I am working on a school project that involves creating fully
networked environment for two rooms; each room must accommodate for 16
Personal Computers (PCs) and 16 Laptops.

When we started this project half the class was to do a UTP/STP
installation, and the other half do a fiber optics installation. Our
budget for all materials including labour is $10,000 Canadian.

It has come to my attention that a group doing Fiber has been able to
completely price out both rooms while staying under the $10,000 budget
(all Fiber using groups didnt need to worry about the budget because
the instructor told them to just justify the costs), and I want to
know how they did it.

So I need resources to retailers selling fiber switches, PC network
cards, Fiber PCMCIA cards, and Fiber Cabling and the tools needed to
test and terminate the cabling properly.

Its possible that they may be using used equipment, so I will also
take links for people selling used equipment. Its very important that
the links to the fiber switches and other products be the cheapest you
can find and also have enough ports for expansion.

One thing the other group told me is that their minimum speeds are
twice the speed of UTP or STP, so that means they have at least 2
gigabits of bandwidth.

I dont need you to price out a network for me, just get me links to
the lowest possible equipment you can find (the more varied the links
are, the better).

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Clarification of Question by jeremycarr-ga on 10 Apr 2005 12:12 PDT

I need to know how the group was able to have such a cheap fiber
installation because our oral presentations are this wednesday and in
my report I list possible solutions, one of them being Fiber.

My big argument against Fiber is its large cost, and if they not only
show that cost isnt much of an issue, but even go under budget it
doesnt look too great for my group. Its hard to sell your instructors
on your plan when the previous group completely contradicts all of
your statements on a Fiber based network.