[HN Gopher] Wiring my home with fiber
___________________________________________________________________
Wiring my home with fiber
Author : sschueller
Score : 405 points
Date : 2022-10-30 11:39 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (sschueller.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (sschueller.github.io)
| [deleted]
| runjake wrote:
| This article is great overall, but there is some stuff you should
| do differently, if you're wanting to follow in the author's
| footsteps:
|
| 1. Just use UPC connectors everywhere unless you have really good
| reasons not to.
|
| 2. Use single mode fiber (SMF) everywhere, including internal
| wiring. SMF is infinitely scalable for future needs, multimode
| (MMF) is not. These days the cost differences for cabling and
| optics is negligible. In fact, SMF cabling is often cheaper than
| MMF. And no, you generally won't have to worry about attenuating
| signal.
|
| Also, in my extensive experience, FS.com optics modules are
| typically better manufactured and more reliable than OEM modules.
|
| I resisted the "cheap chinese" modules for a long, long time, but
| then discovered that most of my uplink carriers used them.
|
| It's been years now. I've had many Cisco OEM, Dell OEM, and a
| couple from another 3rd party manufacturer go bad, but I have yet
| for one FS.com SFP to go bad. I've got several hundred deployed
| in a wide variety of environments, from great (cool, clean areas)
| to bad (hot, dirty areas).
| voidwtf wrote:
| Is there a best practice for which bidi direction to choose for
| which device type?
|
| i.e. I assume you don't want to just wing it for every link, so
| do people typically choose to use all A/B on the switch side,
| and all B/A on the desktop/server side? If I were walking into
| a business, not having setup their network, what direction
| would I expect to need on the desktop/server side?
| coder543 wrote:
| Aren't BiDi transceivers usually a good bit more expensive,
| especially compared to how low the material cost of fiber is?
| What's your use case for BiDi? I don't have a lot of first
| hand experience with this stuff, though. I can easily imagine
| BiDi being useful to retrofit/repurpose some existing fiber,
| since labor costs can be a lot.
| fifteenforty wrote:
| I can see it being useful for running ultra thin bend
| insensitive fibre around base boards; just like the FTTR
| thing Huawei is trying to sell.
|
| I wish the concept was more clearly legal in Australia. I'm
| pretty sure once you glue the fiber in place it becomes
| 'permanent' and thus has to be done by a licensed cabler
| with a fiber endorsement.
| hackmiester wrote:
| I can't speak for anyone else, but we wing it for every link.
| When we light up a new link, we grab a matched pair, randomly
| select one to put in the switch, and then put the other one
| downstream.
| dijit wrote:
| Had a really good experience with FS.com.
|
| To the point that we even printed out a picture of their
| warehouse from google maps and wrote "thank you" on it before
| stapling it to the wall.
|
| They were the best support we received.
| secabeen wrote:
| The new FS-Box is out, allowing reprogramming of most FS
| transceivers for a one-time $500 cost.
| dmd wrote:
| Which is why I'm _so_ annoyed that my employer (which happens
| to be the largest employer in my entire state) mandates a
| vendor that costs 6x as much and whose products fail much
| more often.
| kevin_nisbet wrote:
| I'm really out of the game these days so don't know the
| state of different options, but to be fair, a decade ago I
| had a team member try and cheap out on modules and it
| caused a fairly decent mess. Lots of failures, but not just
| outright failures, but problems where the link would mostly
| work, but through a bunch of fiber taps and bypass modules
| produced a high error rates when installed.
|
| So I'm not saying it's right, but I can at least understand
| where a mandate like that might come from, if perhaps
| outdated compared to the current state of the industry.
| sschueller wrote:
| I had a hard time finding UPC wall outlets since most that are
| available in the Swiss format are for FTTH use, so they all
| have APC LC connectors on them. The keystone versions are
| available as UPC but they lack any fiber routing in the back.
| jagrsw wrote:
| I use the Feller one -
| https://www.feller.ch/de/Produktangebot/Kommunikations-
| und-N... - and it's indeed LC/APC.
|
| My setup is much simpler - I get 25Gbit/s from init7 to
| Mikrotik CCR2004
| https://mikrotik.com/product/ccr2004_1g_12s_2xs and then
| distribute it to 2x1Gbit access points, and use the other
| SFP28 port to power my PC (in another room) via the Intel
| E810 card.
|
| I use the Feller fiber extension cable (20m) and bought some
| cable puller to pull the fiber via the plastic piping, and
| then finished it with the Feller outlet. Looks rather clean
| :) Photo: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FWhHwD0WAAIb3Dt?format=
| jpg&name=...
|
| PS: ccr2004_1g_12s_2xs is barely coping with 25Gb/s routing.
| It can do it, but for multiple TCP sessions, a single one
| chokes the router at something like 20Gbps (down), 15 Gbps
| (up).
| sschueller wrote:
| Very nice, how much does one of those plates cost? I can't
| find any prices easily.
| jagrsw wrote:
| IIRC ~70CHF for the outlet (which only works with the
| Feller electrical wall outlets AFAIK) + 10CHF (RJ45
| module) + 20 CHF (single-port LC/APC module).
|
| The cable extension is expensive, 150CHF or so for 20m,
| but you'd probably need it for this outlet because it's
| specially designed so it can be attached to the LC/APC
| module manually (no splicing). Something like Swisscom's
| ClickLC, just a different system.
| runjake wrote:
| This is what I suspected. Great write-up. Thanks for putting
| all that effort into it.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| What about bi-directional vs running two fibers? Will this
| increase latency, even if negligible?
| ilyt wrote:
| It will increase cost and you need to remember which side
| uses which module. Bi-directional just uses different
| wavelength in each direction.
|
| Generally not worth it unless you have existent
| infrastructure and want some more density
| sponaugle wrote:
| And given some of the inexpensive single mode fiber spools
| are two fibers, it is probably easier to just have two fibers
| instead of trying to do 2 wavelengths.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| 3rd party and maybe 1-2 of each type from the vendor (used to
| show their support that the 3rd party transceiver isn't the
| problem) is what we usually buy, basically an open secret.
| Though I've seen 97% off the price for vendor optics, still
| more expensive than 3rd party
| sponaugle wrote:
| Fiber is, as runjake mentioned, very very cheap. The raw cost
| is less than copper, and that is part of why I ran so much of
| it in my build. (I am not the OP). I did however include some
| multimode in that equation only because some AV equipment uses
| is, and not all of them use replaceable optics modules.
|
| I would strongly agree that if you are running fiber, run
| single mode everywhere. It is amazing how far singlemode fiber
| can go compared to copper if you are willing to spend money on
| the endpoints.
| yakak wrote:
| What kind of equipment outlay was necessary if you don't mind
| my asking? I.e. the splicer the OP bought seems a bit
| expensive and impractical to own compared to an ethernet
| crimper, etc.
| anonymousiam wrote:
| I agree there's a lot of useful information in the article. Two
| things:
|
| 1) I question his choice of OpnSense vs. OpenWRT. I've found
| OpenWRT to be less demanding on the hypervisor/host, and quite
| scalable.
|
| 2) Not about the article, but about your comment on Chinese
| modules. I've tried Chinese 10Gb SFP+ modules and I've returned
| all that I tried. They would overheat, and they would not
| operate up to the specified data rates. The name brands cost
| twice as much, but they work.
| moogly wrote:
| I did this as a small-scale experiment/proof-of-concept earlier
| this year in my 2 br apartment, preparing for wiring for 10G (and
| possibly beyond as the years pass) when I move into my house
| later this.
|
| I went with singlemode fiber. Don't really see the point of
| multimode. At all. After doing some research I am not sure who it
| is made for.
|
| Sure, the BiDi SFP+ modules are a bit more expensive but not
| overly so.
|
| The fiber is cheaper.
|
| It's easier to splice/use field assembly connectors if needed.
|
| Much easier to hide the cables. If you go with 0.9 mm you can
| even hide it in nooks and crannies under door trim etc.
|
| It is future proof. SMF will always be supported.
|
| Now the only problem is that the Mikrotik CRS routers I want to
| get are either out of stock or have insanely inflated prices.
| Seems to still be affected by component shortages. I already have
| a couple of CRS305 and some CCS610, but I'm going to need more of
| those now plus a CRS309 to scale it all up.
| y04nn wrote:
| 10 Gbps is really a game changer if you have large quantity of
| data to transfer (multiple terabytes), but 10G cards and
| equipment are power hungry so I only put out a dangling fiber one
| in a while to make a backup but the speed is appreciable.
|
| Also I'm still looking for a solution setup a ~200m link,
| Ethernet and WLAN are not an option, so I'm only left with fiber,
| 1Gbps would be sufficient, but I won't be able to do it myself
| because of the price of a splicer. I thought about asking an
| installer to do the splicing for me, it shouldn't be that
| expensive, maybe on day.
| yuvadam wrote:
| Any reason you can't use pre-terminated fiber?
| y04nn wrote:
| I have to pass the fiber cable through conduits that are not
| very large and they are not straight. So I will need to use a
| pull line. Using pre-terminated fiber will either bock or
| destroy the connector.
| namibj wrote:
| There are toolless mechanical splices for about a buck each.
| Pre-terminated cable also exists, and a single fiber with an LC
| plug for bidi is small enough to fit through typical conduit.
| Klasiaster wrote:
| Meanwhile the wifi router I got from my provider maxes out at ~5
| MB/s for local transfer between two devices...
| ezfe wrote:
| Well that's stupid - don't pay to rent those shitty boxes
| (unless it's free, I suppose)
| orliesaurus wrote:
| For those wondering, as the OP didn't mention it super-clearly
| imho - but his internet provider is able to do 25gbit [1] for CHF
| 69 a month (+ CHF ~340 set up cost)
|
| CHF 1 ~= USD 1 these days
|
| Question for OP:
|
| Why did you build such an expensive "router" - you justify it by
| saying you also want to run PiHole, but you probably could have
| done this whole setup much cheaply
|
| [1] https://www.init7.net/en/internet/fiber7/
| sschueller wrote:
| The router is more of a server. Pihole is just an example (and
| yes a $35 pi would be plenty for it) but I have many old
| servers running all kinds of other things so I decided to
| update and consolidate some of this.
| minus7 wrote:
| Good joke, there are no $35 pis
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| Meh. It's (supposedly) a transient situation that'll
| resolve in due time.
|
| More importantly, I and many geeks I know but/bought
| several when a new model first comes out because they are
| (were) cheap but electronics wholesalers don't offer free
| shipping so it makes sense to buy as many as you think
| you'll use (until the next one comes out) in one go to
| minimize the amortized cost.
|
| I miscalculated and ended up using all of mine, but I have
| friends that still have some of their stock.
| sschueller wrote:
| I made this telegram bot[1] a while back that uses
| rpilocator.com and will notify you as soon as one is
| available from an official reseller. Those resellers should
| be selling them at the regular price. But yes, if you want
| to buy one right now, it won't be $35.
|
| [1] https://github.com/sschueller/rpilocatorbot
| runjake wrote:
| Although this stuff is all mundane to me (network engineer), it
| was a long, fun read about a layman dipping his toe^W entire leg
| up to the armpits in networking.
| Makobado1 wrote:
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > My ISP plans on proving 100gbits in about 2 years so I don't
| need pull new fiber if I decide to upgrade.
|
| Jesus. Meanwhile, here in Germany, right in the center of Munich
| the best I can get is 100/40, because while there _is_ FTTB
| buildout, the last 20m in the building go through the telephone
| wiring from the late 80s.
| bombcar wrote:
| If you really want it, and are willing to pay, you can often
| negotiate with the building owner to get the last 20m run (up
| to and including conduit hidden on the outside of the building,
| etc).
|
| If enough people in the building care, it might even be
| relatively cheap.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| The latter is the problem. Half the people in the building
| are old, the other half of them are happy with the way it is
| - I'm the only IT guy. _Might_ be possible to pull fiber
| through the conduits, but not sure if the Mnet FTTB box can
| actually give me fiber - I think it 's a miniature DSLAM
| only.
| namibj wrote:
| Mnet should be able to CWDM (of they don't just have a
| fiber to spare for it) you a link on the DSLAM's fiber
| uplink. Provided the building owner allows the fiber from
| the DSLAM to you. They could also put an Ethernet switch
| needy to the DSLAM so more people could share one uplink
| connection.
| vegasbrianc wrote:
| Great article. Amazing the publishers first blog post and front
| page of HN. Well done ;)
| sschueller wrote:
| Thank you and the others who also submitted it as originally
| this post was flagged. Probably because I changed the title
| after submitting it to "Show HN" but I am unsure.
|
| I am glad now that I spent the time to put it on github.io and
| not on some old server of mine that would have been hugged to
| death.
| sponaugle wrote:
| Nice read, and great work on the terminations.
|
| I did an extensive amount of both fiber and CAT6A in my recent
| house build, totally about 21 miles together. I did a mixture of
| single mode and multimode only because of some AV device support
| for multimode, and because all of it was so cheap compared to the
| labor and time.
|
| I ended up with significant fiber runs between the MDF and IDF
| closets, the server room, and all of the AV endpoints which is a
| typical layout. I did run single mode fiber to all 18 wireless AP
| access-point locations, but I suspect those will not get used
| much given I also have 2 CAT6A shielded wires to each AP that can
| support 10G AND provided power. I do use a direct fiber
| connection in my office to provide 10G to my network core from
| that desktop, but that could have been done over copper as well.
|
| Perhaps the biggest gain over copper is my switch interconnects
| which are 40G from the upstairs closet to the server room. If
| needed it would be easy to upgrade those to 100G, and since there
| are 24 strands available you really could expand as far as you
| are every going to need to go with WDM and the like.
|
| The one really good use case for only fiber was running it down
| my driveway to our gate, which is about a 1/4 mile in distance.
| That is something that would be more challenging to do with
| copper. [although I do have copper installed].
|
| From my perspective the cost of running fiber was almost 0
| compared to the entire project because so much more cost is
| involved in path finding and clearing ( cutting holes, etc), and
| the actual pulling. I was very fortunate to have a large group of
| friends who spent a couple of days working with me to do the
| large pulls, combined with many weeks of evenings and weekends
| doing the rest myself. Many hands makes that task much much
| easier.
|
| My particular build is documented in a build thread:
| https://www.garagejournal.com/forum/threads/jeffs-mountain-s...
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| I can't wait to digest this later on a desktop. Thanks for
| sharing it and documenting it. 21 miles! Reminds me of the
| guy's house in Ex Machina.
| spockz wrote:
| What kind of house needs 18 AP? Was this in an existing house
| or an house being constructed?
| sponaugle wrote:
| It was a new house. The 18 AP locations serve a couple of
| different long run purposes and reasons:
|
| The first is to have direct nearly-line of sight locations
| for the majority of the house which is primarily to support
| higher frequency(60GHz) and beyond which have poor wall
| penetration.
|
| The second is to provide good wifi coverage due to signal
| attenuation from the construction techniques. I did many of
| the walls in double 5/8s drywall, some in green wall, all
| insulated, and all solid hard doors. Steel cross structures
| as well. As a result wifi propagation is surprisingly bad
| across rooms.
|
| The third is to provide lots of locations to aid in
| flexibility of having the best locations. I do not use all 18
| locations right now, but I may use more in the future.
|
| It is also a somewhat large (>10,000 sq ft, ~ 1000 sq meters)
| house, so that facilitates a need for a bit more coverage.
| bombcar wrote:
| 10k sq ft as "somewhat large" ha! ;)
|
| With 18 APs are you using campus wifi style things, or just
| a bunch with the same SID?
| sponaugle wrote:
| I'm using Ubiquity Unifi 6 Pros right now, but am going
| to switch to the Enterprise ones (with 6Ghz) at some
| point soon. They are all integrated to the same
| controller (a UDM Pro), so all SSIDs I use are available
| everywhere. I even have a couple of them down the
| driveway all the way to the gate so I have wifi coverage
| all the way out.
| _zoltan_ wrote:
| Why switch?
| bombcar wrote:
| Probably for the sweet, sweet 6GHz.
| sponaugle wrote:
| Yes, the sweet 6Ghz!
| Unklejoe wrote:
| Not surprised to see you on here. I was the guy who got into
| the discussion about the merits of single mode vs multi mode
| with a few of your friends on Facebook a while ago. I was in
| the multi mode camp mainly due to cost reasons whereas they
| were in the single mode camp for future proofing reasons.
|
| That said, the cost gap between MM and SM optics today is much
| smaller especially for 10G (and for the fiber itself it seems
| to have even reversed), so single mode definitely makes more
| sense. For some reason, MM fiber is still widely deployed in
| certain niche use-cases though. Not quite sure why.
|
| For example, I know that it's used on modern military jets for
| their 10GBASE-SR networks. I wonder if it has something to do
| with being able to repair terminations in the field? I know MM
| is pretty forgiving that way. Or maybe it's just another case
| of them adopting whatever was popular at that exact moment.
| sponaugle wrote:
| It was surprising the amount of AV related gear that was
| multimode specific! The cost differential has dropped so much
| now you can run either at low cost so if you have the space
| you can run both.
|
| MM is easier to do mechanical splices on, and does seem to be
| overall less sensitive to damage. If your need is 10G and
| less than 300m it works well.
|
| As an aside I ran a USB over fiber repeater that was
| multimode specific by accident I used a single mode fiber
| (same LC connector), and it worked perfectly.
| yrgulation wrote:
| This is likely not useful in most west european homes (even
| gigabit connections are unheard of in the uk, 10 megs being
| advertised as "superfast", let alone tens of gigs). But still a
| fun project!
| eertami wrote:
| That's because the UK is way behind mainland Europe in this
| regard. My previous house in a very busy area of London had
| 80mbps max...
|
| However in a small town in Switzerland we have 25Gbps
| available. The UK could be in this position, but Thatcher
| happened unfortunately, and the project was canned.
| Jabbles wrote:
| Here's some actual data that contradicts your hyperbole:
|
| _In March 2021 the median download speed of UK home broadband
| connections was 50.4 Mbit /s_
|
| https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0020/224192/...
|
| "Superfast" is not used to describe 10mbs, it is 30-300mbs.
| yrgulation wrote:
| Thanks for correcting, still extremely slow.
| zajio1am wrote:
| Fast local network is useful even without fast uplink, e.g. for
| accessing data on local server. 1 Gbps is still several times
| slower than disk speeds, so going to 10 Gbps seems like
| reasonable future-proof config.
| themoonisachees wrote:
| The uk is behind most of europe. Even east eu countries have
| fiber to a significant chunk of the population now, and west is
| doing great. In france i get 5Gb/1.2Gb for 49 euros.
| Switzerland is even better. When i sold routers to businesses
| they would always be gigabit fiber available, so much that i
| had stopped checking.
|
| That said 25Gb is a lot outside of switzerland.
| yrgulation wrote:
| > Even east eu countries have fiber to a significant chunk of
| the population now
|
| Yes, "even" the barbarians of east europe have it. In romania
| you get around 10 gbps per second for roughly 10 euros a
| month from what i hear, and pretty much everyone has fiber. I
| believe Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia are doing great as
| well.
| matthewmacleod wrote:
| About 70% of UK homes have access to a gigabit connection
| through either fibre or the Virgin Media HFC network. FTTP
| coverage is about 40% nationwide. It's not that rare.
| yrgulation wrote:
| Well i clearly couldnt find such homes and believe me i
| looked. I was happy to have found homes with proper
| structural integrity let alone high speed internet.
| aix1 wrote:
| Respectfully, I find the 70% figure for access to a _gigabit_
| line extremely hard to believe.
|
| When I lived in central London (tube zone 2), all that was
| available at my address was a wet-noodle quality 20 Mbps DSL
| connection. No BT FTTP, no Virgin, no Hyperoptic, no
| G.Network. This was in early 2022.
|
| I now live in Switzerland and have a 25 Gbps FTTP connection,
| paying about 30% more than I paid in London for the DSL line.
|
| It's a completely different world connectivity-wise.
| cr3ative wrote:
| The 70% figure is very recent and largely due to Virgin
| Media doing a massive upgrade. It surprised me too.
| voidwtf wrote:
| They'll eventually be dragged into the future by requirement,
| 1GbE is already standard on most equipment, with 2.5GbE and
| 1+gbit wifi becoming more common on consumer equipment. The
| increasing reliance of on-demand delivery of various forms of
| content, from multimedia to gaming, is already pushing 100Mbps
| connections to where 10Mbps connections were less than 5 years
| ago.
|
| I think its worth choosing fiber in a new deployment, at least
| at the distribution level (between floors, or zones of the
| home). Most new computers come with ultra fast solid state
| storage, so even between systems on a local network, 10GbE
| speeds could be useful.
|
| With the way the price of copper is going, and how much less
| efficient rj45/copper chipsets are compared to optical, I
| wouldn't be surprised if we see a shift to optical as a
| replacement to rj45 in the next decade.
| yrgulation wrote:
| At a time when more internet developed countries are moving
| towards 10gb connections, the uk is moving towards 1gb.
| Instead of playing catch it should lead. Now if only there
| were competent people in power.
| joelhaasnoot wrote:
| I learnt a lot of these things the hard way - this is a good
| resource describing the different connectors and what they mean
| DeathArrow wrote:
| Is there a cheap as in < $1000 router with 10GbE (for fiber or
| copper) ports?
| avidiax wrote:
| https://mikrotik.com/product/ccr2004_1g_12s_2xs
|
| You pay the SFP module tax on every port for that model, and
| also have a loud fan. You also probably can't put a copper SFP
| module in every cage without overheating.
|
| https://mikrotik.com/product/rb5009upr_s_in
|
| That will let you receive 10Gbps fiber, and maybe route 3Gbps
| or so. No fans. No SFP module tax. And PoE on every port.
|
| Mikrotik is definitely missing a product that has maybe 1 SFP28
| port, 1 SFP+ port, 4 10GBps ports and 5 2.5Gbps ports. That
| would let you take in 25Gbps fiber, have a 10Gbps fiber run to
| a switch someplace, and run 10Gbps ethernet as needed.
| nullify88 wrote:
| Mikrotik has some very affordable & capable routers under $1000
| with SPF or SPF+. Depends on how many ports, but they'd start
| with RB5009UG+S+IN which has a suggested retail price of $219.
| jonatron wrote:
| You'd think simplex short boot LC would be able to get through
| small conduit. Although you can always stick the fusion splicer
| on eBay, it's not like it's worthless now.
| sponaugle wrote:
| Yes, I did some pulls with pre-termed LCs since the LCs are so
| small. They were easy to pull and worked fantastic.
| Faaak wrote:
| 3M sells fusion-less APC and UPC connectors that you can insert
| into any (well cut) fiber. I used them to fiber my home too
| without using a fusion machine.
|
| I was really dubious at first but they work really well
| edude03 wrote:
| I'm in the middle of running fiber in my house as well but much
| less elaborate than OP. I bought a few 100m MPO terminated cables
| off eBay, a few MPO to LC splitters from FS.com and a few 100m
| capable optics from eBay and fs.com. All my switches have sfp
| ports so it was pretty straight forward
| fifteenforty wrote:
| Does anyone have any more info on Huawei's FTTR concept?
| https://www.huawei.com/en/technology-insights/inspiration-la...
|
| To me it looks like just standard, modern bend insensitive single
| mode fibre but in a clear jacket.
| uri4 wrote:
| I wonder what is use case for this network. At my home I only use
| optics for long run, more for galvanic isolation, as electric
| charge could destroy electronics. All servers are concentrated in
| single room. Clients use miniPCs. Rest of the house is wired with
| 2.5Gb ethernet and wifi6, anything faster and expenses grow
| exponentially.
| bombcar wrote:
| 10Gb normal CAT whatever Ethernet works but the SPF adapters
| get quite hot.
|
| I have a 10Gb backbone for my "servers" and then a single 10Gb
| Ethernet cable to my main Mac- works well enough for now and
| probably not worth upgrading until I have internet beyond 10Gb.
| heffer wrote:
| I think one major use case in this particular scenario is that
| the author has one 25 Gbit/s and one 10 Gbit/s internet
| service. If you want to make the most use of this fibre is the
| only way to go.
| uri4 wrote:
| I do data processing and can saturate similar bandwidth. But
| 10Gbps goes to my home server room.
|
| There is no need to have 10Gb in bedroom, such tech produces
| a lot of noise and heat. Maybe Stadia or similar video
| streaming could use such bandwidth. But this looks more like
| wiring for residential building with multiple flats, or
| office building. Or like some sort of tech flex.
| culturestate wrote:
| _> There is no need to have 10Gb in bedroom_
|
| ...until later in the home's life when that bedroom is no
| longer a bedroom, for whatever reason. If you're gonna do a
| project like this you might as well take it to its logical
| conclusion.
|
| It's the same kind of advice I'd give to anyone who buys
| e.g. an iPad Pro - you might not think you need a cellular
| model right now, but that one time you _do_ need it two
| years from now you're gonna be _very_ glad that you paid
| the extra ~$100.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| That's some very hypothetical talk. The master bedroom in
| a typical home is likely and forever going to remain a
| bedroom, at least if there is sufficient other space
| available in the home. If you buy a couple of iPads (you
| and your spouse or kids or whatever) and upgrade them
| every x years, springing for an extra $100 on each one
| every time adds up. You never _need_ the cellular module,
| though it might be _nice_ to have since there are always
| other, less convenient options (hotspot on phone,
| standalone hotspot, public Wi-Fi, etc).
|
| You cannot take your mantra to its logical conclusion and
| apply it to everything, everywhere, at least not unless
| cost is absolutely a non-issue for you.
| culturestate wrote:
| _> there are always other, less convenient options
| (hotspot on phone, standalone hotspot, public Wi-Fi..._
|
| Until you're driving, _hypothetically,_ through rural
| Arkansas, where there 's no Starbucks and your iPhone has
| _juuuuuust_ enough signal strength to receive the
| WhatsApp telling you that you need to turn around a
| couple of slides but not enough bandwidth to download the
| deck.
|
| Your iPad, though, for reasons known only to the black
| magic gods of RF design _does_ have a stable-enough LTE
| connection and it saves your bacon with the large
| corporate client that dragged you to razorback country in
| the first place.
|
| Hypothetically.
|
| _> You cannot take your mantra to its logical conclusion
| and apply it to everything, everywhere_
|
| There's a reason I wrote _iPad Pro._ It's not my mantra -
| it's advice that applies to specific kinds of people in
| specific kinds of situations. The kind of people who have
| the means and motivation to run fiber throughout their
| house, for example.
| avidiax wrote:
| It's very likely "because he can".
|
| 25Gbps would be hard to saturate with an NVME SSD. Even if you
| like to mirror hard disks to remote locations all the time, you
| can just RSYNC, and then your needs are limited to the rate of
| change.
|
| I'm getting a 10Gbps from the same provider, and even that is
| not likely to saturate, and I'll only have 1Gbps CAT6 links.
| The main benefit is that the clients are absolutely
| independent, i.e. downloading a Linux image can't affect
| someone's video conference, since each client can only pull
| 1Gbps of 10Gbps total.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| The author's ISP delivers up to 25/25Gbps connections (and
| 10gbps connections for the same price as 1gbps connections,
| about $65 dollars per month converted) so if he is planning on
| using such a high bandwidth uplink, I don't think ethernet
| makes a lot of sense.
|
| If I had a 10gbps uplink for that price, I'd certainly look
| into getting more out of my network than just standard
| ethernet. 10gbit ethernet at least, though fiber may be easier
| to install depending on the size and layout of the house.
| Salgat wrote:
| I have 1gbps fiber and it's extremely rare for me to come
| across a server that supports anything close to that
| bandwidth. At 10gbps you're able to upload 500GB/hour. For
| home use this seems extremely unlikely, even if you're using
| this as part of your job. Even my 4K surveillence cameras
| only require 20mbps each, that's 50 4k cameras to saturate a
| 1gbps line.
| dale_glass wrote:
| I think of >1 GBps speeds as something that serves burst
| rather than streaming needs.
|
| The use case isn't "I need it to watch youtube", but "I
| want to be able to restore from backup in hours rather than
| days", or "I want to play the latest Doom today and not
| tomorrow".
|
| Eg, say you're backing up your data to a remote site. Great
| idea, but what if you need a restore, how long will that
| take? Downloading say, 100 TB on a 1 Gbps connection will
| take you more than a week.
| neurostimulant wrote:
| That would only works if the other end can push 25gbps as
| well. I wonder what's the maximum throughput of various
| cloud storage services commonly used for off site backups
| (S3, B2, etc). Would they artificially limit the max
| bandwidth or allow you to go as fast as possible?
| filleokus wrote:
| I've had trouble saturating my 1 Gbps connection in
| Sweden. I did tests with B2 and Wasabi roughly every
| quarter for a couple of years trying to see if it was
| feasible to move some data hoarding activities there, and
| never got more than [?]100 Mbps when downloading from
| them.
|
| Don't know if it's still the case, or if my ISP was to
| blame (or just being in EU/Sweden).
|
| On the other hand, I don't have a problem maxing out 1
| Gbps when downloading both metaphorical and actual linux
| iso's. A lot of the microsoft stuff is really fast as
| well, wouldn't be surprised if they could saturate [?] 10
| Gbps.
| spaceywilly wrote:
| Have to think about the future though when you're dealing
| with running stuff in walls. Think about what would've been
| acceptable throughput 10 years ago. If you built your home
| network around that, you'd probably be kicking yourself
| today.
| Salgat wrote:
| Even CAT5e supports 10gbps in your typical house (you'll
| want CAT6 for longer distances though), and 10gbps is
| likely future proof for the next 25 years (which is crazy
| because CAT5e came out in 1999).
| popcalc wrote:
| And ipv6 came out a year before that.
| screamingninja wrote:
| I second this. ~$1375 vs under $200 for an Ethernet run.
| Expensive project just to be able to say "I did it".
| SamuelAdams wrote:
| Not every hobby has to be cost optimized. I've spent
| thousands on climbing equipment that I never took full
| advantage of.
|
| Sometimes people have money to burn and want to do something
| for the fun of it.
| sponaugle wrote:
| Hobbies are almost by definition not cost optimized!
| Symbiote wrote:
| Some are, like growing your own food or backpacking.
| RealStickman_ wrote:
| You'd earn more money by working overtime and buying food
| from the supermarket instead of spending time growing it
| yourself.
| Symbiote wrote:
| That depends on the food. My parents mostly grew fruit,
| and berries especially are very expensive at the
| supermarket.
|
| The other things they grew were also equal or better to
| the most expensive produce at the most luxury
| supermarket, like tomatoes that tasted of tomato rather
| than the watery, red golf balls they sell in Asda.
| megous wrote:
| > "Ability to utilize 25gbit internet connection"
| bmitc wrote:
| There are other benefits of fiber, such as transmitting non-
| Ethernet signals such as USB, DisplayPort, HDMI, etc. You can
| run these things over Ethernet, but they are really shoddy
| and unreliable.
|
| It allows you to centralize more things. For example, you
| could just have a monitor, keyboard, mouse, and a hub in a
| room for a computer, where the computer is actually somewhere
| else (such as a server room).
| minus7 wrote:
| I also installed fiber a while ago after being told "this isn't
| hard" by Michael Stapelberg's post [1]. Luckily I managed to get
| by with patch cables; a 30m cables really goes a long way! I even
| managed to get a duplex LC through a 16mm conduit with a pretty
| tight 90deg bend, but just with lube, quite some force and luck.
|
| I can just recommend going for it if you're curious. Cables and
| tranceivers really aren't expensive from fs.com (though their
| sales people may start bothering you).
|
| Edit: And old, used network cards from ebay, of course.
|
| [1]: https://michael.stapelberg.ch/posts/2020-08-09-fiber-link-
| ho...
| archi42 wrote:
| Kudos for pulling those through these small conduits :)
|
| For anyone trying to emulate this: I would very much NOT
| recommend using 16mm conduits for LC duplex patch cables. It's
| doable for some short/straight runs, but the connectors like to
| get stuck in bends. For me it was the final r=3cm bend in a
| ~20m conduit. I ended up pulling Cat7 into that conduit and
| routed the fiber through a tree-like network of wider backup
| conduits.
|
| Since the backup conduit ends up in the wrong corner of the
| room, I might one day 1. cut the 30m fiber patch cable, 2. pull
| it into the original 16mm conduit (w/o connectors), replacing
| the Cat7 and 3. splice the fiber again. Using a "mechanical
| splice" that should be doable quite cheaply, but I didn't yet
| get around to learning/practicing that.
| kube-system wrote:
| Is the equipment used for termination more expensive than the
| splicing equipment?
|
| I just use premade MMF in my house.
| sschueller wrote:
| I have no experience with terminating connectors directly.
| There appear to be all kinds available, even ones with gel
| inside them but they suffer a lot more loss than if I splice a
| fiber.
|
| Using the splicer gave me the flexibility to splice pig-tail
| ends or just two fibers together with a small loss.
| archi42 wrote:
| From what I read (never tried and not my area of expertise)
| for our short runs at home loss isn't that big of an issue,
| especially for 10km transceivers.
| shmerl wrote:
| _> In order to use the SFP+ modules you need the correct PCIe
| cards on your PC_
|
| Are there good SFP+ USB 4 adapters that work on Linux?
|
| One of the bad trends in recent motherboards is minimal number of
| PCIe slots, which are very clearly focused on GPUs only. So
| basically there is no room for any extra devices. Their idea
| seems to be pushing everyone to USB 4 for use cases like that
| (which supposedly should be able to route even PCIe?).
| sschueller wrote:
| I only know of this thunderbolt version but I do not know how
| the linux support is.
| https://www.sonnettech.com/product/solo10g-sfp-tb3/overview....
| . For SFP28 there seems to be nothing available at this time
| that would work via USB.
| shmerl wrote:
| Thanks! They seem to be listing Linux. Would it work with USB
| 4? Whole Thunderbolt / USB situation is somewhat confusing.
| blinded wrote:
| nice article, fun project. I did cat 6e. Was gonna do fiber but
| my telco and modem dont support above 1 gig. but on the lan its
| 10g.
| yuvadam wrote:
| Awesome project, I did something very similar at home, but used
| fiber only to connect switches and routers around the house.
|
| PoE is still a must for powering wireless access point and
| perimeter security cameras.
| alberth wrote:
| PoE is a huge reason why CAT-x cabling will be around for a
| long time.
| kkfx wrote:
| While I like the idea I do not like much fiber or to be more
| precise their live stuff, since they degrade far faster than
| copper. A copper switch might work well for 10+ years, and since
| at home we normally not need such extreme performances and these
| days 2.5GBE on cat 8.1 copper are relatively cheap and common...
|
| Sure, it's very "blinkenlichten" but...
| detaro wrote:
| What exactly degrades in a fiber setup?
| awestroke wrote:
| Fiber degradation is a problem after 30-40 years, not really
| something to take into consideration
| mr_sturd wrote:
| I always end up green with envy that people seem to have pre-
| existing conduits in their walls for running new cables. There's
| no way, in my old house, of doing this without some invasive
| smashing in to walls.
| latchkey wrote:
| I'm currently in the process of literally tearing down walls in
| my old house (built in the 40's). I used to fear smashing into
| walls. Once you do a bit of drywall and mud yourself, you
| realize it isn't that big of a deal. Everything I've learned
| has been off YT videos and there are some excellent channels
| with all of the professional tips and tricks. It isn't rocket
| science by a long shot.
| akvadrako wrote:
| I agree it isn't rocket science, but plastering if one of
| those things best left to professionals, much more so than
| plumbing or electrical for instance. They usually make near
| minimum wage, are just so much faster and produce a better
| result.
|
| I've started plastering a few of my walls and after wasting a
| couple days doing a few square meters ended up hiring a
| couple guys to do the rest of the house. There is just no
| comparison in value.
| _zoltan_ wrote:
| Here in Switzerland it's 10 CHF / square meter for white
| and 15-20 CHF / square meter for colour walls plus
| transport plus recycling plus material.
|
| I wouldn't call this cheap :-)
| dfc wrote:
| Surely you could save some money by doing the painting
| yourself? Is it all or nothing there? In the States
| drywall and paint are two separate crews.
| _zoltan_ wrote:
| you could. most people rent (60+%) and they don't paint
| their walls.
| latchkey wrote:
| I'm sorry, but it isn't that hard, really. Also, awkward to
| talk about how you pay someone a barely living wage as an
| excuse to not do it yourself.
| lazide wrote:
| If your time is billed out at a large multiple of x, it's
| pretty relevant.
| kortilla wrote:
| > Also, awkward to talk about how you pay someone a
| barely living wage as an excuse to not do it yourself.
|
| Guess how much they make if you don't pay them?
|
| It's better for everyone if someone who can make more
| money per hour uses that higher earning power to offload
| lower income tasks to people in those jobs.
| sokoloff wrote:
| It's not like those laborers would be made any better off
| if you did the work yourself.
| y04nn wrote:
| It just take practice, my first try was not perfect but
| acceptable, the second time was much better and the third
| on a larger wall with lots of defects looks good, but I
| probably spent too much time on it, although I am confident
| that I can now do it much faster.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| While it's not rocket science, I always find it to be super
| annoying to do. Getting things smooth/flat when you're done
| (generally, I think I wind up doing 4-5 layers of mud) takes
| a fair amount of time. Plus sanding it down without getting
| the powder everywhere is difficult; I use a wet sander / sand
| "sponge", but even then I wind up with some of it spreading
| around.
| bombcar wrote:
| Drywall is one of those things I've found it is highly
| worth hiring out. Even if you hang the drywall, hiring
| someone to tape and mud and sand can be entirely worth it -
| they do it day in, day out, can use five minute mud, and
| can get done in a few hours what would take you days or
| even a week.
|
| Doing small repairs is easy enough that everyone should at
| least know the concepts involved.
| lazide wrote:
| Concrete finishing is another, IMO.
|
| It takes a lot of practice to be smooth enough at doing
| it to have a nice result over any large area before the
| concrete sets. It's not the type of thing that benefits
| from going 'hmm, maybe I should do it this way' after
| you've started.
|
| Also, it's much, much easier to do as a small crew -
| easily 3-5x more productivity per person. Same as
| drywall. It's not easy to do as a solo worker, even if
| you know the tricks.
| latchkey wrote:
| My house already has the "Santa Fe" texture on the walls...
| it is supposed to be not perfect. Going with smooth, seems
| like a mistake to me.
| robocat wrote:
| I'm guessing what people are saying is that they have
| seen plenty of home jobs where the surface is left with
| an obvious bulge, hollow, or an hideous line. Some people
| are very sensitive to surface unevenness, and really
| notice slight surface imperfections, and some people
| don't notice gross errors.
|
| In my very limited experience, many textures are often
| _harder_ to make look right than flat surfaces. I think I
| am sensitive to texture variation, because with textures
| I notice mistakes and I often notice where alterations
| have been made.
|
| Either way, your Santa Fe look is irrelevant to the topic
| of fixing problems in walls when they are not textured
| like yours.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| I've done a lot of drywall work and I still avoid it whenever
| possible.
|
| Doing basic drywall and paint isn't rocket science, but
| getting a professional level fit and finish actually takes a
| lot of practice and experience. It's also a completely
| different experience when you're trying to match old
| specialty paints from a previous homeowner, blending repairs
| to match the wall texture, and other complexities that don't
| show up in those basic YT videos. If you're in a situation
| with untextured walls, known paint colors, simple repairs,
| and a forgiving eye, then it's really not bad, but the
| complexities can add up quickly.
|
| Even in the best cases, cutting into drywall all across the
| house to pull wire would be a project I'd try to avoid at all
| costs in an occupied home. The fast path still requires
| multiple days to go through all of the drying and re-
| application cycles to build up all the right layers, not to
| mention dust control to keep that fine dust out of everything
| you own.
| latchkey wrote:
| I just redid my whole kitchen to the studs. You're making
| it out to be a bigger deal than it is. Now I'm onto a
| bedroom where I removed two whole walls that had been
| weirdly built to cut the room into a smaller room. This is
| going to require a bunch of repair work, all the way to the
| ceilings.
|
| Certainly, if you're looking for perfectly smooth walls,
| then you're never going to be happy regardless. My place is
| Santa Fe, which is perfect... it is supposed to be messy.
| But this is a place built in the 40's... nothing is
| perfect. Doing something perfectly would stand out even
| more.
|
| If you want old paints to match, then just paint the whole
| wall. That's easier and probably the right solution anyway.
| lazide wrote:
| Pretty much impossible to do without major strain on a
| relationship if you live with someone else, and god help
| you if you have kids. FYI.
|
| Doing it down to the studs and all at once is definitely
| the easier way to do it. Small patches and piecework
| suck, but if you're living in it, especially with others,
| you don't always get a say in the matter.
| jdgoesmarching wrote:
| Sure, it's easy when you have the wall texture that is
| designed to look like a bad drywall job. If you're trying
| to match the wall type found in 90% of American homes,
| there's a huge difference in efficiency and quality
| between a DIYer and a professional mudder.
|
| A good feathering job saves a ton of wasted sanding
| effort and drywall dust. When I ask GCs and tradespeople
| which job they would would never do themselves, drywall
| is far and away the most common answer. It's the only job
| I regret doing myself.
| whiddershins wrote:
| How about flooring?
| latchkey wrote:
| From what I've learned on YT, using quick drying mud and
| mixing it yourself (not using the premixed stuff in
| plastic containers), is the key to smooth finishes.
| Mostly because it hardens quickly and doesn't shrink. I
| used the 40m quick dry and it was quite easy to work
| with. You're right, feathering correctly... no sanding
| needed.
| orangepurple wrote:
| Sheetrock 45 is the way
| latchkey wrote:
| I'm just using 18lbs bags of westpac 40... it's what they
| had at home depot. cheap and easy.
| devonkim wrote:
| Picking the correct timing for the cure time with the job
| size is almost an art in itself. It's unlikely one can
| figure it out without a lot of experience doing it and
| most folks that don't do it for a living won't do it
| often enough to acquire that experience. It's a lot of
| hot mud waste and back and forth trips to the hardware
| store that's exhausting for busy folks that have another
| full time job.
| latchkey wrote:
| I used a drill with a mixer from a hand blender plugged
| into it. Made it really easy to make a batch that filled
| the stainless steel mud box I am using. Even being
| totally untrained, getting that onto the wall in under 40
| minutes was easy. Took a bit more mixing and batches than
| a pro would take, but all in all... it wasn't nearly as
| hard as you're making it out to be.
| zippergz wrote:
| By removing and replacing entire walls, you are missing
| out on most of the difficult parts of texture and paint
| matching (and "just paint the whole wall" quickly turns
| into "paint the whole room" in some cases). I suppose you
| could make the argument that we should then just rip out
| the entire wall to run a single cable, but I personally
| think that's extreme both in cost and disruption.
|
| I'm glad you had such an easy time of it, but cutting,
| patching, and matching is a pain in most homes I've done
| it in. And don't even get me started on lath and plaster.
| latchkey wrote:
| I didn't say it was easy... it just isn't so overblown
| "hire a professional" as people make it out to be. I was
| terrified before I started, but once I watched a bunch of
| YT videos and then got to work... it ended up being a lot
| less stressful than I imagined.
| tchaffee wrote:
| Use an abrasive sponge instead of sandpaper. No dust.
| dekhn wrote:
| Yep, this was one of my great enlightenments: no matter how
| good or professional a wall looks, it's really just drywall
| mounted on wood, some cracks sealed, and then painted over.
|
| When the walls are off in the house is the best time to get
| _anything_ done. Sometimes I don 't even want to put the
| walls back on- for example, an unfinished garage with exposed
| studs is very convenient.
| _zoltan_ wrote:
| Maybe where you live. All of our walls (and I mean all) are
| solid concrete.
| lazide wrote:
| Hence one reason why DIY is nearly unheard of in most of
| Europe and Asia (that and lack of space for tools).
| Aeolun wrote:
| Europeans are the most inclined to modify stuff around
| their homes in my experience. In Asia I don't see it at
| all.
| thatfrenchguy wrote:
| Come on most Americans are completely clueless DIY wise
| compared to most French people.
| lazide wrote:
| Cite?
| sokoloff wrote:
| Cette Vieille Maison is one of my favorite shows.
| bombcar wrote:
| I may someday use shiplap instead of drywall in specific
| rooms, simply because you can make it so you can take it
| off and put it back on relatively easily.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| I have a couple of large plywood sheets in closets for
| this purpose. Paint it the same color and nobody knows
| mr_sturd wrote:
| We had our loft converted last year, and after watching the
| builders construct the partitioning walls, I think I would
| probably manage that. We also had to have some walls removed
| and re-built and made the house too dusty for the kids to be
| around. This house is an _old_ English terraced house, and
| lots of the non-retaining walls are wooden lath and plaster,
| with horse hair mixed in for good measure!
| thatfrenchguy wrote:
| Drywall, sure, it's easy enough (although hard to make look
| perfect)
|
| Plaster walls on wood studs is a lot harder, and plaster over
| brick or concrete is impossible.
| whiddershins wrote:
| Unless your walls are plaster on lathe. Hah we took 150 large
| bags of rubble out of the apartment last week. No, it wasn't
| a gut reno, just 2 walls and 2 closets.
| pmontra wrote:
| I just spent a couple of weeks putting conduits in my brick
| walls. I couldn't reuse conduits in place for power
| (regulations, EU) and they are too small anyway. I used Cat6A,
| not fiber. I don't think an ISP will ever bring fiber to my
| home. Cat6A is 10 Gb/s so it should be OK for a NAS for a long
| time. I only have 1 Gb/s network cards now.
| yakubin wrote:
| I've watched the video and I still don't understand how you get
| the wire through the conduit though. Part of the video seemed
| to happen through telekinesis: the part where a wire magically
| came out of the wall, allowing you to pull from the other side.
| js2 wrote:
| I'm not sure which video you mean, but you use either a fish
| tape or a pull line.
|
| I know that Verizon also has fiber with a stiffer jacket that
| they can push through conduit a pretty good distance. I know
| this because I helped the Verizon installer run FIOS at my
| daughter's apartment in a building that was over 100 years
| old. The conduit had a crimp in it so it took the two of us a
| while to get past that.
| sschueller wrote:
| Probably referring to this demonstration video regarding
| the FTTH Squeeze plate where the pull line comes flying
| through the conduit:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARSpp4B9-X4
| js2 wrote:
| That's a fish tape being pushed through from the other
| end.
| thefounder wrote:
| You have to have a wire installed in the first place(i.e coax
| or just a simple thin but strong wire). That wire is
| installed when you install the walls/gypsum. Then you use it
| to pull whatever you need(hdmi etc). When you pull the new
| wire(hdmi) you attach an additional wire at the tip so that
| you can pull back your initial wire once your new HDMI is in
| place.
|
| If you don't have an initial wire installed you can use a
| magnet kit with a specific wire to pull it through the
| conduit.(e.g youtube "magnepull"). A camera small comes in
| handy as well.
|
| If you need to pull wires through the ceiling and you already
| have recessed lights you can use their wires to pull your new
| wire.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > You have to have a wire installed in the first place(i.e
| coax or just a simple thin but strong wire). That wire is
| installed when you install the walls/gypsum.
|
| Unfortunately, in my experience of 6 or 7 new builds in the
| last 15 years or so, coaxial cables are usually staples to
| the studs and useless for this purpose.
| dfc wrote:
| Coax stapled to the studs is different than coax running
| inside of a conduit.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| I have never seen coax running in a conduit in a
| residential setting in the USA.
| thefounder wrote:
| >> Unfortunately, in my experience of 6 or 7 new builds
| in the last 15 years or so, coaxial cables are usually
| staples to the studs and useless for this purpose.
|
| Well, that's part of the fun/job. Usually you end-up with
| a few holes as well so you try to get hold of anything
| that helps you, "one inch" at a time.
|
| As always, the easy way to deal with this is to let
| someone else do the job(hire a pro/custom installer).
| yakubin wrote:
| That explains it. Thanks.
| Unklejoe wrote:
| You can attach a string to a foam ball/plunger type thing and
| then suck it through with a vacuum from the other side. Then,
| fix your wire to the string and pull it back in the other
| direction.
| uncanneyvalley wrote:
| A plastic bag tied to pulling twine works really well and
| is less likely to get stuck than a ball or plunger. I
| always leave a length of twine in my conduits so I only
| have to use the vacuum method once.
| sponaugle wrote:
| Indeed the plastic bag trick works very very well in a
| lot of different use cases. I was able to pull twine over
| 500 feet with this technique while doing my driveway
| conduits.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I had about 50 feet and 270deg of bends in some PVC
| conduits I'd buried under a section of yard. I'd gotten
| everything done and asked my wife to come help me get the
| poly string and then mule tape into the conduits. The
| poly line practically leapt into the conduit chasing the
| plastic bag. It was one of the greatest ratios between
| how hard I thought something might be and how hard it
| actually was.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Pulling a bit of twine through from my pool over to where
| I had installed my equipment pad went much the same way,
| and I was too dumb to think about using a plastic bag ;).
| Just stuffed a bit of twine in one and and left it loose,
| walked over to the other and and put a shop vac on it,
| and -whoosh- here came the string. Felt like cheating. It
| was only a small conduit, though, 3/4 inch, so it had
| pretty good airflow.
| philjohn wrote:
| Agree with this.
|
| I had my house wired up with 30 Cat 6 drops (3 being in-ceiling
| for AP's) and in the end it was simpler to go up to the loft (2
| story house) and come down that way, with all of the cables
| then being bundled up and coming down through a built-in-
| wardrobe into the garage below.
|
| It required a bit of patching here and there where a small
| chase had to be chisseled out to get around a cable going
| through a patch of plaster used for dot and dab (technique to
| quickly plasterboard/drywall onto brick), but with conduit it
| would have been a much simpler job.
| [deleted]
| jonatron wrote:
| I'm guessing you're in the UK. Even in my relatively new house
| (80's), almost all cables are chased in, no conduit anywhere.
| Standard construction in the UK could be improved by just doing
| basic obvious things that other countries do.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| Likely the US. Unless it's a very new high-end house or you
| got lucky and bought the house a contractor built for
| themselves to a high standard, they did the cheapest thing
| the electrical code allows them to get away with, which
| certainly wasn't conduit in the 80's, unless that was local
| code somewhere. Certainly not in CA or FL.
| js2 wrote:
| No conduit in NC in my 2004 built house, with the exception
| of specific chase pipes I asked them to install from the
| basement to the attic. The drywall was already up to get
| them to do much more than that. I'm guessing all the cat5
| is stapled into place behind the drywall. Fortunately
| between the attic and the ceiling-tile basement I can get
| to where I need, it's just a PITA because of fireblocks. So
| many fireblocks.
| yummypaint wrote:
| Renting a place built a few years ago in NC. It has only
| one conduit, it runs from the networking panel to the
| outside where fiber comes in. Unfortunately there was
| nothing left in the empty conduit to pull things through
| with and the installer didn't want to spend half a day with
| a fishtape, so it didn't even get used. Companies really
| couldn't care less about doing things right w/ regards to
| people's homes unless there is some direct monetary
| consequence for them.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| Agreed. In most US homes, by code, there needs to be a fire-
| stop between floors but also for practical reasons there are
| often cross-bracing mid way up each wall, therefore going from
| one place to another often involves multiple holes in drywall
| (which is relatively inexpensive, but also a dusty/annoying
| nightmare to patch).
|
| If I built a home I'd add conduit, but that's an extremely
| niche idea.
| uncanneyvalley wrote:
| A flexible drill bit[1] can be used to pass a horizontal
| member within a wall. You can enter the wall through an
| outlet hole or use the length of the bit to drill straight up
| through bottom of the wall, if you're able to access it from
| a basement. They usually have a hole in the tip to pull twine
| along with the head of the bit.
|
| [1] similar to https://www.kleintools.com/catalog/flex-bit-
| accessories/flex...
| bombcar wrote:
| If you have high baseboards/ceiling trim, you can have
| drywall that ends _way_ above the sill plates which makes
| it incredibly easy to route cable with the baseboards off.
|
| Similar to: https://www.finehomebuilding.com/project-
| guides/wiring/runni...
|
| There are some considerations if it's a firewall or an
| insulated wall, but it can be really nice.
| throwaway09223 wrote:
| I was able to run two conduits to key areas during a remodel of
| my older home. Take advantage of open walls when you can!
| shagie wrote:
| This is one of the things that my father did when he did the
| wiring for the house ~50 years ago - conduit everywhere. It
| means things like drilling into the wall is safer (you hit
| metal rather than wire) and when you want to, you just pull
| more wire through it.
|
| There are so many parts of it that were "over engineered" for a
| house 50 years ago that are "oh, that's convenient" now.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Yeah, all my walls are filled with loose cables taped together.
| I wish I had nice things like conduits.
| bombcar wrote:
| Many parts of the world use concrete or brick and those almost
| always have conduit.
|
| The US can add it but it's an extra cost and so rarely done.
| pooper wrote:
| > I always end up green with envy that people seem to have pre-
| existing conduits in their walls for running new cables.
| There's no way, in my old house, of doing this without some
| invasive smashing in to walls.
|
| I don't own a house and have never owned a house. This will
| probably sound stupid and I am sorry if this is something
| obvious.
|
| Is it that my spouse will leave me or my parents will disown me
| if I run a conduit just hanging on a wall? What is this
| obsession with hiding all wiring within the drywall? What am I
| missing here?
|
| It could be something as simple as a conduit like
| https://i.imgur.com/6X5of8Y.png
|
| Not that I have a leg to stand on because I still can't afford
| to buy a home outright (and at current rate, never will). I
| live in an apartment and I don't make any changes to it. I
| cannot even imagine doing something simple like drill a hole on
| the door for a doorbell. So, I am definitely hypocritical when
| I say this. Maybe I am just being salty as a non-home owner. I
| feel like all of this comes from treating our homes as some
| kind of liquid asset that we must keep in pristine condition at
| all times so we can stage it and sell it at a moment's notice.
|
| If you own your own home, why not live in your home like you
| own your home? Run that conduit across all the walls (and
| through inside door frames or something like that if you must).
| If not, do you really own your own home? Why not just live with
| housing insecurity like I do?
|
| Edit: spelling
| z3t4 wrote:
| Having fiber cables hanging around is a sure sign you're a
| hacker.
| _zoltan_ wrote:
| Because what you propose is fugly and you don't want to live
| in a mess.
| kelnos wrote:
| I wouldn't run conduit on my walls and around doors because I
| would think it looks awful. People's aesthetics are
| different. If yours (and those of anyone else who might live
| with you) allow for such a thing, then sure, go for it.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| 3/8" flex isn't surface raceway, it's used for connecting a
| rigid (EMT/IMC/RMC) conduit system to a vibrating piece of
| equipment like a motor or transformer, among other things.
|
| Wiremold 500 surface raceway is what I would recommend, it's
| a basic surface raceway for electrical conductors or cables:
| https://www.legrand.us/wire-and-cable-management/raceway-
| and...
|
| There are probably residential raceways that blend in better,
| but I'm not familiar with residential construction.
|
| There are plenty of ways to get a cable from point A to point
| B inside of a wall, particularly if you have a single story
| home with an unfinished attic and basement. A spade drill
| bit, a fish tape, and a multitool/rotozip can get a cable
| pretty much anywhere if you can drill a hole into the wall
| cavity from above or below.
| dazc wrote:
| A friend of mine lives in a building with concrete floors
| above and below, all his wiring runs through plastic,
| surface-mounted, trunking and it is aesthetically disgusting.
| mr_sturd wrote:
| We do have _some_ conduit in place to run cables. One running
| up to a wall-mounted TV, and another running Ethernet up in
| to the loft. I don 't mind the one under the TV, but I
| wouldn't like to use it for everything.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I'm an avid DIYer and have no problem buying others' high-
| standards DIY work, inspection/permits or no.
|
| If I walked into a listing and saw surface raceway
| everywhere, I'd only bid what I was comfortable paying
| leaving room for a gut rehab. It's evidence of a high level
| of DGAF at a minimum and likely isn't the only place that
| corners were cut.
| bombcar wrote:
| Many people who own homes use them with an eye to selling and
| so they don't bother with things that they're afraid would
| reduce resale value.
|
| Or they just run cable along the walls.
|
| Many garages will be as you describe.
| [deleted]
| monitron wrote:
| It sounds like you just have different priorities or a
| different aesthetic sense than folks like me who go to great
| lengths to hide cables.
|
| To me it just feels good to wake up in a visually simple
| environment with things out of sight. It feels like magic, in
| a good way, to be surrounded by performant, reliable and
| useful technology but to be able to see almost none of it.
| And I have an automatic negative reaction to visual clutter
| or conspicuous machinery in my house.
|
| I don't see anything wrong with your way of thinking. I can't
| easily change how I feel about it and I see no reason why
| either of us should have to.
|
| Edit: this makes me think about sci-fi spaceships. Battlestar
| Galactica vs. the Heart of Gold from Hitchhiker's Guide. One
| has its conduits and controls run every which way and the
| other is minimalist to a fault. I like them both but would
| definitely prefer to wake up every morning in the latter!
| lucb1e wrote:
| Do I understand correctly you're proposing to just run it on
| the outside of walls/ceilings? How would you ever again close
| doors that it needs to go through?
|
| My aesthetic requirements are basically zero (to the dismay
| of my partner indeed; we meet in the middle) but I do want to
| be able to practically use the apartment still.
| wrycoder wrote:
| Do it like the real high class cable installers do: run the
| wires on the outside of the house and just drill through
| the walls where you want the drops. Looks fine from the
| inside!
| toast0 wrote:
| > How would you ever again close doors that it needs to go
| through?
|
| Most interior doors have a gap between the bottom of the
| door and the top of the floor, and you can cable in the gap
| if you don't mind the look. If the threshold is carpetted,
| you can often squish the wire into the seam where the
| carpet meets the door frame.
|
| You can get one, maybe two, runs into a room that way, so
| don't put your central switch in a room like that, and if
| you need more than one drop in a room, put a switch in the
| room.
| tass wrote:
| I'm picturing this as a tripping hazard, unless there's
| some kind of well to shove the cable into (like your
| carpet example).
| toast0 wrote:
| Even without carpet, you'd tack it so it stays pretty
| close to the side of the threshold. 'Nobody' uses the
| outside inch or so of the threshold, so it's not going to
| be a tripping hazard. If you are going across the
| threshold that's different, but in that case, it's better
| to go over the top of the door frame.
| adrian_b wrote:
| The interior doors in most houses that I have seen have
| wooden frames in which it is very easy to make holes for
| passing cables. Some newer houses might have door frames
| made of plastic or metal, instead of wood, but even in such
| cases it is much easier to make a clean hole through the
| door frame, instead of through a wall.
|
| I have made many such holes in door frames for passing
| Ethernet cables or TV coaxial cables.
|
| When you do not want to touch the walls, such cables can be
| routed on the edges between walls and floor and they can be
| masked by a cover having the wall color, to be invisible,
| except where passing through a door frame.
| jjeaff wrote:
| Why would you prefer to make a hole in your doorframe
| rather than the wall? Sheetrock is so much easier to deal
| with. But perhaps you are referring to a concrete
| construction, which is uncommon in the US.
| jonatron wrote:
| That conduit would look terrible. Most people care about how
| their houses look. Decorative trunking exists:
| https://www.d-line-it.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2021/02/1240-x-... , I've used it, and it
| blends in well enough.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| That's a pretty good idea. I'd consider this more if I
| wasn't just putting some keystone wall plates through the
| floor into my basement. I'd also have to put trim around a
| door frame.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| To be fair, it looks terrible to you (and to me), but there
| are plenty of people who have no issue with it. Just like
| there's people who get agida when there's things like
| toasters that sit out on the kitchen counter, but a lot of
| people think it's fine.
| _zoltan_ wrote:
| Just like there are people who don't care about how good
| or bad code they write as long as it works. Doesn't mean
| we should accept or promote this as 'good'.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| I've seen many places that were designed "industrial"
| with various metal parts (conduit, vents, etc) showing;
| and the people that owned them were very happy with the
| look.
|
| Good code also doesn't need to "look pretty", it needs to
| be correct, and maintainable. Preferably maintainable by
| a less skilled developer with less domain knowledge.
| Following that logic, the code that follows the pattern
| of "highly visible and obvious", like the conduit, is
| probably the better code.
|
| All that being said, I prefer simple walls, with conduit
| hidden inside it. I'm just happy to admit that what I
| like it not universal, and that other have their own
| styles.
| BlueDingo wrote:
| Aesthetics aren't the same as quality, right?
|
| Also, I would say writing bad code makes the code very
| inaccessible...just like burying important infrastructure
| in a wall.
|
| Did that water leak last year cause mild growth in the
| wall? Don't know without some demolition! Want to upgrade
| your piping or electrical? Gotta destroy some wall,
| hooray, and then do more work to hide it again. Lunacy.
| ericmay wrote:
| They aren't the same but are highly correlated. You can
| have wrong opinions or poor taste.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| It looks terrible to the _vast_ majority of the
| population in most developed countries and it will
| severely impact your home 's resale price if you have
| spiral conduit all over the walls. I can't remember the
| last time I saw spiral conduit in a home anywhere outside
| of the garage or basement...maybe a utility closet.
| Aeolun wrote:
| > I feel like all of this comes from treating our homes as
| some kind of liquid asset that we must keep in pristine
| condition at all times so we can stage it and sell it at a
| moment's notice.
|
| Well, you aren't wrong. This is exactly the thinking behind
| that.
|
| The other response is correct that it's nicer to have it all
| covered up though. I guess it comes down to a bit of
| perfectionism. If I stick everything on the walls I will
| always feel like there is work left to do.
|
| That said, our living room is still (3 years in) a mess of
| (nice, not industrial) on-wall conduits.
| petepete wrote:
| I'm moving into my new home (which was built in 1962) in the
| next month or two. My plan is to run cat 6 throughout, before I
| get the bulk of my stuff/furniture in. Hopefully I won't need
| to smash into too many walls but there will be a few.
| Definitely worth it in the long run though.
| blinded wrote:
| Youd be surprised what you can do with a 40in drill bit and a
| wire snake. did my whole house and only had to repair 1 piece
| of dry wall.
| kuschku wrote:
| With that drill bit you won't be able to get far with
| concrete brick walls...
|
| I hired an electrician to drill the holes for me earlier this
| year and it took him over 10 minutes per hole to get through
| the 60cm (2ft) reinforced concrete slab for running cables
| between two floors.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Honestly, 10 minutes to go through 2 feet of concrete is
| damn impressive. I had to put a couple 50A electric
| circuits through my foundation a few months back and I'm
| pretty sure we spent more like 45 minutes getting through.
| And we didn't even hit any rebar, which is a minor miracle
| itself.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| An attic or unfinished basement can make this much easier
| sponaugle wrote:
| One interesting technique I have seen with fiber is running it
| along/behind baseboards in old houses. Since it is very small
| (and you can get even smaller single mode fiber) it can in some
| cases run along side. Some people remove the baseboard and put
| it behind it. It creates some routing issues, but might also
| solve some.
| Aloha wrote:
| Bend radius?
| sponaugle wrote:
| Yea, that can be an issue, although for shorter runs it is
| surprising how much loss you can have and still work
| fantastic. There are some very cool bend insensitive
| multimode fibers that would work well in that case.
|
| I saw a video where someone was doing this and they used
| little plastic bend guides that were painted trim color..
| not perfect but also not as noticeable as I would have
| thought.
| [deleted]
| rr808 wrote:
| Wiring for me has been a waste of time. I spent a good amount of
| time wiring the house with cat 6 cabling. I had our TV on a hard
| wired network which felt great, no drop outs, no wifi noise. I
| then bought a roku box and left on wifi for a while. Its still on
| wifi, works great and kept it there. Family mostly uses wifi now,
| no PCs using the hard-won ethernet jacks.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Ya, my house is wired for cat5 but no point to use it. It just
| isn't necessary.
| Symbiote wrote:
| To my surprise, my parents use the Cat5 cables I installed in
| their house 20+ years go.
|
| In a brick house, wireless isn't a good choice for desktop
| computers and smart TVs.
| dekhn wrote:
| Thanks- I rarely consider upgrading my home systems until I think
| I have a good understanding of all the details and I see that
| fiber is still a mess (have to choose single mode versus multi
| mode and a number of other details).
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