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From: german@uxh.cso.uiuc.edu (Gregory German)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.lans
Subject: Re: 10Base-T hubs
Message-ID: <1991Apr11.044735.1221@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Date: 11 Apr 91 04:47:35 GMT
References: <1991Apr08.171237.19978@shl.com> <1582@vtserf.cc.vt.edu> <1991Apr9.181721.15560@leland.Stanford.EDU> <1593@vtserf.cc.vt.edu>
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jcrowder@GroupW.cns.vt.edu (Jeff Crowder) writes:

>In article <1991Apr9.181721.15560@leland.Stanford.EDU> morgan@Panther.Stanford.EDU (RL "Bob" Morgan) writes:
>>

Bob's case for UTP deleted.

>Uh, excuse me Bob but what the hell are you talking about?

>Of COURSE you daisy chain offices together with thinwire.  I mean, after
>all you have more than 600' to play with.  You'd have to be NUTS to
>dedicate each port on a thinwire MR to a single user!  (Unless of course
>you have bucks to throw away which I doubt many of us do.)
>We probably average 10 hosts on a segment.  Plug THAT into your
>numbers.

Money is not the only issue here.  For the most part I would claim
that it is asking for trouble to daisy-chain between offices and I
very rarely design a network that includes daisy-chains outside of
labs/classrooms.  Your users are at the mercy of the guy in the next
office and everyone on that segement MUST be on the same network.
If you want to place one person on a separate network you have to
rewire.

>And your telephone installers must be total losers if they can't handle
>coaxial cable at all.  My installers picked it up in about 5 minutes.
>The designers took a bit longer, maybe 15 minutes.  We've had the
>process integrated into the work order infrastructure for quite a
>while.

It is hard to find people are always consistant at making good cables no
matter what the type.  This is one of the most frustrating problems to
have to deal with over and over again and no cable type is immune to it.

 
>And its nit picking but I take exception to your assertion that utp is
>actually cheaper to install.  I can buy good thinwire for about 8 cents
>per foot and level 4 UTP for about 10 cents per foot.  I know you don't
>need level 4 cable for ethernet but I wouldn't install anything else
>these days.  I figure it costs me about $130 per workstation to do a
>nice job with either.  EXCEPT where I DO have hosts colocated, I can do
>the marginal unit for next to nothing with thinwire.  With UTP I have to
>go a whole extra cable and port OR buy one of those converter units.

I don't think anyone is really advocating pulling UTP.  My main reason to
use it is to avoid having to pull cable into each office right next to
unused UTP pairs.  If I have to install cable I would use thinnet, BUT
I would for the most part opt for homeruns for reliability, flexibility
and manageability.

You have a valid point about colocated hosts being a problem with 10baseT.
The converters back to coax can work, but are in the $450 range and have
some limitations.

My point is that there are other considerations than just cost and other
costs than just installation.  IMHO there is and will continue to be a
place for both technologies.

>If you want, I'll forward a some spreadsheets done for actual
>network comparisons.  

>Wow...

>Jeff Crowder
>Virginia Tech
>jcrowder@GroupW.cns.vt.edu
--
         Greg German (german@sonne.CSO.UIUC.EDU) (217-333-8293)
US Mail: Univ of Illinois, CSO, 1304 W Springfield Ave, Urbana, IL  61801
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