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Wiring my home with fiber
81–90 of 305 posts
Re: Wiring my home with fiber
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I always end up green with envy that people seem to have pre-existing conduits in their walls for running new cables. There's no way, in my old house, of doing this without some invasive smashing in to walls. I don't own a house and have never owned a house. This will probably sound stupid and I am sorry if this is something obvious. Is it that my spouse will leave me or my parents will disown me if I run a conduit…
Do I understand correctly you're proposing to just run it on the outside of walls/ceilings? How would you ever again close doors that it needs to go through? My aesthetic requirements are basically zero (to the dismay of my partner indeed; we meet in the middle) but I do want to be able to practically use the apartment still.
> How would you ever again close doors that it needs to go through?
Most interior doors have a gap between the bottom of the door and the top of the floor, and you can cable in the gap if you don't mind the look. If the threshold is carpetted, you can often squish the wire into the seam where the carpet meets the door frame.
You can get one, maybe two, runs into a room that way, so don't put your central switch in a room like that, and if you need more than one drop in a room, put a switch in the room.
Re: Wiring my home with fiber
#83This 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…
What about bi-directional vs running two fibers? Will this increase latency, even if negligible?
Re: Wiring my home with fiber
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Good joke, there are no $35 pis
I made this telegram bot[1] a while back that uses rpilocator.com and will notify you as soon as one is available from an official reseller. Those resellers should be selling them at the regular price. But yes, if you want to buy one right now, it won't be $35.
Re: Wiring my home with fiber
#85While I like the idea I do not like much fiber or to be more precise their live stuff, since they degrade far faster than copper. A copper switch might work well for 10+ years, and since at home we normally not need such extreme performances and these days 2.5GBE on cat 8.1 copper are relatively cheap and common... Sure, it's very "blinkenlichten" but...
Fiber degradation is a problem after 30-40 years, not really something to take into consideration
Re: Wiring my home with fiber
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
You have to have a wire installed in the first place(i.e coax or just a simple thin but strong wire). That wire is installed when you install the walls/gypsum. Then you use it to pull whatever you need(hdmi etc). When you pull the new wire(hdmi) you attach an additional wire at the tip so that you can pull back your initial wire once your new HDMI is in place. If you don't have an initial wire installed you can use a…
> You have to have a wire installed in the first place(i.e coax or just a simple thin but strong wire). That wire is installed when you install the walls/gypsum. Unfortunately, in my experience of 6 or 7 new builds in the last 15 years or so, coaxial cables are usually staples to the studs and useless for this purpose.
>> Unfortunately, in my experience of 6 or 7 new builds in the last 15 years or so, coaxial cables are usually staples to the studs and useless for this purpose.
Well, that's part of the fun/job. Usually you end-up with a few holes as well so you try to get hold of anything that helps you, "one inch" at a time.
As always, the easy way to deal with this is to let someone else do the job(hire a pro/custom installer).
Re: Wiring my home with fiber
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I always end up green with envy that people seem to have pre-existing conduits in their walls for running new cables. There's no way, in my old house, of doing this without some invasive smashing in to walls. I don't own a house and have never owned a house. This will probably sound stupid and I am sorry if this is something obvious. Is it that my spouse will leave me or my parents will disown me if I run a conduit…
Do I understand correctly you're proposing to just run it on the outside of walls/ceilings? How would you ever again close doors that it needs to go through? My aesthetic requirements are basically zero (to the dismay of my partner indeed; we meet in the middle) but I do want to be able to practically use the apartment still.
The interior doors in most houses that I have seen have wooden frames in which it is very easy to make holes for passing cables. Some newer houses might have door frames made of plastic or metal, instead of wood, but even in such cases it is much easier to make a clean hole through the door frame, instead of through a wall.
I have made many such holes in door frames for passing Ethernet cables or TV coaxial cables.
When you do not want to touch the walls, such cables can be routed on the edges between walls and floor and they can be masked by a cover having the wall color, to be invisible, except where passing through a door frame.
Re: Wiring my home with fiber
#88I always end up green with envy that people seem to have pre-existing conduits in their walls for running new cables. There's no way, in my old house, of doing this without some invasive smashing in to walls.
I'm currently in the process of literally tearing down walls in my old house (built in the 40's). I used to fear smashing into walls. Once you do a bit of drywall and mud yourself, you realize it isn't that big of a deal. Everything I've learned has been off YT videos and there are some excellent channels with all of the professional tips and tricks. It isn't rocket science by a long shot.
Yep, this was one of my great enlightenments: no matter how good or professional a wall looks, it's really just drywall mounted on wood, some cracks sealed, and then painted over.
When the walls are off in the house is the best time to get anything done. Sometimes I don't even want to put the walls back on- for example, an unfinished garage with exposed studs is very convenient.
Re: Wiring my home with fiber
#89Awesome project, I did something very similar at home, but used fiber only to connect switches and routers around the house.
PoE is still a must for powering wireless access point and perimeter security cameras.
Re: Wiring my home with fiber
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm currently in the process of literally tearing down walls in my old house (built in the 40's). I used to fear smashing into walls. Once you do a bit of drywall and mud yourself, you realize it isn't that big of a deal. Everything I've learned has been off YT videos and there are some excellent channels with all of the professional tips and tricks. It isn't rocket science by a long shot.
While it's not rocket science, I always find it to be super annoying to do. Getting things smooth/flat when you're done (generally, I think I wind up doing 4-5 layers of mud) takes a fair amount of time. Plus sanding it down without getting the powder everywhere is difficult; I use a wet sander / sand "sponge", but even then I wind up with some of it spreading around.
Drywall is one of those things I've found it is highly worth hiring out. Even if you hang the drywall, hiring someone to tape and mud and sand can be entirely worth it - they do it day in, day out, can use five minute mud, and can get done in a few hours what would take you days or even a week.
Doing small repairs is easy enough that everyone should at least know the concepts involved.