Advice on POE Switches

[reflection]

Those are fantastic switches and will run forever, even in poor conditions. They have more than enough PoE budget for your application, even with the smaller power supplies. The PoE budget varies weather you use the 350W, 715W, or 1100W versions. You won't get an 800W PoE budget without the 1100W power supply, though.

The "48PF" model comes with the 1100W power supply.

 

[bwhid]

Thank you for that info. From what I understand, I need three runs to enable redundancy. If I use 6 strand wire, can I use a connector in the center location to connect the wires from Bldg3 to Bldg1, and in that way only run 2 wires? Will I lose a lot of speed if I use a connector instead of one long run? The total distance would be 435 feet.

Bldg3 ==> 180 feet (10 feet outside) ==> Bldg2 255 feet (30 feet outside) ==> Bldg3

I'm a stone cold newbie when it comes to fiber, so I may be way off base. I thought multimode was faster than single mode and OM4 would allow for greater speed if faster switches were put in later? I am using 3 Cisco switches with 10G fiber uplinks so I only need 10G for now. Singlemode looks to be cheaper for the fiber and the transceivers for the Cisco switches are only slightly more expensive if I buy them used. I understand Singlemode works for longer distances, but should I go with it here? (Again I'm just trying to understand, I want the best solution for now and long term. When someone comes after me, I want them to say we did it right!) So go with Singlemode or multimode?

Also, and I'm probably asking a very dumb question (or even another dumb question) - but here it is. Is it all worth considering buying bulk fiber and terminating the ends ourselves?

I am volunteering my work on this job and working on a tight budget, so I cannot that you enough for your knowledge and time. I am reading on different sites, but it's hard to get information on specific situations.

I'm sorry, to clarify Bldg1 ==

I am not understanding your topology and your example shows 2x building #3's. Can you clarify that?

If you have 3 buildings, are putting a switch in each building, and just need them all to be interconnected, you just need 2 fiber runs. 1 switch will be connected to the other 2.

For example: Building #1 --------> Building #2 --------> Building #3

Again, if it were me, I would use singlemode. There is no speed or (practical) distance limit on singlemode.

If you have experience with terminating fiber, by all means do it yourself. You can do a nicer job like that. If you don't, you're not going to like your results. Either sub that job out or buy pre-terminated.

Small operations don't usually do fiber because of the cost associated with installing it. Nothing beats it for a number of reasons, but it isn't cheap. Whatever you do, DO NOT install copper between the buildings.

Thank you for your reply. I'm sorry it should be as you pointed out - Building #1 ==> Building #2 ==> Building #3. Thank you for all your expertise and advice! It has been invaluable. We will end up with a powerful and flexible system thanks to the help I have received from this site.