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Comment by mmastrac | Hacker News Reader

If you have any way to pull cables between floors, try pulling DAC cables. They give you 10+G, require no splicing (hardware can be found cheap now), and generally just work as you'd expect.

With a 10G backbone, you can get away with basement->main and main->upstairs in a three-floor house, with a small bridge on your main floor.

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There is no reason to pull DAC when fiber has gotten cheap. Singlemode fiber is cheap enough now that isn't worth doing multimode fiber. You can get pre-terminated fiber that is easier to pulling whole DAC transceiver.

DAC is still useful for within rack.

True, though what I like about DAC is that there's far less risk of optical surface damage.

Sure there's ESD risk but I find that much easier to manage.

> If you have any way to pull cables between floors, try pulling DAC cables.

Many of my devices take 10G ethernet, like MacMini and my MacBook Air docking station. Is there an easy way to convert from DAC to 10G Ethernet? The desktop has an SPF+ card so that will take DAC no problem.

Unfortunately there is no way to pull an any cables easily. But someone else suggested replaceable baseboards that hide cable runs, I should look into that.

I don’t know any media converter that would work for that but you can get a Thunderbolt SFP+ ethernet adapter. For example: https://www.sonnettech.com/product/solo10g-sfp-tb3/overview....

10G media converters are available for < $50 USD, but TBH I've never used one.

Why DAC cables over Cat6a or Cat7

They are the lowest power way to connect SFP. And they are cheap.

Though I'm not sure I would pull them as they tend to max out at around 6-7 meters. I use them to connect systems within the same rack/room.

Floor to floor in a house isn't too bad with 6-7m, but I suppose there's always the AOC cables that are 20m+.

10G Ethernet seems to be really hot, all my SPF+ connectors are hot, my TP-Link 10G switch is hot. It seems not be efficient anymore in that regards.

While my 10G fiber and 10G SPF+ DAC cables are perfectly cool.

I hope this is temporary but 10G Ethernet seems hot. I haven't seen anyone write on this topic yet but it is my findings.

It is well known that copper 10G runs hot. Use DAC or fiber if you want run cool

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