7 ms·

Is there a justification for this? What are the chances your CAT cable is a bottleneck to network speeds?

• bombcar 3y ago
  Running fiber will get you above 10Gb if you need that, and for longer. It also completely removes certain electrical grounding issues, and makes connecting separate buildings easier (there are requirements for wires connecting different buildings, like a house and a detached garage; most people ignore these requirements).
  • chrisBob 3y ago
    I am about to put in a garage 300' from my house. I will already have a trench for power and water. What kind of network cable can/should I drop in the same trench?
    • LorenDB 3y ago
      300 ft. is long enough that fiber will be the better choice if only to reduce signal loss. CAT6 has a maximum length of 328 ft., so while it would work, you're going to have a faster, more reliable connection all around with fiber.
    • bombcar 3y ago
      300 feet is at or beyond the edge of copper CAT cables, I'd run multimode fiber of the appropriate type (run a few to be safe?) - fiber doesn't care about power interference. NOTE: See comments - I ran multimode because that's what the connectors in the off-lease hardware I had came with. Seems single mode is better in general. https://www.lanshack.com https://www.lanshack.com or similar should have something in the $400 range. You could be super cool and run conduit, but that itself has a cost (spooled conduit is what I'd do, but costly)
      • fleventynine 3y ago
        Multi-mode standards change too frequently, and it's not really much cheaper. Prefer single-mode.
      • jasonjayr 3y ago
        +1 for lanshack, I've used them for pre-terminated cables for years!
      • amluto 3y ago
        I would go single mode — it’s cheaper, the optics are about the same price, and it’s more future proof. Get a nice OFN/OFNR/OFNP cable and you don’t need to worry about grounding. And you can legally the same cable indoors too.
    • michaelt 3y ago
      If your garage is going to house cars or tools and it's questionable whether you need to run a network cable to it anyway, go for wired cable so you don't need a $500 fiber splicer. 300' is the maximum you can do, but the spec has some wiggle room. If your garage is actually going to be a home office, you're a networking enthusiast and you feel running fiber would be a fun learning experience, and you've got a buddy who can lend you a fiber splicer (or giant holes you can fit a pre-terminated cable through) - then go ahead and run fiber if you like. I barely use the network link I ran to my garage, and I literally have a CNC machine in there. Turns out sneakernet works fine when you've got to go set up the workpiece anyway, and I ain't buying a car that needs a wifi connection. A gold-plated setup would have been a waste of money.
      • fleventynine 3y ago
        I strongly recommend against this unless you have bonded earth connections between the buildings. During a storm the ground potential between the locations is likely to exceed the 1500V rating of the magnetics in your switches, and your equipment will be destroyed. Fiber is the only safe option at this distance.
        • michaelt 3y ago
          In my country lightning strikes are rare, the equipment on each end of the link costs substantially less than a fiber splicing machine, and we get bonded earth connections as a matter of course. I agree it's worth keeping an eye on your earthing, of course - if you get a noticeable difference in ground potential and you plan to plug in an EV charger outside in the rain, you might need some extra grounding. Unless your garage, your EV and yourself are all on an insulated concrete slab.
          • fleventynine 3y ago
            Voltage differentials in the earth that exceed 1500V will occur even without a lightning strike, and the greatest danger is when the ground is dry. Even something as simple as a strong wind blowing on a tree can charge things up significantly...
    • pnut 3y ago
      If you've got power already, why not consider a high bandwidth, wireless point-to-point bridge? Just need two dishes pointed at each other. That hard line is nice until it fails, which it will eventually.
      • chrisBob 3y ago
        I have been leaning towards a wireless bridge. There are not a lot of houses around, so the environment shouldn't be too noisy. My only concern is that I don't want to mount something external on that side of my house.
        • robocat 3y ago
          A good brand link with directional antennas will punch through quite a bit. I just mounted the wireless units inside at one end for my sister (although I did choose a mounting location that had thin wall).
      • brianwawok 3y ago
        Fiber is both cheaper, more reliable, and faster.
    • mturmon 3y ago
      Put in conduit and you can decide later, replace eventually, or change your mind.
    • NegativeLatency 3y ago
      Make it easy to change your mind later, run some PVC conduit and make sure you include a pull tape for your networking stuff. A pre terminated fiber cable and some fiber to ethernet media converters should do the trick for isolation.
    • thworp 3y ago
      If you ever want to send >1 Gigabit over that cable, use fibre. 10 GbE is pretty much the limit of copper cables at that length and create tons of heat (in the switch if RJ45 port, or worse on the SFP+ module). Also fibre has no fire safety considerations and no problem being right next to a power line carrying high-current AC. Also fibre does not corrode. As a bonus, it costs pretty much the same (but switches/sfp+ transciever are more expensive).
  • amluto 3y ago
    In the US at least, those requirements are quite straightforward. The major issue is that you probably ought to use outside plant cable for the outdoor run, and most outside plant cable is messy and not listed for indoor use. And if you run shielded cable, you’re supposed to bond both ends near the points of entry. But you can buy indoor/outdoor unshielded OSP/CM cable, run it in conduit outside, and connect it indoors with no special considerations. (Also, unshielded Ethernet cable is fully galvanically isolated, whereas if you have crappy electrical wiring that confuses ground and neutral or an unnoticed ground fault, a shielded cable may carry “objectionable current” (yes, the code actually uses that term). Those tiny 24awg conductors are not very likely to cause major damage even in the event of a lightning strike, especially if they’ve run underground. They will, however, certainly conduct enough lightning current to fry the magnetics at the ends. (If you think the National Electrical Code means that your circuit breakers will safely and reliably trip in the event of a fault, e.g. a neutral-to-ground short or a cut, stripped live wire stuck directly into wet Earth, I have some snake oil to sell you.)
    • bombcar 3y ago
      The most common issue I've seen is not doing the bonding, or using direct bury cable without considerations of ground loops, and getting a noisy line.
    • myrmidon 3y ago
      > If you think the National Electrical Code means that your circuit breakers will safely and reliably trip in the event of a fault, e.g. a neutral-to-ground short or a cut, stripped live wire stuck directly into wet Earth, I have some snake oil to sell you. Could you expand on this a bit? Do you mean that ground fault interrupters are not fast enough/threshold currents too high to prevent harm in some cases? (Non American; not familiar with your National Code but curious)
      • bombcar 3y ago
        Even the best arc fault breakers (which are NOT the same as ground fault breakers) will not detect certain faults, mainly those that look like normal usage. A GFCI should detect a live wire into wet ground IF a ground is present, but not all breakers are required to be GFCI.
  • Chris2048 3y ago
    Within a single household, that is not mansion sized, it would seem un-needed?
    • bombcar 3y ago
      300-odd feet isn't that long, especially if you can't go "the direct path" and are going around rooms, or connecting to a garage.
• bluGill 3y ago
  10gb Ethernet is known to be power hungry. The latest wifi standards can achieve faster than 1gb speeds (at least on paper, I suspect none in the real world can do that). If you have outbuildings you want to network (or perhaps even just a outdoor access point) then fiber is much safer from lightening and so would be worth it. If you have two NAS systems you will probably want the speed of fiber between them to make for faster backups. Only the outdoor application seems compelling of the above though, and most homes don't have that. That said, this article looks more like an office or apartment building than a home. In both of those applications fiber is much better than CAT cables for the longer lines.
• fleventynine 3y ago
  It's mostly about future-proofing. If I had renovated my house 20 years ago, the "best" copper cable I would have installed was cat5e, which will never get much beyond 2.5G. But if I had installed SMF instead (which was available at the time), it would be compatible with terabit networking hardware that is available today, and the petabit networking hardware that is likely to be available 20 years from now. When the lifetime of cables in the walls is typically more than 40 years, it makes sense to avoid limited technologies like copper or multi-mode fiber.
  • pathartl 3y ago
    Based on the general availability of 10gbit on consumer-priced hardware, I wonder if we'll actually get past 10gbit over the next 20 years. Hell, even 2.5 is only _just_ starting to pop up and usually results in only a couple ports on consumer switches/routers.
    • fleventynine 3y ago
      I consider these consumer-priced switches: https://www.servethehome.com/mikrotik-crs504-4xq-in-a-4x-100gbe-switch-at-under-45w/ https://www.servethehome.com/mikrotik-crs504-4xq-in-a-4x-100... https://mikrotik.com/product/crs510_8xs_2xq_in https://mikrotik.com/product/crs510_8xs_2xq_in
      • Firerouge 3y ago
        Your average consumer is not paying $700 for a switch/router
        • fleventynine 3y ago
          No, but they weren't spending $1000 on a gigabit switch in 2004 either. If you're serious enough about home networking to run cables through your walls, $700 for a switch is nothing compared to the labor cost.
          • 3y ago
• riskable 3y ago
  Two main reasons: 1) Future proofing (the main geek justification we all tell ourselves when considering fiber hehe): There's terabits of potential in even the cheapest fiber. "I'll never have to run cables again!" This is actually nonsense since everyone needs outlets in new places from time to time. Better just get used to the idea that you'll be sweating your ass off in the attic (wear a proper respirator!) every few years no matter what you install =) 2) Long distance runs. You can run fiber kilometers and even the cheap SFP adapters will give you a solid 10Gbit connection. A few secondary reasons: Runs between buildings: Have a detached garage? You can run fiber from your attic to the garage in the air and not have to worry about lightning strikes destroying it and all your stuff/equipment. Just make sure to use a type of fiber cable that's made for that or it'll slowly droop until it breaks (or just gently wrap it around some strong rope that can withstand long term exposure to the elements or use tubing/pipe, etc). Size requirements: You can cram a lot more fiber cables into the same space as you can Cat 6/8 (which are much thicker and stiffer than cat 5/cat 5e). I have some "outdoor" (buryable) Cat 6 that is nearly as thick/stiff as RG-6 coaxial! If you have a tiny hole/pipe and you need to run a lot of wires through it fiber is what you want. I bet you can cram 5-6x more singly-jacketed fiber cables through a 1-inch PVC pipe/conduit than you can Cat 6. A LOT (100x) more if you use a fancy cable with lots of individual fibers within (there's a lot of different styles).
  • pjerem 3y ago
    > "I'll never have to run cables again!" To those people i want to say conduits exists :)
    • riskable 3y ago
      To conduit people I say, "you'll need to run new conduits" =)
  • amluto 3y ago
    > Better just get used to the idea that you'll be sweating your ass off in the attic (wear a proper respirator!) every few years no matter what you install =) Real buildings have conditioned attics and don’t have loose fiberglass in them. :) This can even be fixed in an old building as a fairly straightforward retrofit if you can get into the attic, and it goes well with a re-roof so you can cleanly remove all the vents.
• edude03 3y ago
  Pretty high if you want to have storage separate from your compute (for example, editing video on one computer while storing the raw footage on a NAS, which is one of my use cases). A single average consumer SSD can already deliver 30gbit/s, and having a few "prosumer" drives like the WD Black SN850 in raid can deliver 100gbit and cost under a hundred each.
  • thworp 3y ago
    Not even just SSDs, if you're using SMB you can't even saturate a single modern 7.2k RPM hard drive over gigabit ethernet.
• daveoc64 3y ago
  I've recently got an 8Gbps symmetric FTTP connection at home, and have run Cat 6 to nearly every room. The biggest problem is that there aren't a lot of (consumer accessible) ethernet switches capable of doing 10Gbps with copper ethernet cables. There's a lot more equipment out there in the small office space that can do SPF fibre.
• tguvot 3y ago
  i run cat6 for 10gb link. SFP+ dongles were running at 95C. I had to glue on them heatsinks and add fans to switch to keep their temperature down, otherwise switch could shut it down. eventually switched from it to fiber
• globular-toast 3y ago
  There is no justification. It's like asking a car enthusiast what's wrong with a Honda Jazz.