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Can you use single mode fiber in a house, or do the transceiver only work over much longer distances? Is transceiver burn out an issue?

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You can use SM for short runs, you just have to match the optics to the cable/distance you're looking to use. Tons of very fast single mode optics out there that only expect <300m runs.

That said, it's likely not worth it, given that cabling is typically viewed as a ~10 year investment, and if you're installing OM4 Multimode fiber in a house you're not likely to hit the limit of that fiber within 10 years even in extreme use cases.

But why stop at 10 years? If the theoretical bandwidth limit of SM Fiber is above 100 Gbit/s then there is simply no way that a household will need more internal bandwidth than that. Even for the next 20-30 years, because other technologies (like SATA) will be the limiting factor.

I believe this could be a case of future proofing that will actually last 30-40 years, no?

10 years is the guideline because you can't predict most of the future, but, you can predict the physical wear fairly well. It's likely that the plastic terminations will be iffy by that point basically, which means reterminating, or, running new fiber, and most of the time you'll just run new fiber.

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