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If you get the chance, always run more extra network fiber cabling

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Re: If you get the chance, always run more extra network fiber cabling

#201

Post by sponaugle »

avidiax wrote: post #88
stronglikedan wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And if one "goes bad", you still can't run a new one, unless you have a pullstring. The one that went bad is the pullstring.

> The one that went bad is the pullstring. That works for short runs, but for long runs, the only way to pull the cable without breaking it is to use wire pulling lubricant. And there's no guarantee that the cable you are pulling is undamaged. Rats don't improve pull strength, and even an electrically good cable can have the tensile strength cord severed. If you are in that situation, pulling the old cable with dried…

This is correct - I have pull strings in my conduits at my house for that reason. Pulling fiber down my 1000ft driveway would be difficult to do if the pull string was another fiber.

You can pull a new pull string in empty conduit pretty easily with a shop vac and a ziploc bag.

Re: If you get the chance, always run more extra network fiber cabling

#202

Post by SeaGully »

bhouston wrote: post #14

Yeah, we got a new house built 4 years ago and one of the biggest regrets is not enough ethernet outlets (running fibre in the house isn't practical yet) and power outlets in various places. It is really hard to think of all the places you would want them ahead of time unfortunately and as each has a cost you don't want to incur it unnecessarily. But my biggest regrets were: - Only a single ethernet port in the basem…

For anyone else reading personally ceiling APs can't be overstated. My father-in-law is crazy about internet, but I've realized he was crazy like a fox when we did our to-the-studs renovation. He treated APs like a fire alarm or a CO monitor: one per room.

My brother-in-law thinks he's crazy, and obviously it only really works if it is practical to run the wire and you can afford the number, but for my relatively small house it is insane how little I think about my internet. It is one of those quality of life things I never would have realized with having someone come and do it for me.

I guess the only thing is some of the ceilings get a little crowded with lights + fire alarm + CO alarm + HVAC in/out + AP, so for small rooms it can be a challenge to figure out where to put things. But in that case I mean ... you don't need one per room. My father-in-law is crazy like a fox ... but he's also a little crazy like a crazy person.

Re: If you get the chance, always run more extra network fiber cabling

#203

Post by sponaugle »

bhouston wrote: post #14

Yeah, we got a new house built 4 years ago and one of the biggest regrets is not enough ethernet outlets (running fibre in the house isn't practical yet) and power outlets in various places. It is really hard to think of all the places you would want them ahead of time unfortunately and as each has a cost you don't want to incur it unnecessarily. But my biggest regrets were: - Only a single ethernet port in the basem…

These are great and common regrets in house wiring. I'm actually recording a video series on this exact topic right now. There are some things in electrical that are so easy and cheap to do but just get skipped over. Electricians are typically very very cheap (in a good for you the consumer way). However this tends to lead to under-building in a modern tech house.

Re: If you get the chance, always run more extra network fiber cabling

#204

Post by traceroute66 »

runjake wrote: post #191

If you have the choice, always run single-mode. It’s infinitely more scalable than multimode and the price is on-par. Around here, SMF is currently cheaper. SMF optics are single digit dollars more expensive than MMF optics, if you use third-party modules. And you might as well use them because your SP does. In my experience they’re better built and more reliable (longer lasting and lower failure rate. n=1000s of mod…

> In my experience they’re better built and more reliable (longer lasting and lower failure rate. n=1000s of modules) than first-party Cisco optics

And for the typical price of a Cisco optic you can buy two third-party optics. So now you have a spare. :)

Re: If you get the chance, always run more extra network fiber cabling

#205

Post by traceroute66 »

sponaugle wrote: post #199

In a home buildout, running fiber is surprisingly inexpensive and easy to do. There is one area to watch out for - In most US homes drywall is installed with screws that go into studs so if you have large bundles of wire or fiber be careful how the sit relative to the surface of the studs. Often the drywall screws will be off by a bit an miss the stud. If you wire bundle is large enough and it is a 2x4 wall vs a 2x6…

> Using armored fiber can help this a bit

You can also get bend-resilient unarmored fibre. Its what the incumbent telcos use when they send out their monkeys (sorry "engineers") who've been on a 4-hour afternoon course on how to install fibre before being let loose. Old copper "that'll do" install habits die hard in the telco world.

Re: If you get the chance, always run more extra network fiber cabling

#206

Post by vikingerik »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #170
travisjungroth wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s also come to mean the densest part of any city. Even the town I group up in would call the densest part “downtown”, even though the only buildings taller than two stories were city hall and the historic theater.

Today I learned! I always thought "downtown" and "uptown" were more like "south from X" and "north from X" where X is some reference point in context (e.g. "where I'm standing"). Turns out, it's more similar to "downwell" and "upwell", i.e. towards or away from some central point (gravity wells being spherical-ish and all).

Uptown can mean anything out of: geographically north, upstream on a river, higher elevation, or higher income and wealth of the residents.

It just so happens that for Manhattan which is the most famous uptown, all four of those indicators point in the same direction. In general I think an area would more likely be called an uptown if it met more of those criteria relative to some downtown. (And there would be correlation, wealthier residents would buy higher-elevation land.)

Re: If you get the chance, always run more extra network fiber cabling

#207

Post by traceroute66 »

pavelstoev wrote: post #144
msarrel wrote: post #4

Yup, always run extra everything. At least you can splice fiber now. And be careful of the minimum bend radius. Once, in the 90s, we were having intermittent network failures in our data center. I kept trying to troubleshoot it with the fluke, but the problem kept moving. When I pulled up the raised floor, I discovered that rats were eating the exterior sheath of the network cables. That was some fun troubleshooting!

And clean the fiber connector ends with a special cloth or cleaning liquid. Once, I had an intermittent link due to dust particles. Fun fact 1: When you don't have a proper OTDR fiber tester to check for breaks, you can shine a laser pointer down the fiber and see it projected out on a sheet of paper on the other end (you might have to call the person on the other end). Fun fact 2: If the other end is plugged into a…

> If the other end is plugged into a transceiver, don't look at the fiber end directly

Let me fix that for you.

Don't look at the fiber end directly, always assume it is plugged in unless you can see the other end yourself with your own eyes.

Fibre light meters can be bought cheaply for a basic troubleshooting bag kit-out if you don't fancy splashing out on a fancy device.

Re: If you get the chance, always run more extra network fiber cabling

#208

Post by runjake »

traceroute66 wrote: post #204
runjake wrote: post #191

If you have the choice, always run single-mode. It’s infinitely more scalable than multimode and the price is on-par. Around here, SMF is currently cheaper. SMF optics are single digit dollars more expensive than MMF optics, if you use third-party modules. And you might as well use them because your SP does. In my experience they’re better built and more reliable (longer lasting and lower failure rate. n=1000s of mod…

> In my experience they’re better built and more reliable (longer lasting and lower failure rate. n=1000s of modules) than first-party Cisco optics And for the typical price of a Cisco optic you can buy two third-party optics. So now you have a spare. :)

From the last quote I got, I could buy almost 10 third-party Fs.com optics for the price of a Cisco OEM optic ($2,500 vs $250). And the FS.com seem to be manufactured more durably. And have a lower failure rate.

Re: If you get the chance, always run more extra network fiber cabling

#209

Post by massysett »

ghaff wrote: post #160
jaxn wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe in an apartment. In a house, you want wired backhaul on access points, and wired streaming devices.

Why? Is this an actual problem? I have a bunch of wired connections (or at least had) but I'm not sure I ever saw a difference and I'm certainly not going to spend time or money retrofitting them for some Platonic ideal--ADDED, at least in recent years or outside of specific situations.

Latency. WiFi latency can spike which ruins video calls. Simple speed (given lots of time) on the other hand is rarely a problem.

There’s also the problem of sometimes, video calls just stutter and seize up and it’s the internet’s fault, not the local network. But with a wired connection, I am immediately confident the problem is not in my network. With WiFi, who knows, maybe it’s my fault. I used to continuously ping the router so I could verify this, and indeed ping spikes would happen. Now with a wired connection I don’t worry about this.

But yeah if you run no latency-sensitive applications, WiFi might be fine.

Re: If you get the chance, always run more extra network fiber cabling

#210

Post by traceroute66 »

mrheosuper wrote: post #161
Dylan16807 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It takes less force to bend, though.

could be solved by running reinforce wire along it

> could be solved by running reinforce wire along it

You could, but you might as well just use armoured fibre if you're doing that !

Some of the low core-count CSTA stuff out there these days could almost have you thinking its unarmored if you didn't know. Not at all bulky.

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