The FOM-8420 is a 4-port 10/100 BASE-T Ethernet Switch. The card has four RJ-45 ports and one fiber optic port. The card provides complete electrical isolation for both 10BASE-T and 100BASE-TX Ethernet Switch communications. The RJ-45’s incorporate an automatic MDI/MDIX feature, which allow users to use either a straight or crossover cable for all LAN configurations.

The card can be used in areas of high electrical noise or in and out of RF shielded enclosures. The fiber optic cable is not susceptible to interference caused by impulse noise, crosstalk, or EMI. Privacy of communications is enhanced because the fiber optic cable does not radiate any emissions.

In addition, fiber optic cable offers much longer transmission distances than copper wiring. Traditional 10BASE-T and 100BASE-TX Cat5 cabling is limited to a maximum distance of 100m, but multimode optics on the card can extend the distance to 2km, while singlemode optics can further extend the distance to 20km. A typical link consists of a FOM-8420 at one end of the network and an FOM-8020 at the server end with a duplex fiber optic cable between them. For additional ports, multipleFOM-4PSW can also be daisy-chained together.