Fibre Networking at Home - Suggestions Sought for Cable / Router

Hardware Hub Networking
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tl;dr:

I wanted to upgrade to fibre networking in my house and I am looking for suggestions for the proper cables to use, a good router to handle multiple fibre connections and a clean way to terminate the fibre to open an RJ45 port for connecting devices.

As an ordinary user - I would like not to become an expert on fibre cabling for the one single time that I have to know this stuff and would very much appreciate people that are already experts sharing their knowledge.

I have looked around and seen that there is quite a variety of fibre cabling.

Single mode, multi-mode, LC/LC AC/SPC etc. OM1, OM2 etc.

I am updating my home network and have in mind that I should opt for fibre cabling in the walls as a long-term future proof option.

I was hoping to get some suggestions as to what would be the best cabling to get (cable length will need to be about 100ft - but my understanding is that this is rather irrelevant).

My use case, which may be relevant. I have a NAS, I have a media server. I run a homelab - but I also work from home as a data scientist and utilise huge datasets moved between different machines - this can be terabytes of data.

My house is very thin, but very long - and this makes WiFi a bit of a pain. I have used EoP and it is terrible.

So opting to put in this cable while having some other renovations completed.

For connection points.

There is:

  1. Office at one end of building
  2. Server room at other end of building
  3. Internet Entry point in the middle of the building
  4. Living room between Office and Internet Entry Point
  5. Media Room between Internet Entry Point and Server room.

My initial thoughts are:

Internet Entry Point - internet comes in (fibre 1gb line) - goes to a router that router is Fibre enabled for at least 4 outputs on fibre/sfp+. Those fibre outputs run to each space listed above (server room, media, living room and office).

If anyone has a clever way of converting Fibre to RJ45 that would be good to know as well. The ones I have seen have been boxes that convert but that requires having a box which doesnā€™t really fit well anywhere. I was hoping for a wall socket that would take a fibre input and open an RJ45 port - but I canā€™t seem to find anyway.

This is because while I have 10gb NICs that take SFP+ for the servers the TV for instance only takes an RJ45 (it is not 10gb anyway but wanted that connection for the living room), my desktop has 10gb but it is a standard RJ45 port, so having that option available would be nice.

Any advice welcomed!

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You mentioned NAS and ā€œhomelabā€ and ā€œhuge datasetsā€ ā€¦ which to me speaks ā€œ40G minimumā€ and ā€œ100G preferredā€ ā€¦ but then youā€™re on 1Gbps wan and want to watch some movies, and mention wifi ā€¦ where fiber doesnā€™t matter and just makes everything more complex.

In terms of ports, you mostly run into:

SFP/SFP+/SFP28 (1/10/25 gig)
QSFP/QSFP+/QSFP28 (4/40/100 gig)

in terms of cabling you can do

  • (no transceiver) DAC (for <10m or <30ft)
  • single mode transceiver: LC-LC UPC
  • multi-mode (OM3 or OM4) transceiver

Sometimes, especially on QSFP-ish switches, you can plug in a break-out cable.
e.g. to split a 100G port into 4x25G ports; or a 40G port into 4x10 ports.

On the computer side / PC nic, you canā€™t usually break this out.

You can connect computer-computer, and a multi-port nic can route traffic.

Some switches are ā€œcodedā€ to only take some transceivers and pluggables - like some CPUs are ā€œcodedā€ to only go into some motherboards. Stuff people typically use at home these days for 40G/100G (mikrotik / mellanox / intel) is generally ā€œnot pickyā€.

Thereā€™s various other formats for pluggables, and pluggables can have multiple lasers and a prism built-in to carry different color/wavelength light, and so on and so forth. But basic, point-to-point ethernet fiber is usually as per above. (e.g. gpon uses larger SC connectors, on single mode fiber and multiplexes multiple customers onto a single fiber with prisms, and uses 3 wavelenghts. One wavelength for ISP->customer customer->ISP and for service config ā€¦ youā€™re not going to do this for within home networking).

====

What equipment did your ISP give you? What equipment do they support?

At current residential 1Gbps (or 2/2.5/5/10G) speeds, you donā€™t need to worry about fiber output, you just need to worry about getting ā€œmodemā€ or ā€œontā€ output into a router, like e.g. a pfSense that runs on bare metal, or in a VM.

ā€¦ or if the ISP (tell us who they are), supports taking out the pluggable (ONU) from their modem/ONT ā€¦ that may be something that could be put into a SFP/SFP+ network card, or a switch port directly.

you internet traffic can live in a VLAN, you can have multiple 40

try making a draw.io diagram with your rooms and devices

the way I see it, in your server homelab, use 40G/100G ā€¦ direct between devices, and into a switch.

if you want, maybe take one fiber across the house from server room to office (so you can put noisy storage into homelab, and access it from the office as if it were directly attached).

rest of the house ā€¦ living room, internet, media room ā€¦ stick to 10Gbps cat6.

internet comes in the middle of the house, yes, but ā€¦ itā€™s only 1 Gbps, you can stick it into a VLAN.

youā€™ll need several RJ45 drops around the living room and office for wifi and TV and what not, maybe a small switch.

same thing in media room.

all those can go either via rj45 to switch in server homelab.

Try doing a draw.io diagram, in as much details as possible and just share for critique.

Donā€™t worry about fiber until past 10Gbps.

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First of all, thanks for taking the time to respond, much appreciated.

This is to a point, about future proofing as much as it is about meeting my needs today, internet speeds are not my main concern, it is far more about internal data transfers.

This:

SFP/SFP+/SFP28 (1/10/25 gig)

I think is good enough for me for the foreseeable future as I can upgrade to 25gb should that need arise.

DAC is no good, I need to cover like 100ft or more.

Which of these two is the correct option is what is throwing me a little:

  • single mode transceiver: LC-LC UPC
  • multi-mode (OM3 or OM4) transceiver

I go single mode or multi-mode? Whatā€™s the difference, what impact will it have today - in terms of performance, upgradability, cost of equipment?

For ā€œpluggablesā€ - for the office is not a problem, I can put another switch in here, there are multiple computers and that makes sense. Same for the server room if that is needed.

I was more concerned about the media room / living room where realistically there will not be many devices and I wondered whether there was an alternative to adding another switch to each - even if a small silent one. I can be done, may even make sense in the living room to have a small WiFi enabled switch/router simply to provide WiFi to that area as wellā€¦

For me this drawing was what I was thinking as it keeps it reasonably simple - adding a switch to the Server/Office makes sense and even the living room as discussed above.

My main concern here is about future proofing, but I also donā€™t want to spend thousands and thousands to get 40gb internal networking when 10gb now with a path to 25gb in the near future is an option that would suit me just fine.

This is the layout I had in mind as the simplest option that opens up all avenues for future development, changes, upgrades, while also attracting the minimal cost today.

image

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A lot to unpack here :slight_smile:

Letā€™s try and break this down into parts:

In - Wall Cabling - Fiber or Cat6e?

  • Cat6e (ethernet) is good up to 10Gbit speeds, so for everything other than backhauls (connecting switches between themselves) and server/workstation connections it will future proof your install for the foreseeable future.
    If you really want you can look into deploying cat8 that should support 40Gbit over copper but at this time you risk spending a lot of money for an unknown benefit in the future

  • Switches that support 1Gbit copper are cheap and available, we are seeing now some movement on the 2.5/5Gbit homelab switches, and 10Gbit copper ones that support multiple ports without consuming 100w are available, still at a premium if you need more than 2/4 ports
    Cat6e 10Gbit, depending on the cable quality, is limited to 100meters (330feet) runs, up to 270 meters (900 feet) but you need the right cable and hardware on oth ends

  • Fiber is good if you need more than 100 ft runs at 10Gbit or above speeds, fiber connections also are less power hungry than copper, so they are very well suited for connecting multiple locations in an office/big house and for high speed long runs

  • Switches that support 10Gbit SFP+ are relatively cheap, but you need to add 50-60USD for every port you want to convert to 10Gbit copper, and 20USD for every port you want to convert to 1Gbit copper or for every port you want to connect with fiber

  • Single mode fiber is used for very long runs (many kilometers), and is more expensive, multi mode fiber is used for runs up to 300M and depending on the max speed supported (1-10-40-100GBit) you have different OMx ratings, OM4 is what you want if you want to deploy fiber that will support up to 100Gbit/s otherwise OM3 will do 10, probably 25Gbit/s

  • Fiber runs can be patched, e.g you can have the fiber port of your ISP ONT (the thingy that delivers fiber connectivity to your house and expects a router on the other side) into a keystone fiber

  • In your case, I would run two/four OM4 fiber cables between server room and office, one fiber and one cat6e cable to where your internet connenction drops using one of these:


and place the router in your server room ā€¦

Also, for each room, to tackle your need for local gigabit access for mutiple devices, and the need to have wifi coverage, I would use a cat6 cable to one of these:

Ubiquity Access Point In-Wall HD (UAP IW HD )

2500Ɨ2500 133 KB

980Ɨ654 27 KB

plus a dedicated 1Gb copper run for any device that absolutely require a dedicated 1Gbps connection, or a possible upgrade to 2.5Gbit/10Gbit

The ubiquity in-wall APs provide 4 local gigabit ports as well, they are POE-powered from the server room (do not require a power cable/transformer)

For your use case, I would go for a single main switch in the server room that supports multiple SFP+ connections
If you only have a nas and a workstation, this one from mikrotik:

CRS328-24P-4S+RM

2560Ɨ951 483 KB

would give you 4x 10Gbit ports, 24 gbit ports with POE for about 500USD . This would power all your wireless APs, cameras if you want to put them and even smaller switches you may want to deploy locally through POE like the CSS610-8P-2S+IN

Right now this is the sweet spot, with the ability to progress to 2.5Gb connectivity by upgrading the switch and the devices (no cabling upgrade) and/or use more 10Gbit ports ā€¦

Regarding costs, cabling for 1Gbit and 10Gbit will have the same cost, if you have room in the counduits/drywall to run multile cables you will not need to splice/join the fiber in place, a 100ft OM4 cable costs 40USD ā€¦ a 1000ft decent cat6 spool will cost you ~120USD, plus the cost of the keystones and the plates ā€¦ that cost would not change if you were running lower rated cables.
It probably would be cheaper to run single cables and deploy multiple smaller switches, but then you would have ā€˜thingsā€™ in each room that need power, cables on the floor, no upgrade path and in general a worse experience , and we would still be talking 1KUSD vs 2K USD so depending on your budget it may be a thing for you or not ā€¦

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+1 everything MadMatt said :slight_smile: Mikrotik 10G/SFP+ switches have served me well.

The S+RJ10 SFP+ 10GBASE-T modules get very hot and the official guidance is to not place them in adjacent ports (I guess bad things happen when they overhead, but I havenā€™t had that happen so farā€¦). As far as I can tell, that behaviour is not specific to only Mikrotik - copper 10G just gets hot (my Intel X550 will confirm). So plan for that if you have a switch with SFP+ ports and want to use them all for copper 10G. Optical 10G ports get barely warm in comparison.

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While I have run a bunch of CAT6 in my house I am not a fan of trying to use it for 10gb. It works, but 10g RJ45 switches cost more than SFP+ based ones.

Fiber also does not have the same limitations as twisted pair. You can swap out the optics on both ends and get new speeds without changing the cable.

I personally would recomend running a multi strand pre-terminated cable as your ā€œbackhaulā€ from the front to the back of the house.

Some thing like this gives you redundant lines, and room for growth but wont cost an arm and a leg to install.

Mikrotik products are great for applications like this. I would stick with 10/25g options since 40gb is a dead end and 25g will clock down to 10g for legacy equipment.

You could put one of either switch at each end of your trunk and then use a combo of copper patch cables or SFPā€™s with fiber to connect to different devices.

Fiber comes in 3 basic configurations Single Mode 9um, Multi Mode 50um, and Multi Mode 62.5um. The only thing you really need to worry about is making sure the SFP sensors match the cable type. The cheat code is just do all single mode. If you do that you will generally have no issues with compatibility. You will see LR or long range single mode, you dont need this ever.

I have 24 single mode fibers run from my office to my rack room, along with 3x fiber optic display port cables, and 1 strand of multimode for USB3.0. Its not that crazy an idea, and I look forward to hearing about your experience.

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Iā€™d agree with others that there is a lot of complexity here, but some ā€œarchitectureā€ thoughts, rather than direct answers.

  1. I assume the ā€œmassive dataā€ sets are imported to the house via means other than the Internet, otherwise the internal network could be overkill.

  2. You have lots of different use case ā€œareasā€ (office, media room etc.). While common cabling could be beneficial, consider different approaches for different areas - I suspect 1Gb would be plenty for the living room for example.

  3. Where are the data flows? Will you really be transferring Tb between the office and the server room? Also, what is the process? If you are transferring across the network from a spinning rust disk, the drive will be the bottleneck. Temporarily putting the work device in server room for transfer may be faster than any network, and possibly so much cheaper (at the expense of some effortā€¦)

  4. Agreed that fibre adapters are more ā€œuniversalā€ but not always so. I have a Supermicro server with n/w on the SoC. The adapters no longer work - but did for a year. They work elsewhere so the adapters are good, and a range of other brands also donā€™t work. A DAC does, so go figureā€¦

  5. Your diagram shows a central switch/router. You will need some router functionality to interface with your ISP, but what does your internal network look like. Routing and complex firewalls need much more processing power than a switch. Mikrotik has been mentioned for hardware (I agree - they are good value for money). Look at the performance stats for switching vs routing. Again look at information flows to help determine a set of switches/routers that help segrgate data for performance and security.

I realise not an immediate solution, but it sounds as though you will be spending enough money that some more thought before you buy! I hope the above is a help with planning.

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Thank you all for your contributions, really do appreciate it. I know what cables I need now!

Question from me, given all of what I have read above.

Something like this - which is shockingly cheap to meā€¦

With Fibre cabling reaching out to each individual space, where each individual space has its own smaller switch to take the fibre in and put out RJ45 to devices that need it. Perhaps a larger switch in the server/office room to take advantage of the 10gb NICs that I haveā€¦

Would this not be a good solution? Are there downsides to this?

To me this seems the most simple way of handling thisā€¦if the Fibre connection from the server room is a direct feed into the office at 10gbā€¦which I am assuming will be over fibre optic cablesā€¦this meets my needs perfectly and provides plenty of options for the other rooms that may need 10gb in the future.

Am I missing something?

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Sure, that is a common way of wiring things, where you have 10g uplink between local switches.

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It does not provide POE power to APs and remote switches, other than that, it is a very good priceā€¦

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Cheers all.

Now I know the cables to get, thanks @MadMatt - really the hardware is not the be all and end all - as I can update / upgrade that if the situation changes.

Now to go buy the cabling, get some wall plates, look at getting a pfSense box for the routing and to look at a few small SFP+ to RJ45 boxes for the various rooms.

Appreciate you all taking the time to write as much as you all did, it helped me - but hopefully also helps anyone else with a similar question in the future.

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Reasonable price - also consider alternatives such as MIKROTIK Cloud Router Switch (CRS309-1G-8S+IN) which could be more flexible depending on your needs (for example I used to use my CRS312-4C+8XG (same software) as my router until i started using opnsense.
(Mikrotik fanboy from a reliability and value for money perspective)

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Took awhile but I got this completed, more details here for anyone that happens to find this thread in the future - again thanks for all the great advice in this thread.

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