Yes, I think it is mad. I'll run some Cat6e.

My Mac has ThunderSomething aka USB 3.confusing. I'm sure that does 5Gbps.

In reply to a post by Woolwich:

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]

Without getting too personal, can you provide a quick summary of the layout of your house, floors distances etc, any external rooms or outhouses etc.

Depending on your house setup a mixture of copper and fibre could be appropriate and done properly will be cost effective and hopefully future proof.

Honestly I wouldn't bother - 1Gbps is plenty for many years in the future. It is more robust than fibre and considerably cheaper. I have just run Cat5e in my own house, including damaging walls etc. Fibre never even crossed my mind.

If you have a huge house and you're going to exceed 100m, then fair enough - even then I'd be considering just having 2x100m and a switch in the middle.

Thanks for the offer. Its not a big enough house to make this worthwhile. I'm starting to think although it might be fun, its not really necessary and Cat6a will be fine for the next few years.

Fair enough. Copper is totally fine for all the links to your end devices.

If you have long distances or want to have a "backbone" cable that run 10 Gbps and more in future (not as ridiculous as it sounds depending on your NAS needs) then its really not expensive at all.

For example a single core fibre cable, 50 metres, micro-armoured SWA that is more flexible than any Cat5e cable and only 3mm in diameter with FC connectors on the ends - will set you back around £30

You can get Gigabit fibre SFP pluggables for around £6 from Fibre Store. 10 Gbps SFP's pluggable are around £20. These need 2 fibre cores to work, but a 10 Gb/s BiDi SFP pluggable - just one fibre core needed for transmit/receive - is around £30

A little (4-port +1) 10 Gbps dual router /switch from MikroTik is about £90 before VAT. An 8-port 10 Gbps switch is £156.

Not dirt cheap, but not killer expensive either.

Edited by Pheasant (Thu 04-Feb-21 18:44:40)

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

For example a single core fibre cable, 50 metres, micro-armoured SWA that is more flexible than any Cat5e cable and only 3mm in diameter with FC connectors on the ends - will set you back around £30

You can get Gigabit fibre SFP pluggables for around £6 from Fibre Store. 10 Gbps SFP's pluggable are around £20. These need 2 fibre cores to work, but a 10 Gb/s BiDi SFP pluggable - just one fibre core needed for transmit/receive - is around £30

A little (4-port +1) 10 Gbps dual router /switch from MikroTik is about £90 before VAT. An 8-port 10 Gbps switch is £156.

Not dirt cheap, but not killer expensive either.

Breaking a long silence to say that this is basically how my home network is built.

10G BiDi, Mikrotik switches either side, 2 x 4+1 port for rooms with lower port requirements, 2 x 8+1 for the main switch to the ONT and my home office/lab.

I use Invisilight fibre and it does exactly what it says on the tin. Some attenuation, the optics are intended for 10 or 20km runs and mine are closer to 10 metres, and connector converters, the fibre is SC and you need LC, and I'm done.

This all feeds into a Mikrotik CCR2004 which is massively excessive but I was planning for the future - once and done.

I highly recommend it as a discrete, scalable solution. I'm good for 10G right now and could place a second fibre next to the original one, put the ports into a LAG and have 20G, with the router having 25G ports and 40G routing capability without changing any of the hardware, or relegate the switches to edge and use 40G when the time comes - the fibre itself can carry terabits.

Edited by CarlTSpeak (Fri 05-Feb-21 10:50:38)

In reply to a post by Woolwich:

Or is this just madness?

Yes it's complete madness. Just run Cat 6a and your good to go for 10Gb ethernet.

In reply to a post by Woolwich:

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?

Given that 10Gbps Ethernet runs just fine over Cat 6a then why do you need fibre to run a 10Gbps NAS?

I deal with fibre all the time at work, but the chances of me using it at home anytime soon are basically zero. Especially as my home network is Cat 6a.

You could save yourself some money by using Cat 5e euro modules now and swapping them out for Cat 6a as and when needed. I went full in and did everything with Cat 6a modules but I did get the cable and patch panels for free (came from work completely legitimately as stuff that was otherwise going to be thrown out).

In reply to a post by Pipexer:

Honestly I wouldn't bother - 1Gbps is plenty for many years in the future. It is more robust than fibre and considerably cheaper. I have just run Cat5e in my own house, including damaging walls etc. Fibre never even crossed my mind.

If you have a huge house and you're going to exceed 100m, then fair enough - even then I'd be considering just having 2x100m and a switch in the middle.

I would strongly recommend not running Cat5e. If you have any sort of home NAS then it is not enough in the near future. The marginal additional cost of going to Cat6a cable and future proofing yourself to 10GbE is well worth it, even if you save yourself some money and fit Cat5e face plates which are a lot cheaper than Cat6a ones. It's much easier to swap out the face plates than replace the cable, which will require lifting flooring etc. as opposed to screwing off a faceplate puching down a new module and screwing it back on the wall.

In reply to a post by jabuzzard:

Given that 10Gbps Ethernet runs just fine over Cat 6a then why do you need fibre to run a 10Gbps NAS?

Cos by the time I get a 10G NAS Ethernet will probably be out of fashion and when I pop up here in n years time asking everyone will point and laugh and ask why I didn't run fibre in the first place.

But, yes, Cat6a is the sensible route.