I have a friend who is renovating a new place and since he is renovating it from scratch he wants to do a similar setup that Linus (from LTT) has done whereby there is a “server” room with the actual computer sitting and then streaming the output of the graphics card over a fiber optical cable to a different room (the reason why he wants to do this is he is sensitive to noise and since he happens to be renovating this is basically the ultimate solution to the problem). The reason for using fiber is because it obviously supports much higher data transmission, i.e. as of now HDMI 2.1 requires 48 gigabytes/second bandwidth which is something that only CAT-8 is certified to provide and later revisions of DP/HDMI are going to be even higher.
So I basically have 2 questions which are related. One is, is there a KVM device that supports either HDMI 2.1 or DP 1.4 over optical fiber and the second question is what type of fiber cable should my friend lay and this question is the most critical one for now because he needs to have the cables installed (the KVM can be bought later). Fiber cables have different setups (i.e. multi mode vs single mode and duplex vs simplex). From my cursory/surface level understanding it seems that single mode duplex is the best (i.e. a single fiber strand for each direction that is also bi-directional so signals can be sent via both cables at the same time) however its overkill/expensive so maybe multi-mode duplex is better since each device connected to the KVM can theoretically use different wavelengths? The complicating factor here is what type of KVM is picked since from some basic googling some appear to support SFP (which if I understand correctly it doesn’t matter what type of fiber cable you lay since the SFP transceiver handles the communication) but other KVM’s are not SFP and just take the cable directly, in which case you would actually need to lay the correct fiber cable?
Does anyone have any suggestions here? The ideal setup would be that the KVM acts like a dock/hub so that on one end where the office is monitor/s and all of the peripherals (mouse/keyboard/storage devices such as usb’s) are plugged into the KVM/hub and on the other end graphics card from the computer is plugged into the KVM input device. There are other factors as well (i.e. is there a KVM that supports remotely shutting down/turning on the computer?) but as mentioned before what type of fiber cable to install is whats most critical.
So is Linus using a VM on the server and simply remoting in on a small PC to that VM over the network? (where KVM = kernel virtual machine)
Or is there supposed to be a long HDMI cable as well as long USB cables for keyboard, mouse, and audio just going to peripherals that are far away? (where KVM = keyboard, video, mouse)
I really dont see how a physical KVM switch would help you here. Those are meant for swapping the peripherals between two PCs. If you only have one PC and you send all the cables from one to a KVM then why not just straight into the peripherals in the first place?
This sounds less like a KVM switch and more like a basic extender that is simply converting all incoming and outgoing signals into ethernet for transport just for long distance use.
Whatever device you end up with will determine the fiber cable to use. The device will be intended for single mode or multi mode wavelength, and have a connector that you want to use. Unless it just has an SFP port on it, in that case you can use whatever you want. I’d recommend OM4 or OM5 multimode fiber cable as that has plenty of bandwidth for home use and can reach distances any normal home would be within.
Since he is taking the walls out in construction, also take the opportunity to run fiber cable (OM4 or OM5) with LC connectors for normal network use from the network closet location to the main points of the house: garage, living room, loft/den. Also run normal copper Cat6a or Cat8 cable throughout the house, having 1-2 ports in each room, and choose 2-3 spots on a ceiling or high up on a wall that will be meant for where wifi access points will be mounted. The fiber and copper ethernet can all terminate at a standard keystone wall plate that you can mount RJ45 and LC keystones in for the rooms. Same goes for patch panels.
Linus made a video about the cable, it’s an expensive thunderbolt dock, and it’s thunderbolt over fiber sold by corning. (although he did change the setup a few times and I might be misremembering).
If you’re renovating…
Take stock of what’s inside the walls, wood metal existing tubes and pipes and braces and stuff … and
… Setup conduits - like e.g. 2cm or 1in wide plastic bendable tubes that go through walls up into ceilings or down into floors that don’t have any snags inside. And that you can access in a few places easily (under stairs or attics or whatever - depending on your setup).
What you get - is an option to pull almost any kind of cable, actually multiple (utp/fiber) by yourself whenever you want using a vacuum cleaner and a parachute plastic grocery bag attached to a fishing line, which you then pull in the other direction and almost at any time. Assuming you don’t have tight bends, even fiber patch cables, with small LC connectors you can pull through short distances between two points in the house.
As @EniGmA1987 said, they are called extenders, because as opposed to kvms they only extend a signal.
There’s
HDMI only
dp only
USB only
thunderbolt only
hdbaset units that extend HDMI,USB 2.0 and it signal with a cat6 cable
If you want future proof, you do not want a video extender as the high end ones tend to be picky as to what fiber you should use and/or they cost in the multiple thousands of USD …
The current Linus like solution is to use as many display port optical cables as needed of an appropriate length for video and an ikron USB 3.0 extender or thunderbolt extender depending on the hardware or something like that that will use one or two standard multimode fibers
If you want to future proof with fiber only then multimode om4 16 strands would be my go to, but at that point you are at optical dp connector thickness so you may just do that…
All of the above will cost you lots of money … 3-400 USD per do cable and 1-2k for an ikron or similar unit
Hdbaset extenders will cost you less but will only extend USB 2.0 and HDMI 4k@60hz 4:2:2 and the more expensive and hard to find ones 4k@60hz 4:4:4
Thanks for the replies, I did a bit kroe research and I think OM5 multi mode duplex fiber appears to be the best since its backwards compatible till OM 3 and has future potential.
I had a look at extenders and unless I am missing something the issue with extenders is they only handle video (and possibly audio) signal but doesnt handle inputs like keyboard or mouse or external storage devices like usb.
The linus video with thunderbolt with fiber optic cable going into the expensive dock handles the usecase that my friend is looking for. The only issue is that the cable linus used was a thunderbolt cable and not standard fiber optic (although that could be solvable with an adapter?)
Regarding most KVMs/extenders only supporting 4k@60 this isnt an issue because he can make do without an immediate solution, its more a case of “what can I lay now so that in the future when a, lets say 4k@120hz KVM/extender/dock comes out, it can be used”
So I assume you are talking about getting separate devices, i.e. something like usb-3-0-spectra-3022 from icron to handle keyboard/mouse/input/usb/etc etc when plugged into a good usb hub and a displayport/hdmi over fiber extender for the actual video signal?
If so I presume from your suggestion that there isn’t really a reliable device that handles everything over a single duplex/multimode fiber connection? I am asking this because I found a “True 4K DisplayPort Fiber KVM Extender With USB, 10G SFP Module, 300M (Multi-Mode)” from RexTron (model number FXA1PU-M56) which can seems to handle everything and to boot its SFP? (sorry not allowed to post links).
EDIT. I just realized you mentioned RexTron previously. So basically such devices exist its just a question of reliability.
It can only handle 4k@60hs, it is not a given that it will handle 144Hz or more at lower resolutions
Rextron has that product published since two years, but I am not aware they ever got around to sell it …
That model is analog to a cat6 HDBaseT extender that has the same features, it just uses cat6 instead of fiber, usb is only 2.0 while the Icron is 3.xxx
Anything HDBaseT is going to have major compromises. They are almost always 422 or 420 color space and frequently have compression on top of that to get with in cable specifications.
To get uncompressed 444 RGB at even 60hz your transmit and bandwidth will be 18gb/s so to go higher frame rates your optics and cable need to do probably 25-40gbs. This is why I suggested separate extenders because you don’t want to limit video bandwidth just to plug in a microphone and web camera.
Indeed, HDMI 2.1 is rated for 48 GB/s. This is one of the reasons why if its not cost prohibitive to see if we can install OM5, it is rated for 100G at 150 meters (which is much longer than what the cable length will be) and even though there aren’t any devices for OM5 right now (it appears to have only come out a few years ago) in the future this should change.
Also from what I have read its meant to be completely backwards compatible till OM3
