[Stryker06]

In a medium-sized High-school, what type of cable/fibre would be a wise choice to use? we're talking about a distance of approx 160 metres here from front end of the high school to the far end.
Tips appreciated.

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Ah! A wiring question! I can answer that!

Actually, the answer is "We need more information before we can help you."

To start with, you said school. How many devices are you planning on connecting? One for each department (maybe up to a dozen)? One for each classroom, lab, and office (maybe up to a hundred)? One for each warm body in the building (several thousand)?
Next, what is your budget? Cat5e 4-pair unshielded cable is dirt cheap, but can't be pushed very fast over 100M. On the other hand, fiberoptic cable can handle any data rate you are likely to need for the next decade, but somebody has to pay for it.....

[SandyJax]

Ah! A wiring question! I can answer that!

Actually, the answer is "We need more information before we can help you."

To start with, you said school. How many devices are you planning on connecting? One for each department (maybe up to a dozen)? One for each classroom, lab, and office (maybe up to a hundred)? One for each warm body in the building (several thousand)?
Next, what is your budget? Cat5e 4-pair unshielded cable is dirt cheap, but can't be pushed very fast over 100M. On the other hand, fiberoptic cable can handle any data rate you are likely to need for the next decade, but somebody has to pay for it.....

[Stryker06]

Actually, the length is about 240m and the width is approx 130m I would say. Budget isn't too much of an issue at the moment. I wanna come up with a decent Network plan first, then we'll see if it's feasible.
There are 38 rooms/facilities that'll need network access. Some rooms, all classrooms among others, have 4 termination points, and about 8 rooms have 20 termnination points. The PoP and the server oom(Main Distribution Facility) are quite far apart. The Pop is right at the front end, and the MDF at the far end. I was thinking of having a few other rooms as IDF(Intermediate Distribution Facility).
I'd like quite a fast network connection, i'd hoping you can figure a way out with me to calculate the bandwidth. I suppose it'll be quite a lot. I was also thinking a long the lines of wavelength division multiplexing or even dwdm.
The rooms that'll need network acces is spread over two levels. ground level and first level. most rooms are on the ground level but most classrooms and teacher study rooms are on the first.
not too sure about hardware yet. routers and switches mainly is suppose.
please give me your further suggestions, and i'll do some more research and post later.

[SandyJax]

"I'd like quite a fast network connection, i'd hoping you can figure a way out with me to calculate the bandwidth."

Uh, bandwidth calculation is trivial. "Data rate for one node" times "number of nodes". You need to know these numbers first. Nothing else can be done, until you find out what each PC will be used for.
Mindless surfing? 10Mb/sec Ethernet is fine, because the web is slower than that, anyway. On the other hand, if you have (making up numbers) 50 students all turning in essays to the department server at once to meet a deadline, the link from hub/switch to server will have to be 1Gb/sec or faster, to avoid trouble.
If you can assume that there is two general types of traffic ("inside the department" and "crossing department boundaries"), then what you really need is a high-speed LAN for each department, with each department connected by a high-speed link, and the whole mess connected to the 'net.
Thus, you can break up a big problem "We need a network for our school" into several smaller problems "We need a network for the Language Department with yadda-1 specs", "We need a network for the Math Department with yadda-2 specs", etc. It is possible that the cooking classroom will not need as fast a link as the physics lab.

[Stryker06]

On the ground floor there are the following areas - Cafeteria, Reception, Child Care, 4 gymnasiums, auditorium, drama room, choral room, band room and a small administration room. all these rooms/areas have 4 termination points. all these areas should have access to the server that'll have like a staff drive where teachers can upload and download files from and to. also internet access should be available in all these areas. it's not considered that students will be using a computer in any of these areas.
keyboard lab, medial centre, special intruction and science lab have 20 termination points. each of these rooms will have 2 teachers computers and 10 students computers. internet access required. i'm not too considered bout "noise" here, but a good performing network would be the idea.

1st floor, there are 2 resource rooms(20 term points), 2 teacher studyroom rooms(20 term points) and 16 classrooms(4 term points each). and all should be able to go online.
i will need 3 subnets/vlans for administrators, 12 for students and 5 for teachers. 50 hosts per vlan to avoid too much congestion, though 50 hosts is probably a bit much. i'm really not looking for any noise on this network(s). it should be as smooth as possible.

i was thinking of using baseband on the ground floor and broadband in the classrooms coz students may sending as you said essays simultaneously to the server. students should also be able to download handouts and resources from the server but usually only weekly as it's also handed out in class. so for students who missed lectures.

i'm not sure bout the type of internet connection. Doesn't have to be something like T1, but perhaps something like 1 or 2 mbps over ADSL, and that would be covering the whole school. so the internet would be the same speed in every classroom or other area.
I'd like to have a high-speed LAN on the first floor, and a reasonably fast LAN on the ground floor.