[HN Gopher] If you get the chance, always run more extra network...
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If you get the chance, always run more extra network fiber cabling
Author : hggh
Score : 110 points
Date : 2025-03-25 13:40 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (utcc.utoronto.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (utcc.utoronto.ca)
| js2 wrote:
| > Some of the time this fiber failure is (probably) because a
| raccoon got into your machine room
|
| Or into your handhole/vault, along with her babies:
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/FiberOptics/comments/1ji3rrt/its_no...
| jonhohle wrote:
| As the article says, this is true for just about any cabling,
| copper, power, etc.
|
| I've done cabling in two houses and I've never had too much. I'm
| always finding reasons to run more to new places.
| msarrel wrote:
| Yup, always run extra everything. At least you can splice fiber
| now. And be careful of the minimum bend radius.
|
| Once, in the 90s, we were having intermittent network failures in
| our data center. I kept trying to troubleshoot it with the fluke,
| but the problem kept moving. When I pulled up the raised floor, I
| discovered that rats were eating the exterior sheath of the
| network cables. That was some fun troubleshooting!
| cyptus wrote:
| _minimum_ bend?
| zygentoma wrote:
| minimum bend _radius_
|
| A straight cable has an infinite radius, the more bend the
| smaller the radius
| hinkley wrote:
| Though if it is on or under the surface of the earth,
| "straight" will be a bend radius of around 6,370km. We
| don't make a lot of buildings that deal with this but
| transcontinental or transoceanic cables certainly do. If
| someone designed a fiber that required absolutely no bend
| in order to work you'd have to use it in buildings or dig
| much deeper holes.
|
| There was an encoding mechanism proposed about 10-15 years
| ago that used spirally polarized light to carry more
| channels, but it required the surface of the fiber to be
| polished to a much higher degree than existing cables in
| order for the light to go around bends properly.
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| If you're using the planet as your "flat surface" then
| sure. If, however, you're willing to deal with exiting
| the atmosphere at each end, you can use Real
| Straightness. But I don't know anyone running a single
| segment for that distance.
| hinkley wrote:
| I'm sure there are some microwave antennas still out
| there doing the Lord's Work. At least in the Plains
| states where hills are low and putting antennas on two of
| them gives you some extra distance. How far do microwaves
| bend over the horizon?
| aaronax wrote:
| Don't they generally do the opposite of bend over the
| horizon? Two towers that are observed (visible wavelength
| = tiny Fresnel zone) to have line-of-site can easily be
| obstructed (microwave = huge Fresnel zone).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fresnel_zone
| tejtm wrote:
| > How far do microwaves bend over the horizon?
|
| that depends on the weather and frequency among other
| things
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line-of-sight_propagation
| connicpu wrote:
| If you're going out of the atmosphere may as well skip
| the fiber and just point lasers through the vacuum of
| space directly and reap the benefits of the faster speed
| of light through a vacuum vs glass!
| scarby2 wrote:
| works great until a group of space bats get in the way.
| Etheryte wrote:
| Minimum bend radius.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| It's usually 20x the outer diameter of the cable for fiber, a
| cable with a .3 inch OD has a 6 inch minimum bend radius.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Fibers can be bent to a radius of an inch or so, that's the
| tolerated minimum bend radius.
|
| I guess you could call it "the maximum sharpness tangency" or
| something like that, but that's not the standard verbiage.
| _JamesA_ wrote:
| Have fusion splicers come down in price? Can you recommend any?
| Faaak wrote:
| You can have them second hand for ~500EUR on ebay
| tonetegeatinst wrote:
| Any advice on making sure you get a good splicer?
|
| I know a little about fiber connectors, and the different
| connector modules for speed, but I am not really sure what
| I need for a splicer for fiber.
| mmastrac wrote:
| AliExpress sells some basic ones from $300-700 CAD ($200-500
| USD) with reasonable reviews.
|
| Whatever you do, don't try using the razor-style "hand
| splicers" and adhesive splice kits. Without a splicer that
| has a scope, you're just making bets each time that are
| difficult to test.
|
| I've learned the hard way that it's just not worth it unless
| you can _see_ what you're working on.
| tw_wankette wrote:
| For Multimode, they now make splices where you jam the two
| cleaved ends into the splice. It costs about $5 per splice.
| whycome wrote:
| Your typical Rodent Accelerated Transmission Signal And System
| Suppression
| liotier wrote:
| > Yup, always run extra everything
|
| Cables ain't free, duct capacity is finite and duct rental from
| the local incumbent is costly too... Please calculate the
| financial optimum of pay now vs. pay later - taking into
| account growth, various forms of attrition, cost of capital,
| opportunity costs and appetite for risk. Or everyone would be
| running 1152 strands cables everywhere.
|
| But then I see that from a telco perspective and, now that I've
| read the article, it seems to be from a small-scale hosting
| perspective - entirely different economics.
| dwattttt wrote:
| Or, take the money you would spend calculating that, and
| that's the amount you spend for your margin.
| terribleperson wrote:
| Duct capacity is finite, but fiber cables are tiny and they
| are very nearly free compared to the cost of having them run.
| ghaff wrote:
| And while some people preach hard-wired everything I'd
| probably increasingly not bother at home. . I'll have to see
| how much networking and audio stuff I even do given a kitchen
| fire with s
| yetihehe wrote:
| I left one small room in my new home without network cabling,
| finished just before covid. Guess where my home office ended up
| being located...
| thefz wrote:
| https://michael.stapelberg.ch/posts/2020-08-09-fiber-link-ho...
| aftbit wrote:
| Regarding single mode vs multi-mode ... other than cost, is there
| any reason at all to run multi-mode fiber in 2025? I was under
| the impression that single mode was better in basically every
| way.
| fleventynine wrote:
| Multi-mode transceivers used to be a lot cheaper than single
| mode, but now they're around the same price for short
| distances. From what I can tell, most datacenters appear to be
| making the switch to single mode even for in-room networking.
| FredFS456 wrote:
| Multimode transceivers are still a slight bit cheaper ($30
| for 10GBASE-LR vs $22 for 10GBASE-SR on fs.com) but that's
| more than offset by the single mode fiber being slightly
| cheaper, even for short distances.
| fleventynine wrote:
| Apples to oranges. SR is for short runs inside a building.
| LR is for sending signals across a city.
|
| For short runs inside a building, the transceiver prices
| are much more comparable. Compare
| https://www.fs.com/products/251819.html?now_cid=4089 to
| https://www.fs.com/products/282973.html?now_cid=4089
| eqvinox wrote:
| SR is for when you accidentally installed MMF really.
|
| Except, no, you can run (single lambda, not muxed) LR
| transceivers on MMF, it's out if spec but you actually
| get around +20% range before hitting dispersion limits.
|
| I'll also note SR ranges are not in fact long enough for
| larger buildings. And this gets worse with higher speeds,
| since modal dispersion is a bandwidth problem, not
| attenuation.
|
| Also, using 800G for comparison is a bit ludicrous ;).
| 10G is bread&butter, 25G/100G is mainline. (40G is the
| shunned weirdo uncle.)
| hinkley wrote:
| Why does multi mode sound like it should carry more bandwidth
| but from context seems to be the less interesting option?
| damnitpeter wrote:
| Mode is simply the wavepattern of the light traveling
| through the optical fiber. Multimode means there are a few
| different wavepatterns traveling down the fiber, they tend
| to potentially interfere and its not as efficient of a use
| of optical power. In singlemode, this is a lot harder to do
| and requires better optics, the light is in one pattern,
| power is efficiently allocated to that pattern, and thus
| the light can be sent much further. Its been many years
| since college so hopefully that explanation suffices.
|
| Now lets say you want to send multiple signals to get more
| bandwidth on one fiber, you just need to move the
| frequency/wavelength of light so different signals have
| different wavelengths and can be discerned at the receiving
| end. That's gonna take even more optics and filters on both
| ends, but works quite well to add more bandwidth to
| existing fiber installations where running more fiber would
| cost a lot more than installing new equipment on the ends.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| It's DAC in rack and then fiber or copper between spine and
| leaf (depends on distance, etc).
| thefz wrote:
| Cost, and marginally, heat of the transceivers.
| DanAtC wrote:
| No. Just run single mode.
| timzaman wrote:
| 1. High-level, the post is all wrong. The point should be that
| you _always need to make sure you can pull new cable_. The poster
| illustrates this: single mode, multi mode, non-fiber, etc, etc.
| And if one "goes bad", you still can't run a _new_ one, unless
| you have a pullstring.
|
| 2. The post cannot apply to fast/large networks - will be
| prohibitively expensive.
|
| 3. If running a few at home, I suggest to run MTP/MPO. It's
| basically a structured cable that can have around 12 fibers in
| them, plenty of future expansion.
|
| Though I'll always run a large awg >>cat6 everywhere so it
| supports PoE++
| bananapub wrote:
| what a bizarre reply.
|
| the author is a sysadmin, who can definitely change what is
| plugged in to the switches their employer has chosen to buy,
| but doesn't have the power to make physical changes between
| multiple buildings, easily authorise opex spending on cable
| pullers or retrain as a cable puller.
|
| please actually consider what you're replying to before pushing
| the REPLY button.
| hinkley wrote:
| Pull strings don't give you a way to pull new cables. They give
| you a backup way to pull new cables. Every cable in a conduit
| can be used to pull its own replacement or 2. But if anything
| goes wrong, you have a second chance before you have to go find
| the fishing rod.
| dsr_ wrote:
| > 2. The post cannot apply to fast/large networks - will be
| prohibitively expensive.
|
| The expensive parts of fast/large networks are not the fiber
| strands.
|
| * right of use / lease
|
| * trenching and laying and covering
|
| * amplifiers on long lines
|
| * repair/maintenance
|
| * endpoints
|
| ... which is why the first thing you upgrade are the endpoints,
| and the last you do is lay more fiber. Get the most you can
| afford (often physically) at the beginning.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > And if one "goes bad", you still can't run a new one, unless
| you have a pullstring.
|
| The one that went bad _is_ the pullstring.
| avidiax wrote:
| > The one that went bad is the pullstring.
|
| That works for short runs, but for long runs, the only way to
| pull the cable without breaking it is to use wire pulling
| lubricant.
|
| And there's no guarantee that the cable you are pulling is
| undamaged. Rats don't improve pull strength, and even an
| electrically good cable can have the tensile strength cord
| severed.
|
| If you are in that situation, pulling the old cable with
| dried lube on it may snap it in two, especially if it's
| pulling the new strand.
|
| That's why leaving a pulling tape in each conduit is a good
| idea.
| liotier wrote:
| > 2. The post cannot apply to fast/large networks - will be
| prohibitively expensive.
|
| Yes, it is obviously about small-scale sysadmin cabling. Telco
| networks have wildly different economics.
| j45 wrote:
| Originally thought this was excessive, but at least 4 per
| outlet/room. Saves buying a bunch of smaller switches.
|
| 1 for a switch (Although VLans can help) 1 for telephony if
| required 1 for media devices / peripherals 1 extra
|
| Optional fun use of HDMI over ethernet for more runs.
|
| Behind TVs, you can break it down, or just run a bunch of runs.
| hinkley wrote:
| I routinely wish someone had designed a power outlet shaped
| switch that runs on POE.
|
| But some brands would run too hot for an enclosed space and a
| Netgear one would burn your fucking house down.
| toast0 wrote:
| I've seen some 'in-wall' access points that might be kind of
| what you're looking for. Designed for hotels, etc, they have
| an ethernet port on the back with poe-in, and usually two
| ethernet ports on the front, and also do wifi.
|
| I have no experience with them, though.
| hinkley wrote:
| There are modular jacks that can expose 6 or 8 different
| connectors on one outlet. I just figured the hotel ones
| were a slightly more sophisticated version of that.
| lotharrr wrote:
| I've been pretty happy with Unifi's "In-Wall" AP (e.g.
| https://store.ui.com/us/en/category/wifi-
| wall/products/u6-iw): PoE powered, has four downstream RJ45
| ports (one with PoE itself), and is a side-firing WiFi AP as
| well. Like the sibling comment said, they're made for hotel
| rooms, but I've never been in a hotel fancy enough to use
| them (possibly because the RJ45 sockets aren't particularly
| discoverable, being on the bottom). It doesn't live in a
| power outlet, but it's meant to be mounted at the same
| height. Worked great for my home office. (I'm not associated
| with Unifi, just happy with their gear)
| hinkley wrote:
| Yeah surface mounts aren't bad. Combined switch and Wifi is
| good.
|
| Seems like for discoverability you'd have to mount it
| backward or upside down somewhere so that people can see
| the ports, and then what about the wifi signal? I see what
| you mean.
| bhouston wrote:
| Yeah, we got a new house built 4 years ago and one of the biggest
| regrets is not enough ethernet outlets (running fibre in the
| house isn't practical yet) and power outlets in various places.
| It is really hard to think of all the places you would want them
| ahead of time unfortunately and as each has a cost you don't want
| to incur it unnecessarily.
|
| But my biggest regrets were:
|
| - Only a single ethernet port in the basement. Then the kid
| wanted a gaming station and we moved where the TV was. I should
| have put like 4 down there.
|
| - No ethernet ports in the garage, I should have put in one for
| an AP.
|
| - 4 ceiling APs instead of just two in the main part of the
| house. I over-estimated how much coverage I would get from
| ceiling APs and thus I have some APs hidden under furniture to
| ensure 100% house coverage.
|
| - Lack of multiple circuits in the garage, even better a separate
| sub-panel with 6 outlets. I took up wood working and with a
| single circuit and 2 outlets was insufficient. That cost me $1200
| for the sub-panel.
|
| - Multiple outlets on the back and side of the house - I would
| have done two at the front on each side and two at the back on
| side each and one on each side of the house. I have a single
| outlet at the front and back and that is just not sufficient for
| lights, decorations and patio devices.
| jmacd wrote:
| Wow, we recently built a house and this reads just like my
| regret list!
|
| I think because there are less code specifications for the
| garage, builders just don't bother.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > Only a single ethernet port in the basement. Then the kid
| wanted a gaming station and we moved where the TV was. I should
| have put like 4 down there.
|
| Is it so bad to put in a switch?
| bhouston wrote:
| It does sort of suck because I have cabling running along the
| baseboards. Also I have 10G networking so the switches are
| costly and hot at least this generation.
| LgWoodenBadger wrote:
| How would multiple runs have helped you with that problem?
| Either they're all in the same spot, and a switch would
| solve it, or they're on all different walls and you'd still
| likely have to run cables to the things.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| That's why pretty much every office space/building over here
| has cable trunking/channels on the walls instead of fixed
| wiring, eg:
|
| https://www.elba.si/izdelki/parapetni-kanali/
|
| https://www.obo.si/izdelki/izdelkiinstalacije-v-zgradbah/bis...
|
| Need one more outlet? Remove the plastic cover, insert cable,
| insert outlet, cut the plastic cover to make space for outlet,
| and you're done.
| Symbiote wrote:
| That would be fine in the garage, but few people would want
| this anywhere else in their home.
|
| There's a wood effect version, but I suspect it would make a
| home look like a 1980s office:
| https://homemaster.techinfus.com/en/kabel-kanaly-vidy-i-
| razm...
| david422 wrote:
| > Only a single ethernet port in the basement. Then the kid
| wanted a gaming station and we moved where the TV was. I should
| have put like 4 down there.
|
| Just drop a switch down there.
| bhouston wrote:
| I have, but now I have cable running along the base boards.
| That isn't optimal. Also I have 10G networking, so the
| ethernet switches are hot and expensive.
| zdp7 wrote:
| You don't need an expensive switch. Five port 2.5G + SFP+
| with poe can be pretty affordable and shouldn't run very
| hot.
| bhouston wrote:
| That downgrades transfer speeds though to just 2.5G.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| Which is fine? It's getting capped to 3 at your modem
| anyways... And the difference here is reaching the
| "doesn't matter" phase.
|
| Like - 50GB at 3gbps is ~130 seconds, ~160 seconds at
| 2.5gbps, and ~400 seconds at 1gbps
|
| You're always waiting at least a couple minutes, and
| never more than 10 for that download.
|
| Personally - I have a couple 10gbps switches that run my
| backbone in my house (NAS, k8s cluster, HomeAssistant,
| etc) and I have a 2gbps symmetric wan, but all of the
| offices (my wife and I both work from home, plus the
| media room, plus the kid's playroom) all just run 1gbps
| switches.
|
| They're cheap, normal office work basically never
| saturates those speeds (even multiple conference calls
| with video is a-ok), and there's just not enough value in
| bumping up to 10gbps across the whole house compared to
| the equipment cost.
|
| The 10gbps switches live in the basement and just connect
| those zones.
| bhouston wrote:
| You are completely right that I can always just wait. I
| prefer not to though... there are a lot of times when it
| is amazing to have 10G between my main machines.
| npodbielski wrote:
| I was thinking about this and it is very expensive. And do
| I need 10G really? I do not think so. I did calculated few
| things when I was thinking about 10G and most probably I
| will not saturate 1G for few years. And with phones ans
| laptops mostly WiFi is used anyways.
|
| So can I ask you what is the advantage for using 10G
| equipment in your case? Even something really dull like
| network card costs around 100EUR.
| bhouston wrote:
| 10G is awesome for (1) downloading steam games - many are
| +50GB these days, (2) downloading Ollama models, (3)
| downloading ISOs, (4) downloading app/OS updates and (5)
| I have a NAS also on the 10G network for media backups.
|
| I have symmetric 3Gbps fibre to the home via Bell Canada
| and it reports 4.5Gbps via fast.com.
| hnuser123456 wrote:
| If I get this new job I'm definitely upgrading everything
| to 10G.
|
| My PCIe5 SSD can do 14 GB/s, or about 112 gbit/sec.
|
| Did some research. 10gbe cards are about $30, 100gbe
| qsfp28 cards are about $300, 100gbit 100m transciever
| about $100.
| bloomingeek wrote:
| Friendly reminder: newer modem, router (especially for
| wireless), cat cable and fast speed switches really make a
| difference. I had the fastest speed my ISP could provide, but
| then discovered I needed to upgrade some of my equipment. It
| made all the difference in the world, especially cat 6e
| cable.
| nkrisc wrote:
| > Only a single ethernet port in the basement. Then the kid
| wanted a gaming station and we moved where the TV was. I should
| have put like 4 down there.
|
| https://store.ui.com/us/en/category/all-switching/products/u...
|
| Unless you meant with regards to routing the cables throughout
| the space, like now it's on the opposite wall from the port.
|
| I've definitely shoved cables under baseboards, but you can
| also pull them off and the run the cable in the wall behind
| them. You don't even need to patch the drywall then. You can
| also get baseboards (that look nice in a home) then double as
| cable runs.
| bhouston wrote:
| > You can also get baseboards (that look nice in a home) then
| double as cable runs.
|
| Interesting. That would be great in the basement. I will look
| into it.
| hobs wrote:
| Dont forget Powerline adapters - if you have it all on one
| loop they are surprisingly effective if you have extra
| power sockets!
| cruffle_duffle wrote:
| If you go that route MOCA over your cable tv coax works
| very well too!
| Carrok wrote:
| I recently bought my first house, and there was only one
| coax outlet in the entire place, and zero ethernet. I
| wanted to move where the coax terminated, and after some
| searching around, found MOCA. Had never heard of it
| before, but a hundred bucks or so later, and it's a
| fantastic solution.
| Symbiote wrote:
| I think powerline adapters might work very well in the
| UK, where sockets on each floor are connected in a ring.
|
| In my small apartment in Denmark, with new wiring, they
| are terrible. I get about 30-50Mb/s rather than the
| advertised 1200Mb/s. I assume the signal has to go back
| to the distribution board to get between my adapters.
| mjevans wrote:
| IMO a not-tiny house should have several sub-panels: Kitchen
| (enough to run the big stove + ~100A, but every outlet it's own
| 20A circuit), 'lab' / workshop (same idea), laundry room (lock-
| out breaker near / in room for connecting / disconnecting),
| etc.
|
| A family member who's doing better in life than I am purchased
| a house built within the last 5 years, and it didn't even
| _have_ Ethernet run anywhere. WHY!?! I can't fathom how it's
| possible anyone would find that a negative.
| nkurz wrote:
| > A family member who's doing better in life than I am
| purchased a house built within the last 5 years, and it
| didn't even _have_ Ethernet run anywhere. WHY!?! I can't
| fathom how it's possible anyone would find that a negative.
|
| I'm less sure. Are there any 40 year old cables that you'd
| consider a positive in your house today? 20 year old cables?
| I wouldn't be too excited about having a house full of Coax,
| 10Base-T, and twisted pair.
|
| I feel like the much better solution is to run conduit in
| which you can replace the cable rather than permanently
| putting in twice as much of whatever is in favor today. The
| conduit is always better, right?
| bhouston wrote:
| Yeah, conduit makes sense. The future in homes - from this
| current vantage point - is likely all wireless via multiple
| APs around the house that have short range but very high
| bandwidth. Only us power users will have wired ethernet.
| mjevans wrote:
| Wireless will _never_ have the bandwidth nor wall-
| penetration people want. If it has the latter all the
| neighboring houses / apartment units will bleed through,
| and if it doesn't even the limited frequency domain won't
| be enough unless you're in the same room as an AP that
| doesn't penetrate walls... at which point everyone will
| want drops running to the rooms they stay in anyway.
|
| Yeah, conduits with pull strings and super-gentle curves
| (to safely satisfy minimum bends) are ideal... but at
| least run the lines there!
|
| Re: Copper / Fiber. Fiber's a PITA for all users, even
| powerusers probably don't want it outside of the rack /
| enclosed areas. Delicate cables / connections.
| epiccoleman wrote:
| > 20 year old cables?
|
| I just bought a new house and the previous owner had phone
| lines everywhere (bedrooms, kitchen, office, rec room -
| honestly kind of weird). The house was built in 2002 and I
| gather that it was common at that time to put in Cat5e and
| just not use all the pairs.
|
| So all it took was a pleasant afternoon with the circuit
| toner, a new patch panel, and a few keystone jacks, and now
| the house is networked beautifully. Sure, they're not in
| _exactly_ the places I 'd have dropped 'em if I'd been
| starting from scratch, but it's hard to beat cables already
| in the wall for zero effort!
| terribleperson wrote:
| Cat6 is twenty years old and still entirely usable today in
| a residential setting.
| mmastrac wrote:
| If you have any way to pull cables between floors, try pulling
| DAC cables. They give you 10+G, require no splicing (hardware
| can be found cheap now), and generally just work as you'd
| expect.
|
| With a 10G backbone, you can get away with basement->main and
| main->upstairs in a three-floor house, with a small bridge on
| your main floor.
| bhouston wrote:
| > If you have any way to pull cables between floors, try
| pulling DAC cables.
|
| Many of my devices take 10G ethernet, like MacMini and my
| MacBook Air docking station. Is there an easy way to convert
| from DAC to 10G Ethernet? The desktop has an SPF+ card so
| that will take DAC no problem.
|
| Unfortunately there is no way to pull an any cables easily.
| But someone else suggested replaceable baseboards that hide
| cable runs, I should look into that.
| realityking wrote:
| I don't know any media converter that would work for that
| but you can get a Thunderbolt SFP+ ethernet adapter. For
| example: https://www.sonnettech.com/product/solo10g-sfp-
| tb3/overview....
| mmastrac wrote:
| 10G media converters are available for < $50 USD, but TBH
| I've never used one.
| Epa095 wrote:
| Why DAC cables over Cat6a or Cat7
| graton wrote:
| They are the lowest power way to connect SFP. And they are
| cheap.
|
| Though I'm not sure I would pull them as they tend to max
| out at around 6-7 meters. I use them to connect systems
| within the same rack/room.
| mmastrac wrote:
| Floor to floor in a house isn't too bad with 6-7m, but I
| suppose there's always the AOC cables that are 20m+.
| bhouston wrote:
| 10G Ethernet seems to be really hot, all my SPF+ connectors
| are hot, my TP-Link 10G switch is hot. It seems not be
| efficient anymore in that regards.
|
| While my 10G fiber and 10G SPF+ DAC cables are perfectly
| cool.
|
| I hope this is temporary but 10G Ethernet seems hot. I
| haven't seen anyone write on this topic yet but it is my
| findings.
| ianburrell wrote:
| There is no reason to pull DAC when fiber has gotten cheap.
| Singlemode fiber is cheap enough now that isn't worth doing
| multimode fiber. You can get pre-terminated fiber that is
| easier to pulling whole DAC transceiver.
|
| DAC is still useful for within rack.
| mmastrac wrote:
| True, though what I like about DAC is that there's far less
| risk of optical surface damage.
|
| Sure there's ESD risk but I find that much easier to
| manage.
| jmacd wrote:
| I just had this experience. I had a 200ft run between my house
| and barn. The original builder put a direct bury ethernet between
| the two and it failed. I dug a trench, put in a conduit, pulled 2
| fibre lines and left a pull string in.
|
| I recently had the primary fibre fail and am now on the backup.
| If I need to pull new ones in the future I can do that pretty
| easily through the conduit.
| bityard wrote:
| Yep. Direct-burial ethernet is surprisingly vulnerable to
| nearby lightning strikes. It's not a matter of IF the cable or
| devices get damaged, it's a matter of when. Nearby (not even
| direct) lightning induces ground voltage potentials between
| buildings to the tune of hundreds of volts or more.
| c0nsumer wrote:
| Do you have experience or information on direct burial
| ethernet for something like a POE camera? I'd like to put one
| on the back fence to watch the back of the house and yard.
| Direct burial in the back yard would be a plenty easy thing
| to do, but the cable is pricey enough that I've held off for
| now.
| LgWoodenBadger wrote:
| Whatever you do make sure you put a fiber media converter
| between the "ethernet" cable and your network to prevent
| your entire network getting fried.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| No mention in the article of making sure to run _conduit_ , so
| you can always add more cables easily.
| paulkon wrote:
| This right here is important. We could be running fiber end to
| end in the near future. Ethernet would end up obsolete like the
| phone line.
| fach wrote:
| How would running fiber make Ethernet obsolete? Physical
| medium and framing on the wire are fairly orthogonal.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| People commonly use the word "Ethernet" to mean "Ethernet
| cable", as in a copper cable with an RJ45 on it, not just
| "Ethernet protocol", which is used over both copper and
| fiber alike.
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| It's interesting how long twisted-pair cabling has stuck
| around, to the point that it's associated as being _the_
| physical medium for Ethernet. Ethernet started with
| coaxial cables, but soon lost its association with those
| as twisted-pair was cheaper & easier to work with. And
| it's stayed that way for so long that a CAT-5 cable with
| RJ-45 (really RJ-38 but that's excessively pedantic)
| connectors is an "Ethernet cable", and a perfectly usable
| fiber optic cable is something else!
| recursive wrote:
| I've been in software for decades, and it was only _right
| now_ that I realized that what I 'm calling "ethernet
| cable" is maybe something else. Not that I understand the
| finer details of what you're saying.
| Symbiote wrote:
| You can find them all described here:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet
|
| Specifically these:
|
| - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10BASE5 (early 1980s)
|
| - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10BASE2 (mid 1980s, cheap
| installations like my high school in the early 1990s).
| mbreese wrote:
| It _is_ an Ethernet cable. It's just not the _only kind_
| of Ethernet cable.
| jedberg wrote:
| It should mention conduit for sure, but sometimes conduit is
| hard if you want to stick to the rule of no more than 180
| degrees of bend in the line (and no more than 90 at one bend).
| Long conduit runs need junction boxes at some of of the bends,
| and it's hard to always make those accessible.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| Well, conduit plus multi-cell innerduct to make it easy.
| zelon88 wrote:
| We've almost come full circle with the idea of "run more cabling"
| already in some ways.
|
| For example, a building built in 1960 had analog phone lines.
| Then in the 80s network lines were added. Then in the 90s - 00s
| more and more and more network were added.
|
| Then in the 2010-2020's we're starting to wind back down.
| Removing switches and racks that used to be fully populated with
| CAT5 which are now mostly empty. The end devices that needed
| these runs are now running on WiFi.
| zelon88 wrote:
| To elaborate a little bit;
|
| I've been in many, _many_ buildings for cabling issues. While I
| generally agree with your assessment of "run more everything"
| I think this could be taken out of hand for a lot of smaller IT
| departments who aren't capable of using more advanced methods
| of network building. Like subnetting, VLAN trunking, or
| redundant links.
|
| Why would you need to learn about these things if you've got 3
| or 4 more pairs of fiber hanging down? Then you have a
| situation that I've seen before, where you have 2 fiber runs
| carrying flat networks right next to each other with just a
| couple of IP phones on each one.
| cheema33 wrote:
| I subscribe to this philosophy.
|
| I recently had my house remodeled. A lot of the walls were opened
| up and I asked the contractor to run fiber and cat 6a everywhere.
| Now every room has multiple drops of each. Even the outdoor and
| garage have several drops. Bathrooms have ethernet. Attic,
| basement and storage room has multiple drops. I may have overdone
| it. But, I never wanted to every worry about this ever again.
| joshuaheard wrote:
| I thought about multiple drops of cat6 per room in my house,
| but they charged me per drop. So I just put one drop in each
| room and added a switch in a room that needs multiple
| connections. It's usually for Wifi WAP, smart TV, and the Tivo
| box.
| thefz wrote:
| I was under the impression that once laid, fiber is the most
| stable and future proof between all mediums (barring physical
| damage). After all it won't rot, stain or degrade like copper.
| It's plastic, mostly.
| eqvinox wrote:
| It is, it's just not immune to physical damage. Rodents and
| Jackhammers...
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| Backhoes can find fiber from miles away... they hunger for it
| eqvinox wrote:
| > Fiber comes in two varieties, single mode and multi-mode. I
| don't know enough to know if you should make a point of running
| both[...]
|
| Let me fill this in: in 2025 you (and everybody else) should be
| running SMF. If you need to directly connect to existing MMF you
| should run that _additionally_. But do not build MMF-only in
| 2025. It 's akin to installing Cat5 (non-E) or even Cat3. And you
| pay mostly for the work, not the cable. Do yourself a favour and
| put SMF in.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| Agreed. SMF can handle nearly anything. A single strand can
| handle 100Gb 10km for OS1 or 100km for OS2 per frequency and
| you can do multiple frequencies at the same time or go
| bidirectional, too.
| chaz6 wrote:
| My business is fiber broadband, and we are laying as much as we
| can! Fortunately the legislative environment in the UK is
| conducive to this goal. For now we provide XGS PON (10Gbs minus
| overhead), with 50G PON becoming available in some locations
| later this year. Unlike regular point-to-point, it is point-to-
| multipoint through the use of optical splitters with one head-end
| port capable of servicing up to 256 clients. With the UK being so
| far behind most other developed countries, it means it can take
| advances in all of the R&D from the last twenty years. It has
| also led to the strange situation where there are some properties
| that have a choice between 4 or even more fibre network
| providers. Some fiber networks are tied to a single ISP whereas
| others are open to wholesale. I am not sure if there are any
| ISP's that support multiple connections to the same property via
| different fiber networks - but I think you would generally want
| to use a different ISP for each network anyway. IPv6 is supposed
| to make that easier, though in practice there are still no
| protocols (a la MEF 17 Service OAM) for the ONT to signal to the
| router that there is a fault condition. This is one circumstance
| where PPPoE is useful. As the UK has been slow to deploy fiber
| there are many ISPs still using it. I found this out the hard way
| when I made the switch. My trusty old Ubiquiti Edgerouter Lite
| (Cavium silicon) is not capable of hardware offload for
| ipv6+pppoe+vlan at the same time, so anything particularly
| demanding on IPv6 (e.g. Steam) essentially locks up the router. I
| will be trying out an Alta Labs Route10 this week to see if it
| provides any improvement.
| interroboink wrote:
| "We're only going to do this once and there's always the
| unforeseen."
|
| -- Joseph Bazalgette, on doubling the pipe diameter when building
| the London sewer system
|
| (though I don't have an original source for that quote)
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