Meter for meter, single-mode fiber costs less, contrary to popular opinion, he adds. Single-mode fiber actually costs about a third the cost of its multimode cousin, says Charuk. The overall cost of single-mode systems is far more costly than multimode fiber, Charuk says, but that's due largely to the optical electronics, and lasers, which run several thousand dollars each. If users are intent on deploying a small backbone of less than 500 meters, multi-mode fiber is the most likely choice, Charuk says. But vixels are limited to use in small multi-mode fiber backbones.
Most users are comfortable with multimode and know how to use it.
You want to lay cable once. Customers usually deploy a half to a third of the cable as single-mode fiber, he adds. The cost involved adding those fibers is small compared to the cost of recabling. Network topology Berk-Tek's Bill Charuk believes that traditional star topology configurations may be the best network design for gigabit Ethernet MANs, largely because they will help reduce maintenance costs. But Packet Engines' Brian MacLeod is a proponent of concentric rings as the design for any gigabit Ethernet MAN backbone.