive to lay this stuff in the first place?

It’s a valid question, and there are two main reasons.

Technological improvements. When the Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers (ILECs) first started laying down fiber, back in the late 80s/early 90s, a single fiber channel could transmit data at around 2.5 Gbps. Then the lab geeks figured out they could use Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) to send multiple data streams down a single channel. Multiple streams = more bandwidth. How much more? Well, you can squeeze 32 Tbs down one channel now, which is about 12,800 times more data. So, modern fiber-optic usage leaves plenty of spare fiber for everyone.

Long-term planners laid extra capacity to save on future costs. Labor and project management makes up much of the cost of a fiber install. Those crazy 20th century ILECs figured they’d save a few bucks and installed additional fiber, far more than their requirements at the time – not anticipating the huge efficiencies DWDM would bring.

So, what’s the net result of these two factors? Depending on your geographic location, there could be plenty of dark fiber going unused that your service provider would be more than happy to lease to you.

Who Uses Dark Fiber?

Lots of folk. We’ve seen dark fiber deployed in many ways by a range of businesses who tend to have the following things in common.

Multiple, well-established static locations

A qualified team of in-house transport technicians capable of lighting a fiber network

A strong need for a secure, low latency network, with scalable network connections

These are some common users of dark-fiber networks.

Wireless Internet Service Providers (WISPs). Cellular providers often use a dark-fiber network to connect their cell towers to the data center. They’ll install and manage their own Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) equipment, configured either as a point-to-point service or as an any-to-any topology, to best suit local requirements.

Municipalities. Critical infrastructure such as police stations, fire departments, and hospitals needs to be connected with as much security, reliability, and permanence as possible, making dark-fiber networks a great fit for public services.

Schools and colleges. Large, multi-campus institutions like to connect their locations securely, and enjoy the level of control a dark-fiber network provides.

Connecting two data centers. More of a business need than a use case or typical user – we’re often contacted by companies that, for one reason or another, want dark fiber to run between their data centers. Again, as a secure, predictable low-latency solution, it’s a useful addition to a wide area network (WAN).

Where Can I Get Dark Fiber?

The nearer your location to a major city, the greater the chance that dark-fiber services are available to you. There are fiber lines running between the major cities, too.Outside of major cities and their connective infrastructure, it becomes trickier for carriers to make a business case for fiber installations. As we mentioned previously, the CapEx and project management costs make it harder to recoup fiber network investment from major population centers.

Even if your location is close to a major fiber line, it’s by no means a given that you can tap directly into their line to build your dark-fiber network. Connections to a fiber line are made via splice points – and most carriers have no desire to create additional splices on the line.

Once you know where the splice points are, you can work out whether a service provider is able to offer you a fiber buildout to your locations. Think of splice points as highway onramps – even though your house might be underneath the flyover, you could still have several miles to drive before you can merge onto the highway.

To determine whether a service provider is able to offer you dark fiber, you’d work with the same set of culprits you’d deal with for lit fiber service (Zayo, Crown Castle, Lumen, and the like) and go through similar bidding processes (sounds fun, right?).

What Kind of Contracts Are Available for Dark Fiber?

If you find a carrier that owns fiber between the locations you’re looking to connect, the most common kind of dark-fiber agreement is an Indefeasible Right of Use (IRU) lease. These are usually long-term leases – typically between 20 and 30 years.

If that’s more of a bind than you’re looking for, it’s worth investigating whether potential vendors would be willing to offer an International Private Leased Circuit (IPLC). As the name suggests, IPLCs are designed for international networks, and offer shorter terms – some IPLCs even offer monthly rolling contracts. 

One disadvantage of IPLCs, however, is the prohibition of subletting – you can’t rent the dark fiber out as if it was your own, which removes the possibility of offsetting the costs of your network.

If you’re looking for a lit-fiber deal, with leased fiber transmitters providing DWDM services, a term length of between three and five years is more commonplace. The costs involved for the provider are subject to change over time, so it makes more financial sense for them to ensure they can adjust equipment rental costs at more regular intervals.

Which Should I Choose – Dark Fiber or Lit Fiber?

When it comes to performance metrics, there’s little difference between these two dedicated internet services. The factors to be considered are scalability, security, and cost.

Scalability. Dark fiber isn’t infinitely scalable, due to the physics involved and the mounting cost of equipment, but it's not that far off! Also, any upgrades you carry out on your existing bandwidth capabilities are entirely your own business – no need to contact the carrier, and there are no additional monthly costs.

Lit fiber upgrades will require some negotiation with the service provider, who is likely to charge you a tiered rate according to your bandwidth requirements.

Security. Neither dark fiber nor lit fiber services provide any visibility into traffic through that part of the network – any security provision must take place after the fiber hands off to the customer premises equipment (CPE).

Cost. When comparing like-for-like network locations and provision, lit-fiber services are generally more expensive. The provider is obviously going to charge more for their leased equipment and technicians than you’d pay if you were procuring these things in-house.

However, the relatively lower cost of dark fiber is only available for customers with considerable connectivity needs – you’ll need to have fairly hefty throughput requirements to justify the outlay, although there’s often wildly unpredictable regional variations in how much providers charge for dark fiber. To run a dark fiber network, you'll need to invest in hardware as well as smart hands to run your network and deal with issues, so there is a breakeven bandwidth point where this makes sense.

Subletting fibers on your dark-fiber network can be a handy way to offset the expense of this long-term investment – although this comes with its own set of legal and contractual hassles and responsibilities with which not every business is prepared to engage.

There are several other variables to consider when gauging dark-fiber costs. These include distance from the fiber splice point, and the links used to reach the fiber line, as well as the distance between your connected locations.

This last cost can quickly mount up, depending on the range of your transmitters – should your transmitter only be effective for up to 500 miles, and your locations are several thousand miles apart, then you’ll need to install and maintain repeaters every 500 miles, increasing your project management and labor costs.

While this list of pros and cons will help you get a sense of what both these services can offer, it might not be so simple to apply this knowledge to the complexities of your business and connectivity procurement needs.

The Lightyear telecom operating system is designed to solve problems like these. With ease, you can configure a dark fiber or lit fiber network and compare options digitally, or arrange a real-time meeting to discuss your options with an experienced industry professional.

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How ISP Managed Routers and Managed Firewalls Really Work

Effective outsourcing is an essential business skill. But when vendors expand horizontally to provide supplementary services, it can be difficult to figure out your best bet for taking on the jobs that you don’t want to do.

Managing firewalls and routers are a perfect example. Some companies handle all of that in-house, with a fully tooled-up IT department. Others prefer to hand it off to a dedicated Managed Service Provider (MSP), a company that makes its dough looking after the IT needs of SMEs.

Now Internet Service Providers are looking for some of that action, and many major ISPs are offering ISP Managed services, the most common of which are to manage your firewalls or routers.

So, which option gives your business the best result? Read on and find out.

ISP vs MSP – What’s the Difference? 

To clarify just in case you’ve not met these acronyms in the wild web world – traditionally these are quite different services. You wouldn’t expect an MSP to be responsible for providing your internet connection – these guys are there to make sure your servers, routers, VPNs, and so on, all work correctly.

They typically provide 24/7 IT support, monitoring, and maintenance for a fixed fee, and may offer vendor management, talking to your ISP and others on your behalf.

In line with their more specialized approach, they’ll give you three main options for managed services, with a great deal of flexibility if you want to tailor your package. You can have the following.

MSP Managed with zero customer involvement

MSP Managed with "view-only" customer involvement (if you want to stay in the loop)

MSP Managed in collaboration, effectively co-managing with the customer.

ISP Managed services tend to be a less flexible, and typically come in two flavors.

ISP Managed with zero customer involvement

ISP Managed with "view-only" customer involvement.

Managed routers and managed firewalls have become standard add-ons for quite a few of the major ISPs looking to expand into this area, as they're highly relevant services to your internet connectivity itself. But why should you let your ISP run your IT department?

Good Reasons to Have an ISP-Managed Firewall or Router

IT’s not your thing. Between you and your team, you understand IT enough to know that properly managed firewalls and routers are essential to your business. Beyond that, your skills only extend as far as turning it off and on. 

Your ISP can make it all go away. They will take care of the following.

Order, install, and maintain all or most of your IT equipment

Replace anything that breaks

Manage firewall settings and protocols from their end, usually without your input

Can’t afford your own IT team or an MSP. An in-house IT team is expensive, but so is an MSP, as MSPs provide lots of services beyond pure router and firewall management. If you just want to ensure your firewalls / routers are operational and have support but not much more, an ISP-managed solution may be your best bet.

Not set up for Capital Expenditure (capex) purchasing. Capex doesn’t suit everyone’s cash flow and bottom line. Depending on your business needs and methodology, renting managed routers from your ISP as an operational expenditure (opex) might give you the flexibility and agility your business model warrants.

You love your ISP. Not that you’d take their add-ons for sentimental reasons – maybe they just do a really good job with other services they provide, and you trust them to deliver managed firewalls and routers to the same standard. Often, having “one hand to shake” for many different services can save you time, frustration, and annoying phone calls.

Good Reasons NOT to Have an ISP-Managed Firewall or Router

You already have in-house IT. Router issues are inevitable. Any IT team worth its salt should be ready, willing, and able to handle these problems in the time it usually takes to shout down the corridor – rather than waiting for your ISP’s call-out team. 

You already have an MSP. You may already be contracted with a managed service provider, but you haven’t yet given them the keys to your firewall and routers.

Under these circumstances, your MSP is going to be your best bet. They’ll give you a faster response and repair time than your ISP, and they have a bird’s-eye view of your IT needs, so they can spot any knock-on effects from problems with your routers or firewalls. 

Keeping your costs flexible. ISPs are by no means the final word on rented equipment. You can lease routers on a monthly basis without getting your ISP involved (often with a $0 payout option at the end of the lease, too).

If you’re using in-house IT or MSP services, you can also choose at any time to take those routers as a capex purchase (just go ahead and buy them!). Your ISP, on the other hand, would much rather keep you on a monthly rental fee until the end of time, by which point you’ve paid a king’s ransom for your routers. It may be worth running through the buy vs. rent math on your own if costs are paramount to you, as many ISPs will price their service to breakeven in just a few months.

You haven’t even got to first base with your ISP yet. Sure, you can manage my firewall! What’s your name again? 

Mostly, ISPs are pretty good at network and network equipment maintenance.

Mostly. 

You probably don’t want to just assume that your ISP can handle one of the most important elements in your IT setup. Blind Faith was a pretty good band, but it’s a terrible business strategy. If you guys are new to each other, maybe ride around the block and go over a few bumps together first.

In Our Experience… 

More often than not, your ISP’s going to do a decent job of managing your equipment. You’ll have basic everyday problems solved without too much friction.

However, we'd note that ISP managed services can be pricey, and we recommend running the simple math of how many months it takes to breakeven on using an ISP-managed service vs. buying the equipment yourself and managing it internally (or using your MSP if you use one). Managing a router or firewall isn't too complicated most of the time, so paying $100+ per month per device may not be worthwhile. If you have in-house IT that is capable, or an MSP being paid for services of this sort, we'd almost never paying for the ISP-managed service.

If you don't have capable in-house IT or an MSP you trust, and the costs are not worrisome, then ISP-managed services may be a solid option.

If you’re still unsure about whether to entrust your own team, an MSP, or an ISP with your managed firewalls and routers, that’s ok. These guidelines don’t cover every use case and may not match your experiences or your current scenario. Sometimes it’s straightforward, other times, not so much.

When you use Lightyear, we can quote out the costs of managed firewalls or managed routers along with your internet connection and ensure that you are thinking through the decision properly.

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Internet / WAN Circuit Handoff Guide: Demarc, MPOE, MDF, and more!

The world of dedicated internet and WAN circuits is painfully frustrating, and this goes well beyond quoting and contracting. The dedicated internet access implementation process is rarely straightforward. One frustrating flashpoint we’ve seen, time and again, is conflicting expectations around carrier fiber circuit handoffs – the place where their circuit becomes your circuit.

To the uninitiated, a technical conversation about circuit handoff can feel like you’re swimming in alphabet soup, so we’ve compiled a handy glossary to get you up to speed.

Demarc (demarcation point) is the official end point of your service provider’s responsibilities. Any equipment or cabling after the demarc is no longer their problem.

MPOE (Minimum Point of Entry) refers to the physical entry point where the telecommunications cabling enters the customer property. In most cases, the MPOE will be installed directly into the building’s main telephone room.

MDF (Main Distribution Frame) is often used interchangeably with MPOE in instances where both points are in the main telephone room. Connectivity is distributed from here to all points of the building.

Extended Demarc is a network design feature used when the customer’s telecoms equipment is located somewhere other than the main telephone room. This occurs most frequently in multi-tenant buildings, where each tenant is obliged to make their own connectivity arrangements and contracts.

An IDF, or Intermediate Distribution Frame, is used in situations where the network distribution needs can’t be met by a single MDF. In plain terms, this would usually involve an MDF on the ground floor, where the MPOE is (i.e., where the cable enters the building). The rooms directly above the MDF would house as many IDFs, or additional telephone rooms as necessary. So, one MDF, with supplementary IDFs extending distribution across the property.

An SFP (small form-factor pluggable) is an interface that connects networking equipment (such as a switch, router, or network card) to fiber or copper cabling. They’re tiny, hot-pluggable (so, no need to shut things down when installing), use minimal power, and play nicely with pretty much any fiber or copper network cabling.

Patch cable/cord/lead –these electrical or optical cables are used to connect or “patch” one device to another for signal routing. These can connect different types of devices, too, e.g., a switch to a computer or a router.

SC Fiber-Optic Connector. This square (or subscriber) connector can usually be found hanging off the end of your patch cord, and is designed to…you guessed it, connect to fiber-optic cables.

LC Fiber-Optic Connector. The SC’s smaller, younger brother, LC connectors are rapidly gaining popularity. Their slimmer profile makes them physically easier to use in more densely populated racks and panels.

The RJ-45 will be familiar to anyone who was plugging in a computer before 2008 – it’s the good old ethernet data connector.

Physical Handoff Types

To make sure you have the right equipment at your end for the handoff, it’s essential to know what kind of circuit you’re connecting. The three most common physical handoff types are electrical, single-mode fiber, or multi-mode fiber. Your choice of handoff type is often dictated by your throughput requirements, as well as the physical distances involved in your network layout.

We should mention that the numbers we’re throwing around here are in keeping with the “standard-issue” expectations. Should you choose to splash out for specialized transceivers, you can expect significant improvements in your performance metrics.

Electrical

Speed – options include 10, 100, or 1,000 Mbps (not all carriers can provide 1,000 Mbps).

Cabling – electrical handoffs are provided from CAT5 or CAT6 copper cabling, connected with RJ-45.

Distance – signal loss becomes noticeable after approximately 328 feet (100m).

Multi-mode Fiber (MMF)

Speed – options include 1, 10, 40, or 100 Gbps (maximum speeds dependent on the fiber core size and the SFP used).

Cabling – the different MMF cable types (OM1 to OM5) offer different levels of performance based on their core size and other characteristics. They’re connected using either LC or SC connectors.

Distance – With throughput of 1 to 10 Gbps, optimal performance can be expected over distances of 1,800 feet (100m). For higher rates of throughput (40 Gbps or above), distance is reduced to 500 feet (150m) or less.

Single-mode Fiber (SMF)

Speed – 1 or 10 Gbps are the most procured speeds, though others are available.

Cabling – Usually a 9/125 cable, with a 1550 or 1310 nm wavelength. Again, LC or SC connectors are used.

Distance – single-mode fiber fares are much better than multimode over distance – in MMF, multiple light sources are operating simultaneously, which gets messier the further it goes, increasing attenuation. 

For 1 Gbps throughput with 1310 nm, SMF’s optimal distance is 3.1 miles (5km) or less. For 10 Gbps with 1310 nm, the distance is increased to 6.2 miles (10 km).

Other Information You’ll Need for Handoff

To make sure your install is as smooth as possible, make sure all parties are up to speed with the following.

The address for the location

The demarc location at the property

The business hours or site access hours

Contact details for both onsite queries and technical support

The type of power available at the location.

If you need a partner who eats telecoms jargon for breakfast, Lightyears automated procurement platform and team of experienced industry professionals are here to make your internet circuit installation as pain-free as possible. Get in touch today.