
Adding a fiber link to my home network - secure
https://michael.stapelberg.ch/posts/2020-08-09-fiber-link-home-network/
======
yujanshrestha
This is slightly tangential but if you are moving and fiber internet is an
important consideration for you then check out this tool I made to check fiber
connectivity in bulk:

[https://gigahood.com/](https://gigahood.com/)

It also checks within 500 ft of the address. You may be able to trench a fiber
line out yourself at that distance.

~~~
gravypod
Is there any service that will monitor MLS/others and look for houses and
apartments in a price range, within a commute distance (by train or car or
bus), and with internet access?

I think I'd pay for a service that did this.

~~~
zo1
I would build that - but I have a feeling that the realty companies would
prevent and/or fight you for scraping their data. Anyone have experience with
that that can offer some info/advice?

~~~
SpikedCola
I've scraped MLS for personal use to build a very similar tool (draw on a map,
highlight new listings, able to hide listings), and had no technical issues at
all, just a simple curl call. This was a few years ago, though.

------
EvanAnderson
I've used some of the pre-terminated assemblies w/ pulling hardware from these
guys:
[https://www.lanshack.com/PreterminatedAssemblies.aspx](https://www.lanshack.com/PreterminatedAssemblies.aspx)

The pricing is reasonable, especially compared to having a contractor come in
and pull and terminate small, low-count runs, and the results have been very
good for me.

Edit (now that I'm not on a phone): I like these assemblies because I get a
"super power" feeling, being being able to cheaply add fiber runs for special
cases. The most recent one was extending a single-mode campus fiber
termination to a new closet within a building. Loss budget was very high
(because the campus run was fairly short) so we did a simple "glass-to-glass"
patch on one of these assemblies to the new closet. It was going to be a
couple thousand dollars for a contractor to come in and do a proper fusion
splice, but the Customer ended up spending $250 for favorable results.

~~~
baybal2
As I wrote in another post, <1km fibre runs don't need fusion splicing. This
is what I tell all people still insisting on using expensive multimode for
local fibre setup for ease of splicing.

Multimode will start to struggle at distances at which even worst quality
single mode setup will work just fine. I feel SMF has no sense economically
these days.

Low power, single mode SFP transceivers are everywhere now, and in general,
SMF setup is incomparably more future proof.

------
lostlogin
The photos show a lot of cables stuck to walls. I’m surprised people are ok
with this.

Every house I have lived in has done it too and it’s the first thing I rip
out.

I see contractors (usually ISP installers) doing this inside and outside
houses too and it irritates me. UV, animals/insects, wind etc gets at them and
water goes in the holes. The fixings that hold the cable rust/degrade and fall
out.

Doing it right costs more and takes longer but I’m unsure if the cost is
greater when you look back 5-10 years.

Maybe doing this is slightly more repairable if the place is a rental?

~~~
jcrawfordor
You may underestimate the time and effort that can be involved in in-wall
cabling in a retrofit situation... like most in my area I live in a house that
is coming up on 100 years old, while I do my best to run all cables through
walls there are situations where I have to run cables in conduits on the
exterior as the only way to do otherwise would be to resheetrock most of the
ceiling. There's just a cost-benefit analysis here, and most contractors
aren't willing to put in the time (because the customer doesn't want to pay
for the time!) to open up the walls to get access to run cables through them.
Keep in mind that when you consider demolition, hanging sheetrock, texture,
prime, paint, and clean, any cabling situation where walls need to be opened
is probably going to be billed as a full day, and local building/licensing
codes may not allow a low-voltage technician to perform that work, requiring a
builder to be subcontracted.

There are tricks like flexible installer bits that allow for short runs
through-wall without removing the wallboard but you're going to need an access
hole every couple of studs at least... and at that point you're setting
yourself up for so much patching it might be faster to just open up the wall
entirely. You can also use all kinds of wire-pulling tools, I have a 30'
telescoping fiberglass pole that I have used to run cables through
inaccessible attics (flat and shallow roofs common here), but once again, you
get into situations where running the cable for a single surveillance camera
is an 8-hour job! I put up with this for my own house but clients aren't so
happy about it...

And all of this is assuming wood-frame walls which are the norm for interior
walls but exterior in many areas can be brick, adobe, etc., and blown-in
insulation is great for heating bills but can make cable runs in exterior
walls a huge headache.

At the same time, cables run "cable-installer style" (stapled to gables and
run down exterior to straight-through holes) regularly last for over a decade
and are very easy to repair when there are problems and modify when needs
change. It's hard to blame them.

~~~
lowbloodsugar
It cost me $3000 to have a professional run 7 CAT6 cables to every room
throughout my 80 yo house, plus one to the modem, along with wiring proper
earthed power into another four locations or so. The man was not
claustrophobic. Plus less than $500 for another contractor to fill in and
paint the sheetrock that was required in storage rooms. The cables meet in the
basement in a server rack.

It was well worth it to me. I have teenagers and everyone has an Eero in their
room, plus hardwire for the home theater and office.

~~~
lostlogin
That’s a lot of money. I’ve run about that many and while the the material
cost was relatively low, but it has been days of work and a lot of frustration
and mess. I think you picked wisely.

------
aaronax
Can confirm, DIY fiber is not too difficult to figure out yourself. For most
uses outside of an ISP you don't need the super-low loss that you get with a
fusion splicer.

When I needed to wire up a campground and some cabins I studied a couple of
the Fiber Optic Association textbooks and I recommend them as informative and
easy to read. Also it is pretty easy to spend $50-100 over and over again on
"one more tool" to save time and effort.

On a random tangent, DIY fiber topics often makes me think back to a book
about Kevin Mitnick (Takedown I think) where the author describes how he has
fiber running around his house for various reasons. That was pre-1995 which
was when the book was published; I imagine it was much more difficult and
expensive back then.

~~~
madaxe_again
I honestly found it no harder than anything else - I just did a 300m run to an
outbuilding, as 802.11g just wasn’t cutting it, and the project basically
compromised two media converters, a reel of armoured fibre, and a termination
kit - took all of an afternoon to do.

I guess it’s just overkill in most scenarios - but for long runs, you can’t
beat it. I’ve also got a 200m cat6 PoE run with a repeater/voltage booster
halfway down, and it does duplexed gigabit just fine - which even further
limits the scenarios in which fibre is the better option. Even with the
repeater it was cheaper than the fibre alone, never mind the media converters.

------
neilv
This bend-insensitive fiber the article mentions, combined with the narrower
diameter than Cat-6, might make it more practical to run across the tops of
mopboards in my rented apartment.

WiFi speeds are usually OK, but the apartments density is so high here (and
new `xfinitywifi` APs are often popping up on my channel), that I'm almost
ready to move back to cabled for most purposes.

~~~
TD-Linux
If you want thinner than normal Cat6 but can handle a bit more than 0.9mm,
there is also thin Cat6 available:
[https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=34213](https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=34213)

It's 2.6mm diameter, and I had success running it between baseboards and
carpet.

~~~
neilv
Thanks! I'll have to try at least one run of this thin Cat6.

------
daneel_w
What's oddly left out in the article is the detail of whether or not he
already had a network switch with ports supporting more than GbE - the price
for these things start at around 250-300 CHF which would double his suggested
total cost - or if he's just linking two computers together. Personally I
would just go with 2.5GBASE Ethernet and compact-diameter cabling. 2.5GBASE
PCIe cards cost around $15 a pop.

~~~
progman32
QNAP has some fairly cheap routers that have a couple 10GbE ports, like this
one: [https://www.qnap.com/en-us/product/qsw-308-1c](https://www.qnap.com/en-
us/product/qsw-308-1c)

I paid $200 for mine. Not cost-effective if you have more than a couple 10GbE-
capable devices, but great for hooking up a fast NAS to a couple primary
workstations and leaving the rest of the network 1GbE.

~~~
daneel_w
Thanks for the name-drop, the brand was new to me, though it has just regular
GbE ports unless I'm seeing the speeds wrong. 2.5GBASE/5GBASE is something
that would be interesting as it works on regular Cat 5e/6 and 8P8C.

~~~
progman32
I think you're seeing the speeds wrong :P Not all the ports are the same
speed.

> ... providing three 10GbE SFP+ ports (with one 10GbE SFP+/RJ45 combo port)
> and eight Gigabit ports

~~~
daneel_w
No I'm sure I'm reading it right: the 8 ports on the side are the interesting
ones which you can connect your regular wired devices to, as 99.99% of wired
consumer networking is on 8P8C Ethernet, not SFP+.

~~~
lostlogin
I think it’s a different usage you’re thinking of. Presumably you’d like 10Gb
everywhere, while the article and OP are presumably aiming to link a cor
switch or high usage device (NAS) at 10Gb while everything else remains 1Gb.

~~~
daneel_w
I'd like anything over 1Gbit/s within the LAN, between all of the LAN clients.
2.5G is a very affordable drop-in compatible upgrade - plain Ethernet cables
and PCIe cards - but I've been having problems finding a decent SoHo switch
with 2.5G+ ports. The QSW-1105-5T recommended in this thread seems like a good
solution.

------
richardw
I’m looking at using fiber and media converters to connect 7 houses and 2
entrances in a security estate. Main reason is to get IP cameras (and shared
access to them) at various points but reduce the impact a lightning strike
would have. We have a lot of lightning in this area and I’d be bleak if one
strike wiped out multiple houses worth of network and gear.

If anyone has done anything like this, advice welcome.

~~~
sgt
Funny. Your first sentence had me wondering whether you're south african. Then
you followed up with lighting strikes :-) Agreed, I think your best option is
fibre. A few Mikrotik's (reasonably priced) and SFP modules will work perfect
for you. I think just getting your own splicing kit will make this easier for
you and allow some experimentation.

~~~
HarryHirsch
Don't forget that outdoor cable oftentimes has a metal strength member in it
so it can be run from poles. The underground direct-bury kind of cable has
metal armour for rodent-proofing and protection when the ground settles. Just
because it's fiber cable doesn't mean you can forget about lightning
protection and proper grounding. If the airwaves aren't too congested wireless
might be a better option here.

~~~
d00bianista
You can always blow metal-free fiber in pipes. I'd use PE pressure pipe of
suitable size, pull a string into it with a vacuum cleaner and pull fiber
in... Hopefully the fiber survives.

------
myself248
Skipping the field-terminated bit, I just grabbed a hunk of preterminated
fiber and some dumb media converters. It creates a dielectric gap in my
network, so lightning and surges coming in on the cable modem, can't damage
the rest of the network. (I used to fry a wifi router about twice a year
during storms, and got sick of replacing them...)

~~~
tux1968
Wouldn't you still blow one of the media converters twice a year?

~~~
dboreham
Probably not because the inputs were previously blown due to either ground
shift voltage or EM induced voltage in the long Cat5 run itself. Neither occur
with dielectric cable.

~~~
myself248
Bingo. Now the whole cluster associated with the cable modem can rise and fall
with it, because there's nothing conductive tying it to a node at a different
voltage.

------
bluedino
Armored fiber is another useful tool for the home or small business user. Much
less fragile which can be a big help depending on your application

[https://community.fs.com/blog/what-is-armored-fiber-optic-
ca...](https://community.fs.com/blog/what-is-armored-fiber-optic-cable.html)

------
d00bianista
I'd recommend using managed devices as opposed to using dumb media converters.
If there are issues, you have no insight into the issues with unmanaged
devices.

~~~
bluedino
To expand on this - instead of using a media converter, use a small managed
switch.

A 'dumb' media converter is a little bit cheaper but there's no way of knowing
if the failure is due to the cable, the media converter on either end, or
what. Without physically inspecting it, that is.

All fine for something inside your house but not something where you have a
remote location.

~~~
client4
Better yet, if you're connecting two devices that have PCI ports -- an eBay
Mellanox ConnectX3 is great. Solarflare also works, but Mellanox has had
better driver support in my experience (though we'll see now that they are
owned by Nvidia).

------
timc3
I just got fs.com to make up one for to the right length. Worked nicely

------
baybal2
A much cheaper set:

$13 single mode 10G SFP transceiver set [quite uncertain what they are now...
maybe something not quite ethernet compatible]:
[https://www.aliexpress.com/item/33040961103.html](https://www.aliexpress.com/item/33040961103.html)

2x $20 DLink 10G SFP [a much more certainly standard compatible]:
[https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32847226618.html](https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32847226618.html)

$50 1km G657A2 bend resistant single mode cable:
[https://www.aliexpress.com/item/33045053714.html](https://www.aliexpress.com/item/33045053714.html)

$20 20x gel LC connectors:
[https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32810983763.html](https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32810983763.html)

$15 20x gel splices:
[https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000183799694.html](https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000183799694.html)

~~~
iptrans
That’s not a bidi SFP. The attenuators aren’t needed either.

Then there’s the fact you are ordering from Aliexpress, rather than
Fiberstore. Fiberstore has multiple locations and warehouses, a returns
policy, a level of customer service and no shipping charges.

~~~
baybal2
Yes, it's not a BiDi, and I think they messed up with the text. I picked the
attenuators for the power of proper 10G-LR, so yeah, they are probably not
needed for the short range transceivers.

~~~
iptrans
LR optics don’t require attenuators.

OP didn’t mess up the text. They clearly wanted bidi optics as they only ran
one strand.

~~~
baybal2
Can you identify what those 1.4km transceivers are?
[https://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?SearchText=1.4km+10g](https://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?SearchText=1.4km+10g)

Are they even remotely standard compatible?

~~~
iptrans
1.4 km is a curious distance. Perhaps they are optics that didn’t make the 2
km cut and are sold at a discount?

I wouldn’t worry too much about the standards. There are lots of optics that
don’t stick to the standards, but go above and beyond.

I’m more interested in the use case at hand and if the specs will support the
use case.

~~~
baybal2
I saw a lot of singlemode wired datacentres in China, worked on them, but
never bothered to look what they use for hardware. I wonder if this is the
proprietary semi-standard that big Chinese telcos push for top of the rack
hardware.

I once heard that Huawei was trying to do singlemode with VCSEL laser, but the
descriptions clearly identify those as using 1310nm DFB
[http://www.6comgiga.com/downloadRepository/826d97f5-c91a-454...](http://www.6comgiga.com/downloadRepository/826d97f5-c91a-4545-ad90-7c44ecc5e61e.pdf)
. It is not a 2km multimode

------
ocdtrekkie
Maybe watching Comcast employees use a microscope when fusing individual
fibers together when installing their service has made me feel like sticking
my own connectors on fiber is a bad idea.

The thin diameter is a nice feature, but the ease of breaking them would keep
me from installing them anywhere copper wiring provides adequate performance.

~~~
jauer
People have to be careful when splicing fiber when every dB of loss is
important, but modern fusion splicers make it pretty easy.

For just running between houses, I've seen links working over fiber that was
cleaved with linesmens pliers before a crimp on connector was added.

~~~
gruez
So I searched up "fusion splicers" and apparently there are machines that
automatically align the fiber and fuses them together, with only ~0.02db of
loss. Does a human doing it manually with a microscope get significantly
better results?

~~~
jcrawfordor
Fusion splicers are very expensive, under $10k is the cheap end. ISPs own them
of course for field work but home installs are often done by small independent
contractors (one-person companies are common) without the budget. The
situation has improved a lot over the last few years, but historically fusion
splicing was such a delicate process with sensitive equipment that ISP crews
would pull around an air-conditioned trailer just to house the splicer and its
operator. Actually these trailers are still the norm, but the machines have
also come down in price and up in flexibility so they aren't so necessary any
more (but I'm sure it still really helps productivity to have your tools on
hand and not be dripping sweat on the workspace if you do this all day...).

But in any case I find it more likely the installer was using an inspection
probe/microscope to verify a field assembly connector than actually splicing.
Most field assembly methods don't require a microscope but it's common to use
a specialized type of microscope to check the correctness and quality of the
face of the connector before use, to avoid future callbacks, which said
independent contractor will be penalized for.

~~~
jauer
Expensive if you need to be competitive with higher volume.

Old fusion splicers can be inexpensive. Tradeoff is they take longer to to do
alignment and are much heavier than modern splicers.

I got a FSM-30S for sub $3k on eBay years ago. $350 for calibration. I see
listings now for under $500. Paid for itself very quickly vs. hiring out as a
little ISP. Wasn't hard to learn from YouTube videos and material from Fiber
Optic Association.

~~~
iptrans
FYI, brand new fusion splicers can be had for under a grand.

------
apple4ever
I've run fiber from my basement to my second floor rack (two cables). It's
really cool. Right now its 1G, but I can upgrade it to 10G whenever I feel
like paying for new switches.

------
djsumdog
Back in university, my old roommate did networking at a car dealership and
brought home old 10Mb fiber connectors. Yes, 10Mb .. designed for range, but
certainly not speed.

------
mgarfias
So what? Running the actual fiber to my shop was far less interesting than
digging the trench with the backhoe, running conduit, and backfilling the
trench.

------
tinus_hn
Does anyone actually know how these transceivers work? Is it software or
hardware? They can pass an amazing amount of traffic and I’ve never had them
crash.

------
shmerl
I wish home grade routers would start using SFP already. Very few of them do.
Why is that?

~~~
dylan604
> home grade routers

That's your answer. The average home user just wants to plug in a device, type
in the wifi code, and never think about it again. Only tech nerds want fiber
type connectivity. Putting SFP into home devices would see that SFP sitting
unused 99.9999% of the time. Why incur the expense of adding it?

~~~
cm2187
In fact only tech nerds want wired connectivity at all. Ethernet ports have
pretty much disappeared from all laptops.

~~~
shmerl
Good ones always come with Ethernet port. I wouldn't even consider buying one
without it.

~~~
bartvk
I have a MacBook, which don't come with ethernet for the last 4 years. But I
do want ethernet. So I simply dock my laptop, and the docking station of
course has ethernet.

Of course I do understand that if you're a network engineer, you don't want to
screw around with docking stations and dongles and such.

~~~
shmerl
I don't consider Apple laptops good to be honest. Things should be simple, but
not simpler than simple.

That said, if some device is simply too thin to accommodate a network port, I
don't mind using an adapter through USB-C / upcoming USB4 and etc.

------
kgc
I have symmetrical gig fiber service, and this says it's not possible.

------
aliswe
I love this:

> I had only ever seen 2mm fiber cables before, and the 0.9mm cables are
> incredibly light, flexible and thin! Even pasta is typically thicker:

> (Image of some disorderly 0.9mm thin fiber cables)

> Preparing a delicious pot of glass noodles ;)

------
tuananh
i was recently in market for a tv. surprisingly, most of it doesn't have Gbps
ethernet but just 100mbps.

i ended up using wifi

------
firekvz
any other reads like this? maybe a bigger one, like connecting a whole
building or connecting to an ISP?

------
sneak
This is a very unsubtle ad for the website it links/mentions by name about a
dozen times.

~~~
drwl
Yeah I got the same feeling that this is an ad, or at least in part sponsored
by fs.

~~~
secure
FS has not paid me to write this, I’m just a happy customer. I paid for all
the gear with my own money.

------
codecamper
is that 10gbit or 10Gbyte?

~~~
KaiserPro
10gig ethernet is bits.

100gbit ethernet does exist, but its not overly cheap. That will get you to
about 10gigabytes a second. more or less.

