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Cat6a supports 10gbps. That should be good enough for the foreseeable future. Fiber is significantly more difficult to pull through the wall since it is more fr

Cat6a supports 10gbps. That should be good enough for the foreseeable future. Fiber is significantly more difficult to pull through the wall since it is more fragile.

yardie 5y ago
Fiber is not significantly harder than Cat6 and the turns can be quite a bit tighter. But terminating can be very expensive; the best price I have for a commercial fiber tech is $100/end.
- throwanem 5y ago
  The turns in fiber can be tighter than in Cat 6, really? Granted my experience pulling any kind of cable is most of two decades stale by this point, and my one experience with installing fiber considerably older still - I'm still surprised to hear fiber could be easier to pull.
  - walrus01 5y ago
    g.657.b3 ultra bend loss insensitive can take a remarkable amount of abuse, it's designed for difficult FTTH installs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBt00CVvMBA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBt00CVvMBA
    - throwanem 5y ago
      Thanks for linking the video. That is wild to me - if I'd tried that staple gun trick with Cat 6 on a worksite, my boss would've kicked my ass all the way back to the office, and rightly so. I'd have never dreamed of seeing fiber that could hold up to it!
- walrus01 5y ago
  If you're doing a basic project where it makes economic sense and are willing to teach yourself, it takes a $950 fusion splicer and about $300-400 of hand tools/supplies to terminate single mode these days. It's not super hard to learn how to do as an amateur if you can watch some youtube videos and look at reference documents. This particular model which can be found for 900-950 from China is popular for FTTH last mile work: https://toolboom.com/en/fusion-splicer-kit-signalfire-ai-9/ https://toolboom.com/en/fusion-splicer-kit-signalfire-ai-9/ It's not something I'd use to splice a very important cable carrying long haul DWDM circuits, but more than good enough for its purpose. As to whether a house needs fiber to each room? I'm not really sure, at the loop lengths involved, recent cat6 cable has a high chance of working successfully at 2.5GBaseT and 5GBaseT speeds, even if it doesn't qualify and test successfully for 10GBaseT. If you have a really high end 802.11ax 4x4 dual band AP with 2.5 or 5GBaseT interface on it and the switch to support it, in real world use it's unlikely you'll ever get much beyond 1000BaseT speeds to it with real wifi traffic.
- michaelt 5y ago
  Yes, if you ignore the difficulty of terminating fiber, the more expensive switches, the fact no motherboard, laptop or TV accepts fiber, and the lack of PoE there's really no reason not to use fiber.
  - xbar 5y ago
    Fiber it is!

Cat6a supports 10gbps. That should be good enough for the foreseeable future. Fiber is significantly more difficult to pull through the wall since it is more fragile.

yardie 5y ago

Fiber is not significantly harder than Cat6 and the turns can be quite a bit tighter. But terminating can be very expensive; the best price I have for a commercial fiber tech is $100/end.

throwanem 5y ago
The turns in fiber can be tighter than in Cat 6, really? Granted my experience pulling any kind of cable is most of two decades stale by this point, and my one experience with installing fiber considerably older still - I'm still surprised to hear fiber could be easier to pull.
- walrus01 5y ago
  g.657.b3 ultra bend loss insensitive can take a remarkable amount of abuse, it's designed for difficult FTTH installs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBt00CVvMBA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBt00CVvMBA
  - throwanem 5y ago
    Thanks for linking the video. That is wild to me - if I'd tried that staple gun trick with Cat 6 on a worksite, my boss would've kicked my ass all the way back to the office, and rightly so. I'd have never dreamed of seeing fiber that could hold up to it!
walrus01 5y ago
If you're doing a basic project where it makes economic sense and are willing to teach yourself, it takes a $950 fusion splicer and about $300-400 of hand tools/supplies to terminate single mode these days. It's not super hard to learn how to do as an amateur if you can watch some youtube videos and look at reference documents. This particular model which can be found for 900-950 from China is popular for FTTH last mile work: https://toolboom.com/en/fusion-splicer-kit-signalfire-ai-9/ https://toolboom.com/en/fusion-splicer-kit-signalfire-ai-9/ It's not something I'd use to splice a very important cable carrying long haul DWDM circuits, but more than good enough for its purpose. As to whether a house needs fiber to each room? I'm not really sure, at the loop lengths involved, recent cat6 cable has a high chance of working successfully at 2.5GBaseT and 5GBaseT speeds, even if it doesn't qualify and test successfully for 10GBaseT. If you have a really high end 802.11ax 4x4 dual band AP with 2.5 or 5GBaseT interface on it and the switch to support it, in real world use it's unlikely you'll ever get much beyond 1000BaseT speeds to it with real wifi traffic.
michaelt 5y ago
Yes, if you ignore the difficulty of terminating fiber, the more expensive switches, the fact no motherboard, laptop or TV accepts fiber, and the lack of PoE there's really no reason not to use fiber.
- xbar 5y ago
  Fiber it is!