Thanks a lot for sharing you experience! I recently saw some people I follow on youtube talk about fibre as an alternative for ethernet cables, do you have an any experience with that?
If ethernet works, you’re just using a more expensive option to go with fiber.
Unless you need something unique about fiber, like distance (which can still be dubious for consumer grade hardware), or a non-electrical based signal (dubious requirement in most cases), then you’re just throwing money at being able to say you use fiber.
Yes. Fiber is great but extremely nuanced. SMF, MMF, UPC, APC, OM3, OM4, OS2… All different parts of just the cabling… Not to mention the connectors, LC, SC… You get the idea.
Everyone I tend to talk to about it seem to think multi-mode is cheaper, and it can be, but in my experience, single mode is usually the better choice and usually not much of a price uplift if you’re buying from a good company. Look at FS.com and do some comparison shopping against them. They make some high quality stuff, and it’s at pretty incredible pricing for what you get, but the equipment can add up fast.
Multi mode can only really carry one connection per fiber and usually needs to be duplexed (two strands per link) while single mode can leverage WDM to carry multiple independent signals on different wavelengths. This can be leveraged for bi-directional single strand links, multiple links that are aggregated into a single connection in hardware (this is how 40Gbit works, it’s actually 4x10G connections on different wavelengths)…
It’s still more costly and requires more specialized equipment and training to work with, compared to copper Ethernet, so it’s pretty uncommon to see in residential or home networks.
I feel like fiber only makes sense for long runs or extremely high bandwidth needs. For a typical home network, I don’t see any benefits for fiber over ethernet.
Thanks a lot for sharing you experience! I recently saw some people I follow on youtube talk about fibre as an alternative for ethernet cables, do you have an any experience with that?
Alternative? Sure. Though why?
If ethernet works, you’re just using a more expensive option to go with fiber.
Unless you need something unique about fiber, like distance (which can still be dubious for consumer grade hardware), or a non-electrical based signal (dubious requirement in most cases), then you’re just throwing money at being able to say you use fiber.
Additionally, fiber is more fragile than a copper cable. One bad hit with a vacuum cleaner and it’s toast
Maybe you shouldn’t vacuum your cables?
I don’t vacuum them, I vacuum near it. But you can always accidentally go too far and bump the cable
Yes. Fiber is great but extremely nuanced. SMF, MMF, UPC, APC, OM3, OM4, OS2… All different parts of just the cabling… Not to mention the connectors, LC, SC… You get the idea.
Everyone I tend to talk to about it seem to think multi-mode is cheaper, and it can be, but in my experience, single mode is usually the better choice and usually not much of a price uplift if you’re buying from a good company. Look at FS.com and do some comparison shopping against them. They make some high quality stuff, and it’s at pretty incredible pricing for what you get, but the equipment can add up fast.
Multi mode can only really carry one connection per fiber and usually needs to be duplexed (two strands per link) while single mode can leverage WDM to carry multiple independent signals on different wavelengths. This can be leveraged for bi-directional single strand links, multiple links that are aggregated into a single connection in hardware (this is how 40Gbit works, it’s actually 4x10G connections on different wavelengths)…
It’s still more costly and requires more specialized equipment and training to work with, compared to copper Ethernet, so it’s pretty uncommon to see in residential or home networks.
YMMV. Good luck.
I feel like fiber only makes sense for long runs or extremely high bandwidth needs. For a typical home network, I don’t see any benefits for fiber over ethernet.
Fiber is complete overkill for home networking. Also, POE is very nice to have for things like WAPs or cameras.