Is a home fibre network madness?

I don't know what's needed or how much it cost but a brief look at Cable Monkey suggests fibre isn't too expensive. But I have no idea what's needed or if its too early to consider fibre in the home.

Why? Cos I want to relocate a NAS to a different part of the house. There's no network there so I'm going to have to run some cables. If I'm running Ethernet inside walls I'm going to run two or three as that's easier than doing it all over again in the future. But what if I can future proof by running a single fibre?

Obvs, my network is currently gigabit Ethernet running on Cat 5e. So what would I need to convert that into light, send it around the house and turn in back into Ethernet for the NAS?

Or is this just madness?

[Edit for typo]

Edited by Woolwich (Thu 04-Feb-21 11:46:17)

Not madness, its how we link different rooms in data centres. (nowadays with faster than 1 Gig). For a small project such as that, you would need two media converters, and some multi mode fibre. Each converter needs power.

This would be the same as running a single Cat6 cable, but easier to run outside etc. If you wanted to replace multiple Ethernet connections it depends if you need more than 1Gig across the link, or if you would install a switch at each end. If you wanted the fibre to replace multiple connections you would be into a lot more complexity.

Converters like this one, see the 6th picture down for an example of what you're trying to do.

Edited by jchamier (Thu 04-Feb-21 12:03:55)

Thanks, that's helpful.

Can you join fibre cable and connectors without expensive equipment or do you need to buy ready-made lengths? If I do this with Ethernet I'll run a cable through the walls and terminate it at each end with a wall mounted port which is easy enough to connect with a tool I have. Then I'd have short ready-made Ethernet cables from the port to the NAS and to the switch/router at the other end.

Maybe one day I'll have a 10G NAS, so I'd want to run a fibre capable. OTOH, the rest of existing network is only 1G so I'd need a 10G switch as well. Maybe that's starting to become mad?

You don't have to use fibre for a 10gbe network, you can of course use CAT6a and a 10gbe switch. I recently upgraded my home network to 10gbe, was a simple process as I had installed CAT6 to begin with. I just purchased a 10gbe switch (cost only £130) and a couple of network cards for my PC's (£25) each.

In reply to a post by robertcrowther:

You don't have to use fibre for a 10gbe network

But I thought it might be fun!

Then again Ethernet is passive: I wouldn't need a couple of convertors which require power. So perhaps a Cat6a cable (or two) is the sensible way to go. If I plug Cat6a into my current Cat5e network it should just act as if it was Cat5e cable?

I think it's pointless for a home network as you'll have to drop media converters everywhere, and pull pre-terminated cable unless you're going to invest in the tools to splice connectors on.

In reply to a post by jpm:

I think it's pointless for a home network as you'll have to drop media converters everywhere, and pull pre-terminated cable unless you're going to invest in the tools to splice connectors on.

I agree, unless you have to cross between buildings on different phases of mains electricity, or own Buckingham Palace

If you really want to make something as future proof as possible then pull in some blown fibre tubing at the same time as you pull in the Cat6 cable and be careful not to kink it.

In addition to the replies so far, my main concerns would be that

1) it is more fragile for much the same connectivity, and
2) until common devices come with SFP+ ports there is no speed to gain beyond 1Gbps

I have a hunch that system built-in NICs will start to support 2.5GbE before you are able to see a benefit from your fibre investment. And there are already multiple USB3/USB-C network adapters for multi-gigabit copper that you can try out.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B084L4JL9K/ (Plugable 2.5GbE with USB3+C connectors)

There are client devices out there already that do >1Gbps

For example many Macs can be specced with a 10Gbps NIC and there are plenty of higher end PC motherboards that now come with 2.5Gbps or better NICs.