making a neat garden office install with fiber

Hello,

Looking for some help as I do not seem to find an obvious solution to what must be a common problem.

I have a Gigaclear connection on order, which will connect to the house, their ONT will be on an internal wall and I have a cupboard nearby which will house my router, switch, NAS and DECT VOIP and a fiber media converter. Will knock holes into the back of the cupboard for wires and ventilation

The fiber media converter will feed a single mode fiber out of the house, through the same hole which brings in the Gigaclear fiber and around the house and to the end of the garden to my office, the fiber is +40m long.

The garden office is not yet built, CV19 has slowed down progress on that. I believe the electrician is placing the consumer unit in an IP67 enclosure or adaptable box. I am thinking about put the other fiber media converter in that box too, so that all which has to come into the office is a CAT6 cable via a single gang flush mounted box with an RJ45. The fiber media converter uses at most 5w, so its not getting very hot, should be safe to put inside an enclosure. I expect the fiber can come into the office through the same hole as the power cable does without any issue, though it will have to be large enough for me to push the SC connector through.

Thoughts?

I can leave a few meters of fibre coiled up, spare, under the garden office. Its going to be OFS EZ Bend outdoor cable.

Or should I bring the fibre inside the office and terminate it there. If so, then I would like to find a flush mounted box (with an access panel or door) I can fit into the internal paneling of the walls, think of them as a plasterboard like construction. In the box, would be power, a coil of fiber and the other fiber media converter. Then bring out the CAT6 to an RJ45 on a single gang flush mounted box. I have just not been able to find any small boxes like this, especially with the kind of brushed/satin steel finish we are looking for. BG electrical are close though.

More Thoughts?

Thanks.

Why do you want to use fibre to connect to your garden office? The distance is only about 40m so you could just use gigabit ethernet, perhaps to a switch in your office. You can buy direct burial cat 5e or better cable.

my thoughts exactly, cat6 ethernet supports 10 gig if the run is under 55 meters.

One advantage would be that of surge protection, a nearby lightening strike or similar could damage kit in either end of Ethernet cable, fiber would prevent that from occuring

Edited by mwarby (Tue 30-Jun-20 09:24:48)

Given the power for the garden building is presumably coming from the house it'll make no dfference if it's fibre or copper with a nearby lightning strike

Why not use switches with SFP at each end? That way you can have fibre connection with the electrical isolation as well. Just a thought ....

In reply to a post by comerford:

Given the power for the garden building is presumably coming from the house it'll make no dfference if it's fibre or copper with a nearby lightning strike

True, maybe a decent UPS for the IT kit wouldn't be a bad idea as well.?

OK, it is easier to keep to an agreed spouse acceptance factor limit using fiber compared to a tough CAT6 cable, the fiber is 5mm outside diameter at most and will be almost invisible where I am taking it. That is the reason for my choice and it gave me a reason to play with using fiber for the first time. So win-win for husband and spouse.

Yes, I was going to have a UPS in the garden office to keep me working if needed for a short while. The switch in the garden office will fail over to the 4G router which I currently run my house off that I will relocate to the garden office

What about the boxes and enclosures required for making a neat job of this?

In reply to a post by comerford:

Given the power for the garden building is presumably coming from the house it'll make no dfference if it's fibre or copper with a nearby lightning strike

It will make a difference because you won't get resistive coupling between the network devices in both buildings if it's fibre rather than copper. Have a look at the diagrams in https://www.mtl-inst.com/images/uploads/AN_904-1001_...

If you run ethernet rather than fibre you should put grounded ethernet surge protectors at either end of the cable run between the buildings.

Edited by caffn8me (Tue 07-Jul-20 15:56:54)

Hehe, this thread has just made me realise that the bog standard cat6 cable I run to my shed (15 meters from the house but 25m cable) has no lightning protection...

Ordinarily I'd say "well if my shed gets unlucky, so what" but there's a Tesla Powerwall on the same switch as the shed cable... Off to do a bit of Googling...