Gives me fiber for bandwidth and copper for PoE. Figured it was smarter to do both than compromise to either one, and surprisingly the fiber was cheaper than the copper to pull.
What do you mean by "trunk which is available in three locations"?
Usually cabling is home-run to a single, central patch panel. A cable (fibre, copper) would usually have one end in a room's wall outlet, with the other end at a patch panel: how would you have a cable one end at three locations? Do you have three patch panels? I.e., three hubs, with the room cables going to one hub and then you can have hub-to-hub runs?
In principle it sounds simple, but in practice I got lost in my own way too many times. Just glad that it's over, hahah.
100G on singlemode (100G-LR4 being the most common) uses the well-known two-strand ("duplex") fiber. Or you can get 100G bi-directional ("BiDi") over a single strand of singlemode (fiber-to-the-home often uses this).
100G on multimode is weird. As the name implies, one beam of light, sent down the core of a multimode fiber, results in multiple modes (search "Laser modes") being sent down the strand. As they overlap, it gets hard to get a clean signal out the other end.
To deal with this issue, 100G on multimode uses fiber cables containing multiple strands per direction of travel. MPO-8 and MPO-12 are common cables used for 100G multimode: It contains eight or twelve strands of fiber. Four strands are used to send, four to receive. And the prices for those cables are higher than standard duplex singlemode cable.
OS2 transceivers are not that expensive anymore with the rise in third-party modules: sure, first-party, OEM SKUs are pricey, but a home user is not going to go that route.
Standard /r/networking advice is to go single-mode basically everywhere due to price drops over the last 10+ years.
The sibling posts have already pointed out the pricing has mostly equalized at this point too, especially if you're more realistic and look at 10G or 25G. (Or just buy a pile of used 100G CWDM4 transceivers off eBay.)
The math worked out just to move to single mode a decade ago
Four-fibre cable was about US$ 1.5/m (here in Switzerland, I am sure cheaper elsewhere).
I picked ONTi JT-S508CL-8S as the main 10G fibre switch (direct from Ali, for about 100 bucks).
For wired Ethernet and PoE, I have a couple of KeepLink KP-9000-9XHPML-X switches (I paid about 60 buck for each, they seem to cost around $85 now). I find that they work well and use them for 10/100/1000/2500 GbE switching and to power various devices (other switches, U7-Pro-XGS AP, Zigbee dongle, home automation server, rack fans etc).
The main splice box was about 60 bucks, 24 pigtails included.
From memory, 10G SFP+ fibre modules were about ten bucks apieces. (DAC cables are cheaper, 10G copper transceivers are more expensive.)
Plus various paraphenalia (wall face plates, keystone modules, more pigtails etc), all of which was pretty cheap.
Note that I was able to borrow a fusion splicer from a friend. Otherwise they seem to start at around 500 bucks; buying one would have been the single biggest expense.
I also run a 25G path from one point in my flat to my ISP. The cabling is exactly the same but 25G switching equipment and optics are considerably more expensive and less available than 10G.
I particularly like per-pert PoE power monitoring on the RTL837x. I hooked that up to my netdata to get a full history of how much each device in my rack is drawing. Don't need a fancy PDU or separate power bricks for each device -- everything is powered by the $60 switch.
(This is a home network and I'm not at all bothered about single points of failure or lack of redundancy/failover.)
If we're not accounting for switches, we're talking maybe few hundred euros at most including cables and outlets both for fiber and CAT6A, maybe 400-500 total or so where majority was CAT6A since I opted for the more _industrial one_, includes 150 I paid for help to run the cables through conduits. Fiber was all patch from distribution to walls, and trunk mainlines are _industrial_ fibers where in a single small diameter cable you have 48 strands of single mode. Actually in one I have 72 strands since guys didn't have 48 at the time and diameter is the same and price difference was small. This is for a three story house + basement and a run to the garage. I did the crimping myself, you do NOT "crimp" fiber yourself.. you get pre-made cables or for trunks you ask for pros with equipment to splice/fuse it for you.
Network equipment is a range of course. I opted for dream machine gateway for net and then the backbone is Switch pro XG Aggregation where most equipment is at with Switch Pro XG 10 PoE for APs (has dual 10GBit uplink), and a few smaller switches on the edges like Flex 2.5G for cameras etc. Yeah, I went full ubiquiti on that one and my mainline is basically 25Gb network, but it doesn't matter and that's the beauty of this setup - I could've easily gone full 1Gbit, 10, 25, 100, 400, even Nvidia/Mellanox 800Gbit OSFP with appropriate transcievers if one wants to go way overboard. Idea was to run this through to be future-proof cable-wise for another 10+ years (probably more), and for network setup to be for next 10 years (probably more) with 10/25G.
It shouldn't be that much different in price to run fiber verse running cat6. The expensive part is the labor, not the cable.
Ethernet specs are for cabling in dense conduit. Most people don't have dense conduit in their house. Much cable tests better than the rating on the jacket.
My 10 gigabit thunderbolt dongle weighs about a pound, and I think 90+% of that weight is just heatsink. If I've had it plugged in for awhile, if I accidentally touch that dongle it actually hurts because it's so hot. I cannot image that much heat is good for, well, anything.
I have another Thunderbolt dongle that has an SFP+ module, so I ran a fiber line from my switch to my computer, and that runs considerably cooler. That's what I use nowadays.
DACs are copper, and they're happy.
> I have another Thunderbolt dongle that has an SFP+ module, so I ran a fiber line from my switch to my computer, and that runs considerably cooler. That's what I use nowadays.
This is also what I am doing, and I love it. Much better and more reliable than WLAN. I want as much wired as possible.
However... recently, Realtek released several products adding cheap, affordable, low-power 10 gbit SFP+ and PCIe copper (even certain for routers/switches, too). STH did reviews: they're performing. Specific chipset are: RTL8127, RTL8127AP (servers, with management), RTL8127ATF (fiber, no 10/100 mbit)), RTL8127AT (idem, but copper), RTL8159 (USB-C), RTL8261C (SFP+ copper, and media converter). See the examples here: [1]. I've already seen various been selling since ~December on AliExpress, especially copper RTL8127 variants (back then, even one RTL 10 gbit PCIe SFP+ variant). There appears to be one caveat: macOS isn't supported, Windows and Linux are.
I get the case for PoE, but PoE is apparently not as power-friendly as using a dedicated charger. I do find it much more elegant though.
Edit: I'd like to add that I've been having good success with Aquantia AQC100S which I use in my desktop (running Linux, and using a SFP+ for 10 gbit fiber), as well as a Sonnet TB3 (to SFP+ for 10 gbit fiber, running macOS M1 MBP). Both don't get hot, don't use a lot of power, and the connections saturate. Mind you, it is important to specifically go for the AQC100S and not the AQC107 or AQC113 which are both much more common. Both use more power. Because I got good success with these, and my router is sporting a X710 4 port SFP+ NIC (which could be more efficient, to be fair, but it is what it is) I am no longer interested myself in any alternatives. I'm settled.
[1] https://www.techpowerup.com/337113/realtek-to-bring-affordab...
Yeah, but DACs are pretty short and tend to have much thicker cables than regular copper Ethernet.
Well come on. GP really means category cable (twisted pair copper) is not happy at 10Gb distribution lengths (so-called horizontal cabling, although in a home it may span multiple floors without IDFs). That's kind of obvious context.
DACs are not category cable; they are twinax, short, and bulky.
If PoE required: use copper twisted pair.
If both sides SFP+ (preferred, but not always possible):
Physical presence: DAC (very cheap).
Not physical presence (e.g. has to go through wall, floor, or longer distance): fiber (OM3 are very cheap but apparently the color being translucent is regarded as nice).
Else: copper twisted pair.
I've applied this on my (rental) house. One server has a 10 gbit copper twisted pair NIC because it also has a PCIe switch with M.2 storage on the same physical PCIe board. Two WLAN APs are powered by switch in fusebox. The Unifi Protect appliance is also powered by twisted pair copper. But I was also able to get an OM3 fiber through the same wall hole.
And always terminate at walls. So if a cable in house goes bad, the one through the wall or the socket is unaffected. Works with both fiber and twisted pair copper.
You can already notice it in this post. DAC barely is part of the content. It is fire and forget, no caveats, lowest latency and lowest power usage. So it tends to be forgotten, but a DAC cable is useful if both devices got physical (vicinity) presence. An alternative could be networking over TB.
To be clear the Cat6a is thicker than Cat6 and harder to work with. It makes termination a bit more tricky.
The cables themselves don't get too hot, but the dongles themselves seem to get really hot. I'm assuming that's a known issue given the size of the heatsinks on them.
If you use a DAC they usually run cool, and optical is even cooler.
The floors where native fibre is not needed have a cheap ethernet media converter from fs.com, everything else (3 floor switches) are interconnected with 10Gbps SFP+ modules and 2.5G ethernet for the hosts.
All done thanks to the great https://michael.stapelberg.ch/posts/2020-08-09-fiber-link-ho...
(if you are reading this, I owe you several beers)
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10_Gigabit_Ethernet#10GBASE-T
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet_over_twisted_pair#Var...
Why the need for faffing about with media convertors, at least with-in your domicile? (Fibre outside / to the garage certainly makes sense.)
For all the benefits I mentioned above, plus no electrostatic shielding required, and all fibers end in a CRS310-8G+2S+IN.
Is answered in the comment you responded to:
> because the off ramp is clearly happening for ethernet at 10gbit/s
As for
> because that is what devices such as PCs and WiFi access points use
We are looking to the future. If you're putting stuff in the walls, then you should try to target something that will be adequate both today, and in 10 years from now.
Increasingly, prosumer stuff is including an SFP port. High end PCs will be shipping it in the near future, as well. And, while low-power chips are coming out, the simple fact is that physics are getting in the way.
I do think that the average home won't need more than 2.5gbps, pretty much indefinitely (an 8k video at "bluray quality" is about at most 5% of that bandwidth). But if you have any desire of going past 10gbps, Ethernet is not going to cut it.
And yes, before you ask, there is a 25gbase-t standard. Maximum distance: 30m (100ft). 100ft from panel to panel in a house? Oof.
Yeah I'm not seeing a need for fiber or anything more than CAT6. Most household devices use WiFi and I think that will continue. People don't like wires. They're unsightly, collect dust, get tripped over, etc.
I already have coax cable and telephone wiring in my walls that's unused. One computer in my house has a wired network connection. Everything else, TVs, laptops, printers, phones, tablets, miscellaneous "things" are all WiFi.
In my house though, everything except printers, phones and laptops uses Ethernet. It just works and it's better.
Not to mention termination and interference considerations, etc. When I looked at it, I decided anything over 2.5g just wasnt worth all the extra hassle vs running fiber instead.
Hell many many people now a days own only a tablet and phone and no desktop/laptop at all.
Someone else in this thread mentioned motherboards with SFP ports on them and I cant believe that will ever be common because people can barely handle the many flavours of cables using USB C, how are they going to manage the mishmash of transceivers that only like specific brands and the DAC cables that may or may not work depending on how they feel that day.
This is very useful and actionable information. At the very least I think it will be useful to plug in the mesh WiFi access point thingy if I actually have four pair in there. I will check. Thank you!
It is difficult, but possible, to find a SFP+-capable switch where idle consumption scales at around 1W/port, but less than that I have not found.
You should be running both.
If you are being smart about it your planning distributed switching (fiber to media boxes with power).
From a pure networking stance, fiber is the way to go. But POE continues to have more and more uses (doorbells, cameras, sensors, lighting controls).
How many consumer devices have an ((Q)SFP(+)) optical cage?
If you're in their pulling stuff anyway, sure, do some OS2, but for most people, for most devices, Cat 5e/6 is more useful, especially since you can do POE(+(+)) over it as well. 5e/6 gets you 10GbE to 55m, and 6A to 100m.
One place with two desktops has a switch, although when I finish up some stuff, I'm going to reterminate the phone line that's there as rj45 so both desktops can get 2.5G to my 2.5G switch. Could be sfp+, but they're mini-itx.
The kitchen desktop has its own 2.5G port; the printer next to it is on wifi because I don't want to buy a 2.5g capable switch for them to share. Mini-itx again
My work desktop has 10g-baseT.
Fiber would work for all of that, I guess.
But then I have a tv with just one device on 100base-TX. And the access points don't have spf, and aren't near other equipment.
4G has been enough for a decade, 5G was mostly just an infrastructure and capacity improvement and most consumers could never tell you they notice a difference between the two. The human eye can only see so much resolution, we don't need 8k video. I don't think consumers will need more than what they already have. At least until some new novel media format that gulps down bandwidth comes around.
This isn't necessarily all bad news. There is still a push for higher bandwidth for datacenters etc, which will keep pushing technology forward, hopefully making consumer and ISP grade equipment cheaper.
If I built a house I'd probably run ethernet. Maybe play around with a 10gbe core network. But it wouldn't really give me any benefit, it's not like disks are that fast anyways.
The upside of this is that you can increase bandwidth as the technology evolves without needing to rerun cables anytime a new specification is created for high-speed copper. OM5 fiber can do up to 400Gbps for short distances. Maybe in the future you can bundle a few pairs up and have a remote GPU sitting somewhere.
The downside is that you may need MCs, but they are small and can be hidden in wall outlets.
For majority of home usage it will all be WiFi. WiFi 7 has gotten to the point where prosumers are happy with its performance. WiFi 8 and 9 will further improve in that direction for reliability and speed.
With PoE, router and everything else Ethernet is still clearly the easiest choice. And as mentioned we now have sub 2W 10Gbps Ethernet. What will likely happen is that 10Gbps becomes like 1Gbps Ethernet, it will stay here for 10-20 years until something happen in the future that needs extra bandwidth.
May be in 10 years time 10Gbps could be done under 1W.
[1] https://stefan.schueller.net/posts/wiring-a-home-with-fiber/
Do you mean Ethernet cables get hot? Or just the networking equipment pushing that data.
I ask because I’ve never heard of Ethernet cables getting hot.
Before specifying fibre everywhere I suggest you note that a CAT 6 cable can manage 10G and PoE++. Its a lot more resilient to breakage too, especially outside the data centre.
If you really want to blow some cash there is CAT6A, which is probably not indicated unless you want cable lengths of more than say 50m.
Often that will mean running both Cat6A and fiber.
https://www.ui.com/us/en/integrations/accessory-tech/sfp-wiz...
Previously seen: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45732874
Especially handy for specific Intel NICs where they refuse to link up if the module isn't in the driver-allowed list and those modules are hard to come by
They all are little snowflakes. Compatibility is hit-or-miss. They run hot. They eat more power. They're finnicky. Heck, they plain out lie about what they are (I've got some that pretend to be fibre with 3m of copper, sure).
So yeah, DAC it is for patch, fibre for anything more.
Glad it was helpful and not me being an idiot. That's a shame about the temp read out. I just checked my MikroTik and can see the same thing. In fact, the only SFP module reporting a temperature at all is the real fiber one, all of the DACs/converters report nothing. No voltage either.
10baseT (!0Mbps) came out in 1990 (there were non-twisted pair earlier versions). "Fast Ethernet" (100Mbps) came out in 1995. Copper 1GbE came out in 1999. Copper 10GbE came out in 2006. Ethernet seemed addicted to 10x'ing every version and 10GbE is really where everything fell apart. Or at least, it's where it got hard. We never really got mass market 10GbE. The controllers were too expensive. The cable requirements were quite high. And heat was an issue.
1GbE really was fast enough and 10GbE was a massive jump that I even remember thinking at the time that there should've been intermediate steps, which is what happened in 2016 with 2.5GbE and 5GbE.
Now compare to Thunderbolt, introduced in 2011, which has completely surpassed Ethernet bandwidth, in part by putting chips in the cables, but of course the big difference is cable length. A copper cat 6/7 cable can get to ~100 meters, which is also why the power is so high: attenuation.
but I guess my point is that 10GbE over copper was a mistake. We'd reached the point where you really had to swap over to fiber.
I'd say 10GbE has arrived. It is relatively cheap, most of the time works over existing 1GbE cabling, and gracefully degrades to 5/2.5/1Gb based on conditions when it can't reach 10Gb.
Yes to be 100% guaranteed of getting 10Gb even in bundles of 100 cables running over noisy fluorescent ballasts to a full 100m you need Cat6A but in many environments Cat5e or Cat6 is more than sufficient. It works so well if you fail to get the full 10Gb I humbly suggest you re-do the terminations on both ends before considering replacing the cable.
It's coming sooner than you think: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44071701 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46423967
After stepping up in networks periodically (coax, then twisted pair with hubs, then 100mbps dual-speed switching hubs, then finally non-blocking 100mbps switches), I finally upgraded to gigabit ethernet at home because that had became cheap enough.
That last upgrade was 18 years ago, in 2008, and by that point I wasn't even an close to an early-adopter.
And now, 18 years hence: It seems absurd that the next 10x improvement is still not quite ready yet.
But for cabling, OS2 clear bend rated cable … pre-terminated is like the same price and currently have 25gb optics but I’m able to run over 100gb in my house without having to drill holes etc. (runs along the baseboards)
The cables are super thin… and clear/transparent
And I never have to replace the cable again I’m pretty sure haha
The bidi sfp28s $25 are awesome :)
And worst case if your service loop just … loops …. Eh haha
Gonna try using it for other things like hdmi etc too with a cassette :)
Replaced a wifi bridge that way...30m run across multiple rooms & hallway...zero drilling.
Within the past year, I've tried a number of Chinese 10GBase-T SFP+ modules with the Broadcom chipset and they've all been great. The one's I've got now are WTTOGTEC and WTSFOPTC, which seem to be the same company. They're dirt cheap at less than $30 each, and they're solid. I've tried both the 30m and 80m variants, and have not had any problems at all.
I've got six of them here that have been running fine full-time for several months. Two of those are in a garage with no climate controls, and summer temperatures lately often over 100℉.
The six modules I'm using are installed in three Ubiquti USW Pro XG 8 PoE switches.
https://www.moduletek.com/en/application_notes/an_00196.html
https://www.fs.com/c/gpon-xgspon-sticks-5607 (I think this is what you're looking for?)
There is an old but still good list of transceivers with this feature here: https://www.servethehome.com/sfp-to-10gbase-t-adapter-module...
Fiber is affordable, and for short distances you can use direct attach copper cables. Basically two SFPs hardwired together. You can order a 3 meter 10 GBit DAC cable for like 20 bucks. And they can be had in lengths up to 10+ meters.
Ethernet is dead for home usage. I wish companies gave a damn, but no, for the past 25 years we are stuck at 1GB/s. Only recently some laptops and motherboards started shipping with 2.5GB/s ethernet options.
If you need internet for work related audio/video conferencing, and you share your screen, wired is the way to go. Over time you can tell which colleagues are on wireless and those that are wired in.
Perhaps you're making the case that wifi7 is as good or better than wired but I would argue that depends on your physical setup and possible interference issues.
10gbps in wifi7 is great in theory but client hardware is normally 2 spacial streams, channel widths of 320 are impractical and cause me CCI even at home. Then a load of my stuff still uses 2.4. OT is a bit like that and isn't going to change. I have to share air time with my family other devicew, there are sometimes hidden nodes, DFS from the local airport.
500Mbps is more realistic.
You couldn’t pay me to rip out my fiber and run strictly on wifi.
The correct solution to future proof has and probably always will be running some single mode fiber runs. The same cable would have taken you from 10mbit to 400gbit+.
You are correct that 10GBASE-T really shouldn't be the default choice, fiber and DAC both have advantages over it. But compatibility is important, and there are a lot of situations where 10GBASE-T is just more convenient.
Makes a decent draw wire.
Residential low-voltage cable plants are almost never implemented in a way that makes upgrades simple.
Also personally, if you can get away with a copper DAC, I would rather use that instead of fiber because you don't need any special modules.
Regular people also are not buying DACs.
If you are in the line of work where you need to know what SFP is and the difference between DAC and Optical, a quick "what's OM3 vs OM5 and when do I use either?" to your favorite LLM/Search engine will get you sorted.
Regular people don't know whether to get Cat5, Cat5e, Cat6, or Cat7. So... yeah.
> ...OM3/OM4/OM5? Single mode/Multi mode? LC/SC?...
My answer is OM4, Multi-mode [0], LC. OM3, 4, and 5 will all work at 10gbit for any run you'd expect to make in most houses. I chose cable grade based on what was in stock at the local store. I chose connector type based on what fit into my NICs. I went with multi-mode because it was cheaper than single-mode and I wasn't going to be making multi-km runs.
[0] That's what the "M" in in the cable designation means.
Biggest install cost is labour. The cable and optics are cheap now, and with the future (200Gbps+) being multiple wavelengths in parallel[1], we’ve pretty much hit the end of the road for MMF.
[1] https://www.tiafotc.org/ieee-802-3-ethernet-standards-update...
Okay? If I had to run cabling through a wall, I'd make sure the guy sets it up so that I can use the cable he installs to pull new later. My time's free when I'm doing something that I don't mind doing, and I don't mind easy cable pulls.
> ...(200Gbps+)...
Don't you need 16x PCIe 4.0 for those guys? With everything other than workstation and server boards having exactly one 16x slot, you're "never" hooking that up to a gaming PC.
Everyone needs a hobby, so if you want to replace the cable later on nobody’s going to stop you.
There was a time when we couldn’t buy a PC that could saturate 1Gbps ethernet, and that time wasn’t that long ago. Your cabling plant will outlive any hardware you buy today.
Anyway, priorities. Nic in the cpu slot, gpu in the chipset slot :p
What are you talking about. It's right in the manual for some switches like the TP-Link TL-SX105 V4 [1]. It's not even an expensive or fancy one.
Network Media (Cable)
100BASE-TX: 2-pair UTP/STP of Cat. 5 or above (maximum 100 m)
1000BASE-T: 4-pair UTP/STP of Cat. 5e or above (maximum 100 m)
2.5GBASE-T: 4-pair UTP/STP of Cat. 5e or above (maximum 100 m)
5GBASE-T: 4-pair UTP/STP of Cat. 5e or above (maximum 100 m)
10GBASE-T: 4-pair UTP of Cat 6 (maximum 55 m) or STP of Cat 6, 6a, 7 (maximum 100 m)
In the worst case you'll buy some overboard Cat 7 cable, but at least things are simple unlike with fiber optics last time I've asked [2]. With cable all you need to know is the speed. You don't have to ask yourself what kind of module you have or maybe you don't even have one. All you need to know is the speed and perhaps the length although I think only "the 1%" will need more than 55 meters :-)
[1]: https://static.tp-link.com/upload/manual/2025/202501/2025012...
Because 6 has the plastic separator its much more of a bastard to pull through things. I imagine that 7 is also a dick in that regard because the shielding stops it from bending as readily.
Regular people don't know whether to get Cat5, Cat5e, Cat6, or Cat7.
I can query Google, an LLM, or a run of the mill cancer doctor for information on how to treat my stage 1 melanoma. That I can learn how to treat stage 1 melanoma doesn't mean that I know how to treat stage 1 melanoma.
> [Fiber optics are so complicated.] [With copper, all] you need to know is the speed and perhaps the length although I think only "the 1%" will need more than 55 meters :-)
For a 55 meter run, all you need to know is "Buy the cheapest multimode two-strand fiber your vendor has in stock. It's going to have LC ends, so get LC multimode optics.". You don't even have to worry about the speed of the transceivers to use this advice.
As an aside: Wow. That's [0] pricey for a dumbswitch that you also can't ever switch over to fiber. You can get a managed switch with four 10gbit cages, five 1gbit cages, and one 1gbit port for fifty bucks less [1], or a (physically much smaller) managed switch with four 10gbit cages and one 1gbit port for about the same price as that five-port TP-Link dumbswitch. [2]
TP-Link is absolutely raking in the dough on that unit.
[0] <https://www.newegg.com/tp-link-tl-sx105/p/0XP-001U-007G7> (apparent MSRP of 280->300 USD)
[1] <https://www.newegg.com/p/0XP-002R-000Y8?Item=9SIAEFKHB37914> (MSRP 200 USD)
[2] <https://www.newegg.com/p/0XP-002R-00108?Item=9SIB7VEJJD1334> (MSRP 150 USD)