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Wiring my home with fiber

sschueller.github.io

11–20 of 305 posts

Re: Wiring my home with fiber

#11
post #3

I wonder what is use case for this network. At my home I only use optics for long run, more for galvanic isolation, as electric charge could destroy electronics. All servers are concentrated in single room. Clients use miniPCs. Rest of the house is wired with 2.5Gb ethernet and wifi6, anything faster and expenses grow exponentially.

I second this. ~$1375 vs under $200 for an Ethernet run. Expensive project just to be able to say "I did it".

> "Ability to utilize 25gbit internet connection"

Re: Wiring my home with fiber

#12

For those wondering, as the OP didn't mention it super-clearly imho - but his internet provider is able to do 25gbit [1] for CHF 69 a month (+ CHF ~340 set up cost) CHF 1 ~= USD 1 these days Question for OP: Why did you build such an expensive "router" - you justify it by saying you also want to run PiHole, but you probably could have done this whole setup much cheaply [1] https://www.init7.net/en/internet/fiber7/

The router is more of a server. Pihole is just an example (and yes a $35 pi would be plenty for it) but I have many old servers running all kinds of other things so I decided to update and consolidate some of this.

Re: Wiring my home with fiber

#13
Nice read, and great work on the terminations.

I did an extensive amount of both fiber and CAT6A in my recent house build, totally about 21 miles together. I did a mixture of single mode and multimode only because of some AV device support for multimode, and because all of it was so cheap compared to the labor and time.

I ended up with significant fiber runs between the MDF and IDF closets, the server room, and all of the AV endpoints which is a typical layout. I did run single mode fiber to all 18 wireless AP access-point locations, but I suspect those will not get used much given I also have 2 CAT6A shielded wires to each AP that can support 10G AND provided power. I do use a direct fiber connection in my office to provide 10G to my network core from that desktop, but that could have been done over copper as well.

Perhaps the biggest gain over copper is my switch interconnects which are 40G from the upstairs closet to the server room. If needed it would be easy to upgrade those to 100G, and since there are 24 strands available you really could expand as far as you are every going to need to go with WDM and the like.

The one really good use case for only fiber was running it down my driveway to our gate, which is about a 1/4 mile in distance. That is something that would be more challenging to do with copper. [although I do have copper installed].

From my perspective the cost of running fiber was almost 0 compared to the entire project because so much more cost is involved in path finding and clearing ( cutting holes, etc), and the actual pulling. I was very fortunate to have a large group of friends who spent a couple of days working with me to do the large pulls, combined with many weeks of evenings and weekends doing the rest myself. Many hands makes that task much much easier.

My particular build is documented in a build thread: https://www.garagejournal.com/forum/threads/jeffs-mountain-s...

Re: Wiring my home with fiber

#16
I'm in the middle of running fiber in my house as well but much less elaborate than OP. I bought a few 100m MPO terminated cables off eBay, a few MPO to LC splitters from FS.com and a few 100m capable optics from eBay and fs.com. All my switches have sfp ports so it was pretty straight forward

Re: Wiring my home with fiber

#17
post #7
post #3

I wonder what is use case for this network. At my home I only use optics for long run, more for galvanic isolation, as electric charge could destroy electronics. All servers are concentrated in single room. Clients use miniPCs. Rest of the house is wired with 2.5Gb ethernet and wifi6, anything faster and expenses grow exponentially.

I think one major use case in this particular scenario is that the author has one 25 Gbit/s and one 10 Gbit/s internet service. If you want to make the most use of this fibre is the only way to go.

I do data processing and can saturate similar bandwidth. But 10Gbps goes to my home server room.

There is no need to have 10Gb in bedroom, such tech produces a lot of noise and heat. Maybe Stadia or similar video streaming could use such bandwidth. But this looks more like wiring for residential building with multiple flats, or office building. Or like some sort of tech flex.

Re: Wiring my home with fiber

#19

Nice read, and great work on the terminations. I did an extensive amount of both fiber and CAT6A in my recent house build, totally about 21 miles together. I did a mixture of single mode and multimode only because of some AV device support for multimode, and because all of it was so cheap compared to the labor and time. I ended up with significant fiber runs between the MDF and IDF closets, the server room, and all o…

I can’t wait to digest this later on a desktop. Thanks for sharing it and documenting it. 21 miles! Reminds me of the guy’s house in Ex Machina.

Re: Wiring my home with fiber

#20
post #5

This article is great overall, but there is some stuff you should do differently, if you're wanting to follow in the author's footsteps: 1. Just use UPC connectors everywhere unless you have really good reasons not to. 2. Use single mode fiber (SMF) everywhere, including internal wiring. SMF is infinitely scalable for future needs, multimode (MMF) is not. These days the cost differences for cabling and optics is negl…

Fiber is, as runjake mentioned, very very cheap. The raw cost is less than copper, and that is part of why I ran so much of it in my build. (I am not the OP). I did however include some multimode in that equation only because some AV equipment uses is, and not all of them use replaceable optics modules.

I would strongly agree that if you are running fiber, run single mode everywhere. It is amazing how far singlemode fiber can go compared to copper if you are willing to spend money on the endpoints.

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