Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

My Home Fibre Network Disintegrated

alienchow.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 237 posts

Re: My Home Fibre Network Disintegrated

#12

Post by defrost »

> A main component of why I was in sheer horror was the fact that I had stupidly buried all of these cables under my cement flooring in PVC trunking from my shelter to all of the rooms in the flat.

This I don't quite get .. as I understand it "PVC trunking" is a type of cable channeling / ducting.

I do a lot of cable and pipe layout around houses, farms, workshops, worksites, etc. and it's routine to use pipes / ducting / channels to allow other cables to be threaded through after or to replace bad cables.

As much as cable deterioration sucks it should be a relief to have ducting to pull good through after the bad.

Re: My Home Fibre Network Disintegrated

#13

Post by jandrese »

Looking at the pictures it looks like the fiber itself might be inside of that spiral metal conduit in the middle and the outside is just abrasion protection. There are way too many strands for that outside bit to be the fiber. It's obviously bad that the outside plastic disintegrated, but it looks like the buried cables might be fine.

I have a similar problem on my car where the 12v wiring is disintegrating like this because the manufacturer tried to switch to a more environmentally friendly wiring. Now the wire jackets turn to dust at the slightest touch or if they vibrate too much. I'm forever tracking down intermittent shorts in the wiring harness.

Re: My Home Fibre Network Disintegrated

#14

Post by alienchow »

defrost wrote: post #12

> A main component of why I was in sheer horror was the fact that I had stupidly buried all of these cables under my cement flooring in PVC trunking from my shelter to all of the rooms in the flat. This I don't quite get .. as I understand it "PVC trunking" is a type of cable channeling / ducting. I do a lot of cable and pipe layout around houses, farms, workshops, worksites, etc. and it's routine to use pipes / duct…

The electricians mentioned that in order to curve the cables along underneath the floor tiling they couldn't use metal trunking which would cause sharp angles, so they used PVC pipes to do curvy trunking for the fibre cables. I could theoretically pull a new cable through by ripping out the wall outlet if this cable actually fails. You can see it in my earlier homelab post. But due to the length of the trunking and the number of bends, I'm not too sure if I can safely drag a new fibre cable through.

But yeah, maybe it's not that bad after all. I hope it won't get to that point.

Re: My Home Fibre Network Disintegrated

#15

Post by kev009 »

There are very survivable fiber cables designed for stage and A/V setups for instance, and even "real" military grade ones. But the common thin LZSH stuff is surprisingly resilient in my experience, so long as it didn't kink the OP would probably have been fine with a "standard" cable. In any case I would always try to place fiber in a place where it can be re-pulled.. conduit, tray, or a plenum.

I bought a big spool of 6 strand Corning stuff a long time ago for various projects, the cost and diameter don't increase much to add some protection lines even if you never imagine using them they can save you a re-pull if you bugger something up in construction.

Re: My Home Fibre Network Disintegrated

#16

Post by somat »

russdill wrote: post #4

If you buy a consumer product labeled "military grade" you are buying snake oil. And not just snake oil, incredibly over priced snake oil.

Military-grade just means it has a spec, now, I will admit having a spec is nice, very nice. but in general it says little about the actual quality of the item. And if the spec can't be found or there is no spec. Probably best to stay away, in those cases they are not even selling you the snake oil but the sound of it sloshing in the bottle.

Re: My Home Fibre Network Disintegrated

#17

Post by 1970-01-01 »

russdill wrote: post #4

If you buy a consumer product labeled "military grade" you are buying snake oil. And not just snake oil, incredibly over priced snake oil.

Exactly. It's a very successful marketing play on MIL-SPEC:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Military_Standar...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_grade

Re: My Home Fibre Network Disintegrated

#18

Post by defrost »

alienchow wrote: post #14
defrost wrote: post #12

> A main component of why I was in sheer horror was the fact that I had stupidly buried all of these cables under my cement flooring in PVC trunking from my shelter to all of the rooms in the flat. This I don't quite get .. as I understand it "PVC trunking" is a type of cable channeling / ducting. I do a lot of cable and pipe layout around houses, farms, workshops, worksites, etc. and it's routine to use pipes / duct…

The electricians mentioned that in order to curve the cables along underneath the floor tiling they couldn't use metal trunking which would cause sharp angles, so they used PVC pipes to do curvy trunking for the fibre cables. I could theoretically pull a new cable through by ripping out the wall outlet if this cable actually fails. You can see it in my earlier homelab post. But due to the length of the trunking and t…

I feel for you & yeah, fingers crossed :-)

One of my love / hates is Australian parrots and cockatoos - fantastic birds, noisy as hell - and they can rip out and shred unprotected wiring from rural camera and sensor systems like winged can openers.

Re: My Home Fibre Network Disintegrated

#19

Post by userbinator »

The link to the product says "TPU outer jacket". That's thermoplastic polyurethane, which is well known for degrading via hydrolysis:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyurethane#Hydrolysis_and_bi...

...so it is a bit amusing to see "TPU Jacket Features Water, Abrasion Resistance" in the product description. PVC or PE would be far better and more common.

Post reply on HN