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Comment by vicek22 | Hacker News Reader

- 1km of fiber optic cable - https://www.amazon.com/Jeirdus-Launch-Singlemode-Measuring-O... - 1Gb modem - https://www.amazon.com/TP-Link-Ethernet-Converter-Multi-Mode...

The price for two modems and the cable is just under $120

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You linked unterminated single-mode fiber and a dual-fiber multi-mode media converter, you can't actually use these together.

You need something more like this:

- Terminated single-mode fiber: https://www.fs.com/products/74355.html?attribute=255&id=3029...

- 2x SFP transceivers: https://www.fs.com/products/75335.html

- 2x media converters (or NICs): https://www.fs.com/products/96396.html

The price is over $200.

Wouldn't cost of burying that cable be like 50x of that anyway?

These solutions for things like IP-over-copper-pair are typically designed for situations where you already have the cable buried or strung on poles or whatever - so the choice isn't whether to lay new copper or lay new fiber at roughly equal expense, its really whether to use the existing copper or lay the new fiber at much greater expense

Thank you, this wasn’t clicking for me until I read this. Of course there are countless places with a dead phone line hanging between them.

Or a fat old conduit that you can run a new wire through...

I can't imagine a scenario where you already have a 1km long conduit that doesn't already have copper or fibre in it. Why would you choose to push a kilometre of brand new copper twisted pair line down an existing conduit just to squeeze 10 Mbps out of it? The hard part is already done and fibre equipment is pretty cheap.

If the conduit already has a phone line in it that isn't being used, sure.

In the context of the current thread, I'd say that's fair. If you're talking urban infrastructure, my understanding is that things are good until the existing (fairly large) conduits fill up, and then everything stops until someone digs up the street for blocks and blocks.

Do you happen to know, for these long conduits is it typical to do a solid run or to put access panels at regular intervals? If you're running a new cable are you actually trying to run a 1km snake through a pipe, a 100m snake 10 times, 50m x20, or something in between?.

I've never seen anyone run a 1km cable, but I've seen buildings be rewired with tens of kilometers of new cables a couple times.

If you look closely in the parent’s fiber product photo (last picture), the seller providing the connector for free.

Nitpick, I don't think you're going to just run bare fiber outdoors, not even indoors. You would need to first run your own ducting/conduit and then have the equipment to pressure force the raw line through the shielding. So, much more expensive. But you can get outdoor rated cable with moisture absorbing gel for not too much I believe (struggling to find a price). Some even come with wire-mesh already attached in the event you have to hang it between elevated positions (like telephone poles). But you would need all of that for a copper run outdoors as well so it doesn't change your point.

Back to your point, fiber came to my mind as well. Why bother running CAT5/6 when you can just run fiber? Maybe its meant for existing infrastructure? But if that's the case, what was utilizing that infra before? Is it just in cases where you happen to have phone lines running between buildings?

what does 'pressure force the raw line through the shielding' means ?

Blowing the fibre or cable with compressed air through the empty 'speed pipes'.

As in one end of the fibre is connected to some sort of plug, while the rest is on a spool, the plug is then inserted into a narrow pipe, and pushed through it by pressure.

Pick any: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=blown+fibre+ins...

You can also buy 50km on that page! But the fiber is raw (unprotected) so I would think that its not usable to run outdoors?

A 1km reel of unsheathed 9/125um single fiber strand would last maybe about one minute during installation before it snapped.

1KM of fiber cable for $60 seems crazy cheap when you contrast it with 3D printer filement. More so as I'd of thought the former be more expensive to manufacture.

Fiber is generally laid just once. But the filament is a recurring cost to consumers so it provides more value to businesses ... and therefore more opportunity for a higher demand and higher price.

Does seem very much that the whole 3D filement market just needs one disruptive supplier. Which often happens when you have high-margin consumables markets. Which with the ink printer market saw makes of the printers introduce DRM into the consumables - something I don't see happing with 3D filement though, so could be interesting.

That all said, I see that there are products that can convert your plastic bottles into 3D printer filement - https://3devo.wpmudev.host/filament-makers/

There aren't that many types of fiber optic cable, the actual cable diameter is extremely small (single mode might have 9µm core), and the product is used in large quantities by price-sensitive, sophisticated consumers doing large-scale capital investments. Ethernet cable is also very cheap.

3D filament is a consumable, like paper!

I think this is more a usecase for places where you already have a copper cable available (eg. telephone cable between buildings). If you have to dig and pull a new cable, doing fiber is the only logical choice now, but the price for all that is way way above $120.

Yeah, I think there's other considerations like power, overall size, input voltage supply, ease of maintenance etc.

If it's purely down to cost then I don't these modules would compete

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