[ale] Home fiber network?

Richard Bronosky Richard at Bronosky.com
Fri Aug 28 10:02:23 EDT 2009


I agree that I cannot come up with any justification for fiber.
However, suggesting that someone can simply repull a cable is full of
fail. This should only ever be done for straight runs. I made a
vertical drop that goes from my attic through 2 floors to my basement.
I have a permanent fish cord double the length of the run terminated
at each end. I use this much more often than I expected, as it goes
trough the fireplaces on both floors where I later installed flat
panel TVs. I have tried similar things in areas with one to three
bends and have often ripped cat5e (riser and patch) cable in half
trying to pull it.

If you really want to future proof, install whole house central vacuum
tubing. You can then plug the holes with [basically a sock] and use a
shop vac on one opening to pull/suck a cable with a pom-pom connected.
You can cover the conduit openings with this awesome plate
http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=105&cp_id=10425&cs_id=1042505&p_id=3997&seq=1&format=2
Have I mentioned how much I love monoprice.com?

On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 9:41 AM, scott mcbrien<smcbrien at gmail.com> wrote:
> Fiber isn't worth it (at least not now).  When you're planning your cat6
> pulls, just make sure there's extra room in the bundle and some space around
> where the pulls go through studs, walls, or floors.  If at some point in the
> future, you want to replace a cat6 drop with fiber, just attach the fiber to
> the origination of the cat6, go to the termination point and pull up the
> cat6 wire, the fiber you've attached will come right along with it.
> What are you doing in the house that is too slow over GigE?  If you compare
> the cost of the fiber, and all the equipment that goes with it with Cat6 +
> GigE, I think it's hard to find a justification.  Especially considering
> that you're boxen are either also going to have to have fiber network cards
> in them or are going to talk over copper anyway.
> -Scott
>
> On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 9:03 AM, Scott Denlinger <scott at scottdenlinger.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> I have an old house which I'm remodeling, and I am considering running
>> fiber
>> instead of cat. 6, since I think fiber won't become as obsolete as quickly
>> as
>> cat. 6 will. Does this make any sense to consider? I've run cables before,
>> and
>> could do the termination of copper myself, but would I be out of my league
>> trying to run fiber? I would have to bring someone in to terminate
>> everything
>> and test it, but I'm reasonably confident I could design the network, and
>> run
>> the fiber myself, so I'm sure I could save on a lot of the labor costs,
>> even if
>> I need someone to terminate all the connections.
>>
>> Are there good Internet resources out there for RESIDENTIAL fiber
>> networks? A
>> lot of what I've seen in my searching so far seems to involve commercial
>> installations.
>>
>> Another factor is location--I'm in Statesboro, and there's at least one
>> guy here in town
>> who claims to be able to do fiber installations, but I haven't gotten into
>> specifics with him. I'm sure there are folks in Savannah who could come
>> out and
>> do it pretty easily, especially if they didn't have to spend time running
>> the
>> fiber themselves. I imagine if they're only terminating and hooking up
>> onsite
>> equipment, it's a 1-day job at most.
>>
>> Thanks for any tips, insights or caveats.
>>
>> Scott Denlinger
>>
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