16 ms·
Adding a fiber link to my home network
- neilv 6y agoThis bend-insensitive fiber the article mentions, combined with the narrower diameter than Cat-6, might make it more practical to run across the tops of mopboards in my rented apartment. WiFi speeds are usually OK, but the apartments density is so high here (and new `xfinitywifi` APs are often popping up on my channel), that I'm almost ready to move back to cabled for most purposes.
- zamadatix 6y agoYeah can confirm for the same use case though I use Ubiquiti Edge Router X SFPs off a Ubiquiti Edge Router 12P so I get more ports. Of course at this point we're close to Wi-Fi 6E hardware and I probably wouldn't have done all of this at this point.
- swiley 6y agoI switched to cable when I moved to an apartment. Channel 11 was becoming unusable right around 8:00 every morning when all the WFH people got online. My apartment has a nice patch panel though so I don't have to actually run cables everywhere.
- Dylan16807 6y agoWere you stuck with 2.4GHz for a reason? I can't imagine how bad that would be in an apartment.
- reaperducer 6y agoDepends on the apartment. In some, it's not as congested as it used to be because so many people have moved to 5GHz. It's still amazing to me, though, that so much new gear is still 2.4GHz only. I bought a brand-new, top-of-the-line air filter earlier this year, and even at close to $500, 2.4GHz is the only option.
- gambiting 6y ago....why would an air filter have WiFi in the first place?
- reaperducer 6y agoYou could ask the same thing about light bulbs, but they do.
- Dylan16807 6y agoYou often want to control brightness and possibly color on light bulbs, and it's good if that can be integrated with other systems so you can have central control and automation. Wifi may not be the best way to connect, but it's reasonable. With an air filter, do you ever want to control it? Naively I'd think that you'd want to leave it on unless you're going to be gone for a week or more. And even in that case it's probably easier to flip the switch. Would it tell you when it needs a filter change? Would that actually work better than a calendar?
- s_fischer 6y agoWhile I somewhat agree with you, it's possible to do some pretty advanced/nifty things with advanced automation platforms like Home assistant. There are prebuilt extensions for things like air quality index, so in theory, you could set up a rule to run your air filters when the exterior air quality is above a certain threshold of dirty. The same could be done for indoor air quality if you had a local sensor monitoring it (can be done pretty cheaply with a Pi but I've seen off the shelf products as well)
- postit 6y agoThey are so thin I covered mine with the wallpaper
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- tyingq 6y agoA quick search shows that single strand fiber is available with a white outer color. That would almost visually disappear in your mopboard example.
- iptrans 6y agoYou can get fiber even as a translucent version, that is almost “invisible”.
- TD-Linux 6y agoIf you want thinner than normal Cat6 but can handle a bit more than 0.9mm, there is also thin Cat6 available: https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=34213 https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=34213 It's 2.6mm diameter, and I had success running it between baseboards and carpet.
- neilv 6y agoThanks! I'll have to try at least one run of this thin Cat6.
- luckylion 6y agoThere's also powerline, which works very well for me and all you need are power sockets to bridge the distance between your desk and the router.
- iptrans 6y agoPowerline can have major problems, depending on the quality of the electric wiring. In addition to that latencies are bad.
- jon-wood 6y agoI once had powerline networking which somehow ended up joining my next door neighbour’s powerline network. That was a bizarre evening of trying to work out why my connection was sometimes fine, while other times unusably slow - turns out I was occasionally getting DHCP responses from next door’s router, and unsurprisingly the available bandwidth across RF interference between two power sockets back to back on opposite sides of a wall leaves a lot to be desired.
- tuananh 6y agothat's funny. how did you find out?
- jon-wood 6y agoThankfully the neighbour did freelance networking, so the domain being handed out to DHCP clients on their network matched the business name. It turned into quite a friendly relationship with them, I hadn't previously known that they were in the tech world as well.
- greenknight 6y agodepending on the electrical wiring, latencies may not be that bad. Ethernet is usually <1ms.... powerline adapter i use is about 2ms.... wifi to the same router, is 40ms. 2ms is much more manageable for me than 40ms
- ocdtrekkie 6y agoMaybe watching Comcast employees use a microscope when fusing individual fibers together when installing their service has made me feel like sticking my own connectors on fiber is a bad idea. The thin diameter is a nice feature, but the ease of breaking them would keep me from installing them anywhere copper wiring provides adequate performance.
- client4 6y agoIt's actually rather difficult to break cladded G.657 fiber, and it's much cheaper than copper. Now, at the splice point where you must strip the cladding you are correct it is very fragile. At that point you heat shrink on a splint with a steel rod in it which protects it (and typically place that in a splice case).
- jauer 6y agoPeople have to be careful when splicing fiber when every dB of loss is important, but modern fusion splicers make it pretty easy. For just running between houses, I've seen links working over fiber that was cleaved with linesmens pliers before a crimp on connector was added.
- gruez 6y agoSo I searched up "fusion splicers" and apparently there are machines that automatically align the fiber and fuses them together, with only ~0.02db of loss. Does a human doing it manually with a microscope get significantly better results?
- jcrawfordor 6y agoFusion splicers are very expensive, under $10k is the cheap end. ISPs own them of course for field work but home installs are often done by small independent contractors (one-person companies are common) without the budget. The situation has improved a lot over the last few years, but historically fusion splicing was such a delicate process with sensitive equipment that ISP crews would pull around an air-conditioned trailer just to house the splicer and its operator. Actually these trailers are still the norm, but the machines have also come down in price and up in flexibility so they aren't so necessary any more (but I'm sure it still really helps productivity to have your tools on hand and not be dripping sweat on the workspace if you do this all day...). But in any case I find it more likely the installer was using an inspection probe/microscope to verify a field assembly connector than actually splicing. Most field assembly methods don't require a microscope but it's common to use a specialized type of microscope to check the correctness and quality of the face of the connector before use, to avoid future callbacks, which said independent contractor will be penalized for.
- richardw 6y agoI’m looking at using fiber and media converters to connect 7 houses and 2 entrances in a security estate. Main reason is to get IP cameras (and shared access to them) at various points but reduce the impact a lightning strike would have. We have a lot of lightning in this area and I’d be bleak if one strike wiped out multiple houses worth of network and gear. If anyone has done anything like this, advice welcome.
- sgt 6y agoFunny. Your first sentence had me wondering whether you're south african. Then you followed up with lighting strikes :-) Agreed, I think your best option is fibre. A few Mikrotik's (reasonably priced) and SFP modules will work perfect for you. I think just getting your own splicing kit will make this easier for you and allow some experimentation.
- HarryHirsch 6y agoDon't forget that outdoor cable oftentimes has a metal strength member in it so it can be run from poles. The underground direct-bury kind of cable has metal armour for rodent-proofing and protection when the ground settles. Just because it's fiber cable doesn't mean you can forget about lightning protection and proper grounding. If the airwaves aren't too congested wireless might be a better option here.
- d00bianista 6y agoYou can always blow metal-free fiber in pipes. I'd use PE pressure pipe of suitable size, pull a string into it with a vacuum cleaner and pull fiber in... Hopefully the fiber survives.
- richardw 6y agoJoburg :)
- d00bianista 6y agoWith something as complicated as 9 separate locations, I'd definitely avoid unmanaged media converters. Managed ones will be able to tell you how well, or how poorly, your fiber links are doing.
- aaronax 6y agoCan confirm, DIY fiber is not too difficult to figure out yourself. For most uses outside of an ISP you don't need the super-low loss that you get with a fusion splicer. When I needed to wire up a campground and some cabins I studied a couple of the Fiber Optic Association textbooks and I recommend them as informative and easy to read. Also it is pretty easy to spend $50-100 over and over again on "one more tool" to save time and effort. On a random tangent, DIY fiber topics often makes me think back to a book about Kevin Mitnick (Takedown I think) where the author describes how he has fiber running around his house for various reasons. That was pre-1995 which was when the book was published; I imagine it was much more difficult and expensive back then.
- PopeDotNinja 6y agoMy training in the US Army included learning to splice fiber optic cable by hand, including polishing the end of the fiber itself! That was in 1993.
- madaxe_again 6y agoI honestly found it no harder than anything else - I just did a 300m run to an outbuilding, as 802.11g just wasn’t cutting it, and the project basically compromised two media converters, a reel of armoured fibre, and a termination kit - took all of an afternoon to do. I guess it’s just overkill in most scenarios - but for long runs, you can’t beat it. I’ve also got a 200m cat6 PoE run with a repeater/voltage booster halfway down, and it does duplexed gigabit just fine - which even further limits the scenarios in which fibre is the better option. Even with the repeater it was cheaper than the fibre alone, never mind the media converters.
- timc3 6y agoI just got fs.com to make up one for to the right length. Worked nicely
- d00bianista 6y agoI'd recommend using managed devices as opposed to using dumb media converters. If there are issues, you have no insight into the issues with unmanaged devices.
- bluedino 6y agoTo expand on this - instead of using a media converter, use a small managed switch. A 'dumb' media converter is a little bit cheaper but there's no way of knowing if the failure is due to the cable, the media converter on either end, or what. Without physically inspecting it, that is. All fine for something inside your house but not something where you have a remote location.
- client4 6y agoBetter yet, if you're connecting two devices that have PCI ports -- an eBay Mellanox ConnectX3 is great. Solarflare also works, but Mellanox has had better driver support in my experience (though we'll see now that they are owned by Nvidia).
- bluedino 6y agoArmored fiber is another useful tool for the home or small business user. Much less fragile which can be a big help depending on your application https://community.fs.com/blog/what-is-armored-fiber-optic-cable.html https://community.fs.com/blog/what-is-armored-fiber-optic-ca...
- yujanshrestha 6y agoThis is slightly tangential but if you are moving and fiber internet is an important consideration for you then check out this tool I made to check fiber connectivity in bulk: https://gigahood.com/ https://gigahood.com/ It also checks within 500 ft of the address. You may be able to trench a fiber line out yourself at that distance.
- ancarda 6y agoIs this US only? I got "This address is invalid". I live in the UK at the moment. Would be good to know a bit more about this tool. I'd love to get FTTP!
- gnfargbl 6y agoYou might find https://www.broadbandchecker.btwholesale.com/ https://www.broadbandchecker.btwholesale.com/ helpful. If you want to check an address and don’t know the phone number, use https://www.findmyaddress.co.uk/search https://www.findmyaddress.co.uk/search to get the UPRN for the address and paste that into the BT tool. I’d also love FTTP, but the state of affairs in the UK seems really disappointing at the moment. If you run a business and live in a rural area then the Government will contribute £3500 to the cost of an FTTP-on-Demand build. Unfortunately, Openreach’s engineering costs are so ludicrous that (in my experience) it’s still not a realistic prospect.
- wdb 6y agoThe UK lives in the dark ages regarding Internet. In Switzerland I already had 150mbit internet (in 2010+) while when I moved to London I couldn't even get more than 16mbit while living in Zone 1. Still these days I can't get that speed.
- secondcoming 6y agoWeird, I get 100MB consistently not far from zone 1. You may live far from the exchange
- myself248 6y agoSkipping the field-terminated bit, I just grabbed a hunk of preterminated fiber and some dumb media converters. It creates a dielectric gap in my network, so lightning and surges coming in on the cable modem, can't damage the rest of the network. (I used to fry a wifi router about twice a year during storms, and got sick of replacing them...)
- tux1968 6y agoWouldn't you still blow one of the media converters twice a year?
- snuxoll 6y agoBlown media converter is better than other equipment in your setup getting murdered.
- dboreham 6y agoProbably not because the inputs were previously blown due to either ground shift voltage or EM induced voltage in the long Cat5 run itself. Neither occur with dielectric cable.
- myself248 6y agoBingo. Now the whole cluster associated with the cable modem can rise and fall with it, because there's nothing conductive tying it to a node at a different voltage.
- djsumdog 6y agoBack in university, my old roommate did networking at a car dealership and brought home old 10Mb fiber connectors. Yes, 10Mb .. designed for range, but certainly not speed.
- EvanAnderson 6y agoI've used some of the pre-terminated assemblies w/ pulling hardware from these guys: https://www.lanshack.com/PreterminatedAssemblies.aspx https://www.lanshack.com/PreterminatedAssemblies.aspx The pricing is reasonable, especially compared to having a contractor come in and pull and terminate small, low-count runs, and the results have been very good for me. Edit (now that I'm not on a phone): I like these assemblies because I get a "super power" feeling, being being able to cheaply add fiber runs for special cases. The most recent one was extending a single-mode campus fiber termination to a new closet within a building. Loss budget was very high (because the campus run was fairly short) so we did a simple "glass-to-glass" patch on one of these assemblies to the new closet. It was going to be a couple thousand dollars for a contractor to come in and do a proper fusion splice, but the Customer ended up spending $250 for favorable results.
- baybal2 6y agoAs I wrote in another post, <1km fibre runs don't need fusion splicing. This is what I tell all people still insisting on using expensive multimode for local fibre setup for ease of splicing. Multimode will start to struggle at distances at which even worst quality single mode setup will work just fine. I feel SMF has no sense economically these days. Low power, single mode SFP transceivers are everywhere now, and in general, SMF setup is incomparably more future proof.
- shmerl 6y agoI wish home grade routers would start using SFP already. Very few of them do. Why is that?
- dylan604 6y ago> home grade routers That's your answer. The average home user just wants to plug in a device, type in the wifi code, and never think about it again. Only tech nerds want fiber type connectivity. Putting SFP into home devices would see that SFP sitting unused 99.9999% of the time. Why incur the expense of adding it?
- cm2187 6y agoIn fact only tech nerds want wired connectivity at all. Ethernet ports have pretty much disappeared from all laptops.
- shmerl 6y agoGood ones always come with Ethernet port. I wouldn't even consider buying one without it.
- bartvk 6y agoI have a MacBook, which don't come with ethernet for the last 4 years. But I do want ethernet. So I simply dock my laptop, and the docking station of course has ethernet. Of course I do understand that if you're a network engineer, you don't want to screw around with docking stations and dongles and such.
- shmerl 6y agoI don't consider Apple laptops good to be honest. Things should be simple, but not simpler than simple. That said, if some device is simply too thin to accommodate a network port, I don't mind using an adapter through USB-C / upcoming USB4 and etc.
- 6y ago
- codecamper 6y agois that 10gbit or 10Gbyte?
- secure 6y ago10 gbit/s, as is common in networking.
- CameronNemo 6y agoNetwork speeds are typically measured in bits.
- KaiserPro 6y ago10gig ethernet is bits. 100gbit ethernet does exist, but its not overly cheap. That will get you to about 10gigabytes a second. more or less.
- jcrawfordor 6y agoa lower-case b (10Gbps) should indicate bits while uppercase (10GBps) would indicate bytes. This is the correct notation but you definitely see it done incorrectly fairly often. It's usually easy to tell though as giving network media speeds in GBps would be very unusual.
- daneel_w 6y agoWhat's oddly left out in the article is the detail of whether or not he already had a network switch with ports supporting more than GbE - the price for these things start at around 250-300 CHF which would double his suggested total cost - or if he's just linking two computers together. Personally I would just go with 2.5GBASE Ethernet and compact-diameter cabling. 2.5GBASE PCIe cards cost around $15 a pop.
- secure 6y agoNo, all other devices are gigabit ethernet switches only. I’m linking two switches together with this fiber, and the rest is copper ethernet cables in these switches and other switches :) Behind each switch are 4+ devices, so individual network cards won’t help here.
- daneel_w 6y agoYou have 4+ networked devices in your kitchen, which require more than one Gbit/s network transfers?!
- secure 6y agoYes, I have 3 devices that require fast networking: I run the primary network storage replica, a build server (only powered up on demand) and a mirror server. A Sonos speaker is also connected to the network, but that’s obviously neither important nor significant in terms of traffic. In this article, everything is 1 Gbit/s, including the fiber. I’ll talk more about the 10 Gbit/s aspect in the next article.
- progman32 6y agoQNAP has some fairly cheap routers that have a couple 10GbE ports, like this one: https://www.qnap.com/en-us/product/qsw-308-1c https://www.qnap.com/en-us/product/qsw-308-1c I paid $200 for mine. Not cost-effective if you have more than a couple 10GbE-capable devices, but great for hooking up a fast NAS to a couple primary workstations and leaving the rest of the network 1GbE.
- sneak 6y agoThis is a very unsubtle ad for the website it links/mentions by name about a dozen times.
- drwl 6y agoYeah I got the same feeling that this is an ad, or at least in part sponsored by fs.
- secure 6y agoFS has not paid me to write this, I’m just a happy customer. I paid for all the gear with my own money.
- 3guk 6y agoI’m not sure I agree - I’ve always been a fan of FS for fibre stuff, at least in europe - their prices and support are both excellent !
- lostlogin 6y agoThe photos show a lot of cables stuck to walls. I’m surprised people are ok with this. Every house I have lived in has done it too and it’s the first thing I rip out. I see contractors (usually ISP installers) doing this inside and outside houses too and it irritates me. UV, animals/insects, wind etc gets at them and water goes in the holes. The fixings that hold the cable rust/degrade and fall out. Doing it right costs more and takes longer but I’m unsure if the cost is greater when you look back 5-10 years. Maybe doing this is slightly more repairable if the place is a rental?
- ggregoire 6y agoWhat’s the right way to do it?
- mitchtbaum 6y agohttps://www.google.com/search?q=structured+wiring&rlz=1CASICM_enUS896&sxsrf=ALeKk00a6vjBwKSbAdshXygzKegJ3OvffA:1597000580203&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj7zKfi6o7rAhVyNX0KHab-AtUQ_AUoAnoECA4QBA&biw=1366&bih=697 https://www.google.com/search?q=structured+wiring&rlz=1CASIC... https://www.homedepot.com/c/ab/structured-wiring-and-networking-panels/9ba683603be9fa5395fab9059b310fc#:~:text=Structured%20wiring%20is%20a%20general,home%20automation%20or%20security%20signals.&text=These%20direct%20lines%20are%20called,each%20of%20your%20electronic%20devices https://www.homedepot.com/c/ab/structured-wiring-and-network....
- z3t4 6y agoIf you are building new or renovating, run the cable pipes before the walls are in place. If the walls are already there its much trickier, but still doable with a long bendable drill and magnets, and you might end up with the switch on the attic as its easier to drop down.
- lostlogin 6y agoI find going up from the basement to be easiest. Dirt rocks and spider webs beats heat, grime and ceiling creatures. A lack of space above or below and solid brick walls are going to be seriously limiting. Possibly the only upside to New Zealand’s average house quality is that there is space everywhere and most things are hollow. > you might end up with the switch on the attic UniFi makes stuff I like and this situation sounds like a great use for their ‘Flex’ switch which is managed and POE powered.
- firekvz 6y agoany other reads like this? maybe a bigger one, like connecting a whole building or connecting to an ISP?
- baybal2 6y agoA much cheaper set: $13 single mode 10G SFP transceiver set [quite uncertain what they are now... maybe something not quite ethernet compatible]: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/33040961103.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/33040961103.html 2x $20 DLink 10G SFP [a much more certainly standard compatible]: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32847226618.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32847226618.html $50 1km G657A2 bend resistant single mode cable: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/33045053714.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/33045053714.html $20 20x gel LC connectors: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32810983763.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32810983763.html $15 20x gel splices: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000183799694.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000183799694.html
- iptrans 6y agoThat’s not a bidi SFP. The attenuators aren’t needed either. Then there’s the fact you are ordering from Aliexpress, rather than Fiberstore. Fiberstore has multiple locations and warehouses, a returns policy, a level of customer service and no shipping charges.
- baybal2 6y agoYes, it's not a BiDi, and I think they messed up with the text. I picked the attenuators for the power of proper 10G-LR, so yeah, they are probably not needed for the short range transceivers.
- iptrans 6y agoLR optics don’t require attenuators. OP didn’t mess up the text. They clearly wanted bidi optics as they only ran one strand.
- baybal2 6y agoCan you identify what those 1.4km transceivers are? https://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?SearchText=1.4km+10g https://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?SearchText=1.4km+10g Are they even remotely standard compatible?
- apple4ever 6y agoI've run fiber from my basement to my second floor rack (two cables). It's really cool. Right now its 1G, but I can upgrade it to 10G whenever I feel like paying for new switches.
- Bloggerzune 6y agoIndeed Prime tries to encourage employers to think about such candidates by using coding tests on its platform, aimed toward showing employers than “non-traditional candidates” are even as skilled as children beginning of the halls of academia. https://www.bloggerzune.com/2020/07/Indeed-Prime.html?m=1 https://www.bloggerzune.com/2020/07/Indeed-Prime.html?m=1 Seen helps employers more easily connect with not just some of the toughest to fill tech roles Indeed data shows that the toughest to fill tech role within the US is programmer , where the bulk of job postings lie open for over sixty days. In addition to serving a broader range of job titles, Seen has many other benefits for those trying to find their perfect match. Such benefits to job seekers include free, personalized career guidance that gives everything from webinars and work style assessments to one-on-one career coaching sessions. Additionally, personalized resume reviews are going to be provided to all or any tech candidates, providing videos unique to every individual with recommendations on the way to boost their resume.
- aliswe 6y agoI love this: > I had only ever seen 2mm fiber cables before, and the 0.9mm cables are incredibly light, flexible and thin! Even pasta is typically thicker: > (Image of some disorderly 0.9mm thin fiber cables) > Preparing a delicious pot of glass noodles ;)
- kgc 6y agoI have symmetrical gig fiber service, and this says it's not possible.
- tuananh 6y agoi was recently in market for a tv. surprisingly, most of it doesn't have Gbps ethernet but just 100mbps. i ended up using wifi
- tinus_hn 6y agoDoes anyone actually know how these transceivers work? Is it software or hardware? They can pass an amazing amount of traffic and I’ve never had them crash.
- mgarfias 6y agoSo what? Running the actual fiber to my shop was far less interesting than digging the trench with the backhoe, running conduit, and backfilling the trench.