Gives me fiber for bandwidth and copper for PoE. Figured it was smarter to do both than compromise to either one, and surprisingly the fiber was cheaper than the copper to pull.
It shouldn't be that much different in price to run fiber verse running cat6. The expensive part is the labor, not the cable.
Ethernet specs are for cabling in dense conduit. Most people don't have dense conduit in their house. Much cable tests better than the rating on the jacket.
Four-fibre cable was about US$ 1.5/m (here in Switzerland, I am sure cheaper elsewhere).
I picked ONTi JT-S508CL-8S as the main 10G fibre switch (direct from Ali, for about 100 bucks).
For wired Ethernet and PoE, I have a couple of KeepLink KP-9000-9XHPML-X switches (I paid about 60 buck for each, they seem to cost around $85 now). I find that they work well and use them for 10/100/1000/2500 GbE switching and to power various devices (other switches, U7-Pro-XGS AP, Zigbee dongle, home automation server, rack fans etc).
The main splice box was about 60 bucks, 24 pigtails included.
From memory, 10G SFP+ fibre modules were about ten bucks apieces. (DAC cables are cheaper, 10G copper transceivers are more expensive.)
Plus various paraphenalia (wall face plates, keystone modules, more pigtails etc), all of which was pretty cheap.
Note that I was able to borrow a fusion splicer from a friend. Otherwise they seem to start at around 500 bucks; buying one would have been the single biggest expense.
I also run a 25G path from one point in my flat to my ISP. The cabling is exactly the same but 25G switching equipment and optics are considerably more expensive and less available than 10G.
I particularly like per-pert PoE power monitoring on the RTL837x. I hooked that up to my netdata to get a full history of how much each device in my rack is drawing. Don't need a fancy PDU or separate power bricks for each device -- everything is powered by the $60 switch.
(This is a home network and I'm not at all bothered about single points of failure or lack of redundancy/failover.)
If we're not accounting for switches, we're talking maybe few hundred euros at most including cables and outlets both for fiber and CAT6A, maybe 400-500 total or so where majority was CAT6A since I opted for the more _industrial one_, includes 150 I paid for help to run the cables through conduits. Fiber was all patch from distribution to walls, and trunk mainlines are _industrial_ fibers where in a single small diameter cable you have 48 strands of single mode. Actually in one I have 72 strands since guys didn't have 48 at the time and diameter is the same and price difference was small. This is for a three story house + basement and a run to the garage. I did the crimping myself, you do NOT "crimp" fiber yourself.. you get pre-made cables or for trunks you ask for pros with equipment to splice/fuse it for you.
Network equipment is a range of course. I opted for dream machine gateway for net and then the backbone is Switch pro XG Aggregation where most equipment is at with Switch Pro XG 10 PoE for APs (has dual 10GBit uplink), and a few smaller switches on the edges like Flex 2.5G for cameras etc. Yeah, I went full ubiquiti on that one and my mainline is basically 25Gb network, but it doesn't matter and that's the beauty of this setup - I could've easily gone full 1Gbit, 10, 25, 100, 400, even Nvidia/Mellanox 800Gbit OSFP with appropriate transcievers if one wants to go way overboard. Idea was to run this through to be future-proof cable-wise for another 10+ years (probably more), and for network setup to be for next 10 years (probably more) with 10/25G.
100G on singlemode (100G-LR4 being the most common) uses the well-known two-strand ("duplex") fiber. Or you can get 100G bi-directional ("BiDi") over a single strand of singlemode (fiber-to-the-home often uses this).
100G on multimode is weird. As the name implies, one beam of light, sent down the core of a multimode fiber, results in multiple modes (search "Laser modes") being sent down the strand. As they overlap, it gets hard to get a clean signal out the other end.
To deal with this issue, 100G on multimode uses fiber cables containing multiple strands per direction of travel. MPO-8 and MPO-12 are common cables used for 100G multimode: It contains eight or twelve strands of fiber. Four strands are used to send, four to receive. And the prices for those cables are higher than standard duplex singlemode cable.
The math worked out just to move to single mode a decade ago
OS2 transceivers are not that expensive anymore with the rise in third-party modules: sure, first-party, OEM SKUs are pricey, but a home user is not going to go that route.
Standard /r/networking advice is to go single-mode basically everywhere due to price drops over the last 10+ years.
The sibling posts have already pointed out the pricing has mostly equalized at this point too, especially if you're more realistic and look at 10G or 25G. (Or just buy a pile of used 100G CWDM4 transceivers off eBay.)
What do you mean by "trunk which is available in three locations"?
Usually cabling is home-run to a single, central patch panel. A cable (fibre, copper) would usually have one end in a room's wall outlet, with the other end at a patch panel: how would you have a cable one end at three locations? Do you have three patch panels? I.e., three hubs, with the room cables going to one hub and then you can have hub-to-hub runs?
In principle it sounds simple, but in practice I got lost in my own way too many times. Just glad that it's over, hahah.
A switch differs from a hub, a patch panel differs from a hub. Hopefully you haven’t touched one since affordable fast Ethernet switches hit the consumer market.
My 10 gigabit thunderbolt dongle weighs about a pound, and I think 90+% of that weight is just heatsink. If I've had it plugged in for awhile, if I accidentally touch that dongle it actually hurts because it's so hot. I cannot image that much heat is good for, well, anything.
I have another Thunderbolt dongle that has an SFP+ module, so I ran a fiber line from my switch to my computer, and that runs considerably cooler. That's what I use nowadays.
To be clear the Cat6a is thicker than Cat6 and harder to work with. It makes termination a bit more tricky.
The cables themselves don't get too hot, but the dongles themselves seem to get really hot. I'm assuming that's a known issue given the size of the heatsinks on them.
If you use a DAC they usually run cool, and optical is even cooler.
DACs are copper, and they're happy.
> I have another Thunderbolt dongle that has an SFP+ module, so I ran a fiber line from my switch to my computer, and that runs considerably cooler. That's what I use nowadays.
This is also what I am doing, and I love it. Much better and more reliable than WLAN. I want as much wired as possible.
However... recently, Realtek released several products adding cheap, affordable, low-power 10 gbit SFP+ and PCIe copper (even certain for routers/switches, too). STH did reviews: they're performing. Specific chipset are: RTL8127, RTL8127AP (servers, with management), RTL8127ATF (fiber, no 10/100 mbit)), RTL8127AT (idem, but copper), RTL8159 (USB-C), RTL8261C (SFP+ copper, and media converter). See the examples here: [1]. I've already seen various been selling since ~December on AliExpress, especially copper RTL8127 variants (back then, even one RTL 10 gbit PCIe SFP+ variant). There appears to be one caveat: macOS isn't supported, Windows and Linux are.
I get the case for PoE, but PoE is apparently not as power-friendly as using a dedicated charger. I do find it much more elegant though.
Edit: I'd like to add that I've been having good success with Aquantia AQC100S which I use in my desktop (running Linux, and using a SFP+ for 10 gbit fiber), as well as a Sonnet TB3 (to SFP+ for 10 gbit fiber, running macOS M1 MBP). Both don't get hot, don't use a lot of power, and the connections saturate. Mind you, it is important to specifically go for the AQC100S and not the AQC107 or AQC113 which are both much more common. Both use more power. Because I got good success with these, and my router is sporting a X710 4 port SFP+ NIC (which could be more efficient, to be fair, but it is what it is) I am no longer interested myself in any alternatives. I'm settled.
[1] https://www.techpowerup.com/337113/realtek-to-bring-affordab...
Yeah, but DACs are pretty short and tend to have much thicker cables than regular copper Ethernet.
Well come on. GP really means category cable (twisted pair copper) is not happy at 10Gb distribution lengths (so-called horizontal cabling, although in a home it may span multiple floors without IDFs). That's kind of obvious context.
DACs are not category cable; they are twinax, short, and bulky.
If PoE required: use copper twisted pair.
If both sides SFP+ (preferred, but not always possible):
Physical presence: DAC (very cheap).
Not physical presence (e.g. has to go through wall, floor, or longer distance): fiber (OM3 are very cheap but apparently the color being translucent is regarded as nice).
Else: copper twisted pair.
I've applied this on my (rental) house. One server has a 10 gbit copper twisted pair NIC because it also has a PCIe switch with M.2 storage on the same physical PCIe board. Two WLAN APs are powered by switch in fusebox. The Unifi Protect appliance is also powered by twisted pair copper. But I was also able to get an OM3 fiber through the same wall hole.
And always terminate at walls. So if a cable in house goes bad, the one through the wall or the socket is unaffected. Works with both fiber and twisted pair copper.
You can already notice it in this post. DAC barely is part of the content. It is fire and forget, no caveats, lowest latency and lowest power usage. So it tends to be forgotten, but a DAC cable is useful if both devices got physical (vicinity) presence. An alternative could be networking over TB.
The floors where native fibre is not needed have a cheap ethernet media converter from fs.com, everything else (3 floor switches) are interconnected with 10Gbps SFP+ modules and 2.5G ethernet for the hosts.
All done thanks to the great https://michael.stapelberg.ch/posts/2020-08-09-fiber-link-ho...
(if you are reading this, I owe you several beers)
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10_Gigabit_Ethernet#10GBASE-T
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet_over_twisted_pair#Var...
Why the need for faffing about with media convertors, at least with-in your domicile? (Fibre outside / to the garage certainly makes sense.)
For all the benefits I mentioned above, plus no electrostatic shielding required, and all fibers end in a CRS310-8G+2S+IN.
Is answered in the comment you responded to:
> because the off ramp is clearly happening for ethernet at 10gbit/s
As for
> because that is what devices such as PCs and WiFi access points use
We are looking to the future. If you're putting stuff in the walls, then you should try to target something that will be adequate both today, and in 10 years from now.
Increasingly, prosumer stuff is including an SFP port. High end PCs will be shipping it in the near future, as well. And, while low-power chips are coming out, the simple fact is that physics are getting in the way.
I do think that the average home won't need more than 2.5gbps, pretty much indefinitely (an 8k video at "bluray quality" is about at most 5% of that bandwidth). But if you have any desire of going past 10gbps, Ethernet is not going to cut it.
And yes, before you ask, there is a 25gbase-t standard. Maximum distance: 30m (100ft). 100ft from panel to panel in a house? Oof.
Not to mention termination and interference considerations, etc. When I looked at it, I decided anything over 2.5g just wasnt worth all the extra hassle vs running fiber instead.
Yeah I'm not seeing a need for fiber or anything more than CAT6. Most household devices use WiFi and I think that will continue. People don't like wires. They're unsightly, collect dust, get tripped over, etc.
I already have coax cable and telephone wiring in my walls that's unused. One computer in my house has a wired network connection. Everything else, TVs, laptops, printers, phones, tablets, miscellaneous "things" are all WiFi.
In my house though, everything except printers, phones and laptops uses Ethernet. It just works and it's better.
Hell many many people now a days own only a tablet and phone and no desktop/laptop at all.
Someone else in this thread mentioned motherboards with SFP ports on them and I cant believe that will ever be common because people can barely handle the many flavours of cables using USB C, how are they going to manage the mishmash of transceivers that only like specific brands and the DAC cables that may or may not work depending on how they feel that day.
Even server boards often have their SFP in daughter boards specific to the chassis.
This is very useful and actionable information. At the very least I think it will be useful to plug in the mesh WiFi access point thingy if I actually have four pair in there. I will check. Thank you!
You should be running both.
If you are being smart about it your planning distributed switching (fiber to media boxes with power).
From a pure networking stance, fiber is the way to go. But POE continues to have more and more uses (doorbells, cameras, sensors, lighting controls).
How many consumer devices have an ((Q)SFP(+)) optical cage?
If you're in their pulling stuff anyway, sure, do some OS2, but for most people, for most devices, Cat 5e/6 is more useful, especially since you can do POE(+(+)) over it as well. 5e/6 gets you 10GbE to 55m, and 6A to 100m.
One place with two desktops has a switch, although when I finish up some stuff, I'm going to reterminate the phone line that's there as rj45 so both desktops can get 2.5G to my 2.5G switch. Could be sfp+, but they're mini-itx.
The kitchen desktop has its own 2.5G port; the printer next to it is on wifi because I don't want to buy a 2.5g capable switch for them to share. Mini-itx again
My work desktop has 10g-baseT.
Fiber would work for all of that, I guess.
But then I have a tv with just one device on 100base-TX. And the access points don't have spf, and aren't near other equipment.
It is difficult, but possible, to find a SFP+-capable switch where idle consumption scales at around 1W/port, but less than that I have not found.
4G has been enough for a decade, 5G was mostly just an infrastructure and capacity improvement and most consumers could never tell you they notice a difference between the two. The human eye can only see so much resolution, we don't need 8k video. I don't think consumers will need more than what they already have. At least until some new novel media format that gulps down bandwidth comes around.
This isn't necessarily all bad news. There is still a push for higher bandwidth for datacenters etc, which will keep pushing technology forward, hopefully making consumer and ISP grade equipment cheaper.
If I built a house I'd probably run ethernet. Maybe play around with a 10gbe core network. But it wouldn't really give me any benefit, it's not like disks are that fast anyways.
The upside of this is that you can increase bandwidth as the technology evolves without needing to rerun cables anytime a new specification is created for high-speed copper. OM5 fiber can do up to 400Gbps for short distances. Maybe in the future you can bundle a few pairs up and have a remote GPU sitting somewhere.
The downside is that you may need MCs, but they are small and can be hidden in wall outlets.
[1] https://stefan.schueller.net/posts/wiring-a-home-with-fiber/
For majority of home usage it will all be WiFi. WiFi 7 has gotten to the point where prosumers are happy with its performance. WiFi 8 and 9 will further improve in that direction for reliability and speed.
With PoE, router and everything else Ethernet is still clearly the easiest choice. And as mentioned we now have sub 2W 10Gbps Ethernet. What will likely happen is that 10Gbps becomes like 1Gbps Ethernet, it will stay here for 10-20 years until something happen in the future that needs extra bandwidth.
May be in 10 years time 10Gbps could be done under 1W.
Do you mean Ethernet cables get hot? Or just the networking equipment pushing that data.
I ask because I’ve never heard of Ethernet cables getting hot.
Before specifying fibre everywhere I suggest you note that a CAT 6 cable can manage 10G and PoE++. Its a lot more resilient to breakage too, especially outside the data centre.
If you really want to blow some cash there is CAT6A, which is probably not indicated unless you want cable lengths of more than say 50m.
Often that will mean running both Cat6A and fiber.