When I first looked at sorting out my new home’s network, I knew I had to use some fiber. I couldn’t do regular Cat6 everywhere and call it a day. It’s a worthwhile option for most homes because it’s about as good as you’d normally need for a noisy online home. But my house is not normal. There are stone walls for almost half of the outer and inner walls. Then there is the fact that the office is in the outbuilding and the garage is also separate.
We will be working from home in the office and the servers will be running in the garage, so we need a physical connection between each building. Fiber comes with the sheer hassle of ground potential differences, lightning risks, maximum run lengths, and shielded cable burial. I have never bought fiber before and have worked with it for a long time. I thought it was fragile and expensive, but it couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, the installation was not only manageable, but also easier than working copper.
What makes fiber the right choice?
Better than Cat at this
I planned around Cat6 but the distance was just too much. Between the dining room OPNsense the box works, there are about 23 meters between the house and the office, and about 18 meters between the same room and the garage. This is only the measurement between the entry point for the holes in the external walls, so there is a little more to run the cables from the wall to the three switches. Cat6 can technically achieve this, but they are not ideal.
For starters these runs are outside and we are next to a main road with lots of vibration, disturbance and air hitting the same side of the house where the switches will be located. Moreover, I was planning to bury the cable underground. The fiber ticked all the boxes, including no electrical conductivity, plenty of spacing, future-proofing with bandwidth, and it’s super thin and light. The downside is that it is more sensitive than Cat cable, but as long as care is taken, this shouldn’t be a problem.
Since we’re going to bury the cables, we might as well go with something that won’t need to be exposed for many years, especially when trying to improve the connections between each switch. We could easily go More than 10Gbpsthat’s enough. Fiber handles the 10Gb connections between switches, and Cat cable is then used to transfer 2.5Gbps data between customers. This is sufficient for servers, network attached storage, access points (AP) and other devices.
Selection of fiber
If you haven’t shopped for fiber yet, there are different versions available. I chose pre-terminated and outdoor rated multimode fiber with LC connectors. Then I added lots of M30 tubing to protect the cable between the locations. I had to go this size up due to the pre-suspended shoes being too big for the M20. I went with pre-terminated fiber so I didn’t have to deal with splicing or polishing connectors; I just ordered the cables cut to length and already have the connectors.
Underground laying of fiber cable
Bury links quickly with little effort
Interestingly, I thought that using fishing cable to pull the fiber cable through the pipe would be the most difficult part of the process, but this is not the case. It was a drilling job. Not only did we have a lawn, I had to run the pipes through the bedding and then under some gravel. The gravel road was the most tedious and took the longest because it had to be dug deep enough to secure the pipeline and not create raised sections. It was vital that the fiber was buried deep enough to protect it from accidental damage.
With the fiber already pulled from the tube and the two tubes sealed in the middle, it’s time to bury it. It was easy once you got off the road. The sod was a simple process of driving the ground into the dirt and removing the ground to lower the pipes. The turf can then be re-laid and sealed to level, and once the entire length is complete, you’ll struggle to find out there’s 30 meters of fiber cable buried below.
Once fiber cable connected to the switches, a 10Gb bus was created to handle larger data transfers between buildings. The SFP+ modules were inserted directly into the switches and everything works fine. The locally managed web interfaces allowed me to make sure the switches would work with the existing VLAN settings and not call home for nothing. A large file transfers completely almost instantly and there is no lag or buffering for any task.
Cat cables have a place in my network
Getting all customers online
My computer doesn’t have an SFP port, nor does my TV or many other devices, which is where Cat6 comes into play. In each building, I ran Cat6 through several walls to devices and access points, but chose 2.5Gb Ethernet instead of sticking with gigabit. This is the sweet spot between standard gigabit and amateur 10Gb setups. The hardware is not very expensive and more devices support these speeds. It’s fast enough for our needs and doesn’t require special cabling.
Transferring large files between premises is effectively instantaneous, network backups complete faster, streaming is easy when the network is already busy, and latency is low across the platform. But since the garage and outbuildings are both connected, the two APs in place ensure that we have Wi-Fi coverage throughout the property from the garage to the back yard. But do you need fiber or even a 10Gb network? Probably not, but it doesn’t feel anywhere near as developed as I thought it would be.
