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My Home Fibre Network Disintegrated

alienchow.dev

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Re: My Home Fibre Network Disintegrated

#31

Post by ggm »

bradgessler wrote: post #27

What’s the advantage of using fiber optics for home networking over 10Gbe Ethernet?

Many people believe running fibre between buildings, even in ducts, is safer than running copper because you get opto-isolation from lightning.

The second thing is that domestic buildings usually do not come with a consistent ground plane. I worked in a 1960s build purpose made for mainframes and we had ~48v floating between racks at either end of the building and had to do a shitload of work to reground the building, in the 90s (-we were decommissioning an IBM 3033 and deploying a secondhand cray1) the point being somehow, God knows how, prior rs232 serial wiring didn't care and the ground plane for the mainframe was fine at the time. Pre Ethernet this stuff maybe just passed code.

I suspect people who build their own home to some spec acquire these theories. Data comms? Not much reason tbh unless you're pushing a lot more data than normal.

Re: My Home Fibre Network Disintegrated

#32

Post by alienchow »

bradgessler wrote: post #27

What’s the advantage of using fiber optics for home networking over 10Gbe Ethernet?

It's one of those "just because" moments. The idea was to future proof my home infra for a 25G NAS connection. Most ethernet connections tap out at 10G. While theoretically speaking Cat 8 cables can do 40G, hardware support for full 40G Cat 8 NICs is rare. Fibre is very very flexible with its potential bandwidth and SFP28 transceivers are relatively affordable (if you don't do what I did by using SMF. Home networks should only use MMF if the property isn't a mansion.)

Re: My Home Fibre Network Disintegrated

#33

Post by nevi-me »

I sympathise with burying cables that you think are for life, only to need to replace them later.

We ran fibre cables in the ceiling when constructing our house. I requested the electrician to shield the cables with some tubing, but he probably thought I was being extreme. We have 9 cables, 2 of them don't work, likely from being bent by mistake or something.

The wiring is intermixed with electrical and ethernet (for cameras) cables, making the process a bit tricky. At least for us we might only have to cut the ceiling boards in a few places to help guide the replacement cables.

Re: My Home Fibre Network Disintegrated

#36

Post by mixologic »

alienchow wrote: post #6
johnboiles wrote: post #2

That seems incredibly fast for plastic to degrade like that. I wonder if you could have something generating ozone in there.

I'm not sure either. It's not an air tight bomb shelter and it's used like an average storeroom, storing stuff like winter jackets, suitcases and paint. I do use small amounts of Calcium Chloride based dessicants to keep the room dry.

Have you checked for Radon?

Re: My Home Fibre Network Disintegrated

#37

Post by FireBeyond »

bradgessler wrote: post #27

What’s the advantage of using fiber optics for home networking over 10Gbe Ethernet?

For me, it was for a nearly 100ft run that try as I may to get a good termination, I'd often find my Mac Studio and Ubiquiti EdgeSwitch struggle to negotiate at more than 5gbps. So I got a smaller switch upstairs, ran 10GbE to it, approximately 10ft, and then ran OM-3 fiber for the 100ft up into my attic, across my house and down into the garage. Rock solid at 10 Gbps.

Re: My Home Fibre Network Disintegrated

#39

Post by Infernal »

jandrese wrote: post #13

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 thi…

Your car wouldn’t happen to be a Volvo would it?
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