Fibre Network..

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greggpb

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SO I want to setup a super fast network in my new house will lots of streaming applications.. the house is goinf to have a server room houseing all my AV/IT stuff.... the question becomes.....

Cat6 or Fibre for the home network... which is more futer proof ?
 
I'm no networking EXPERT but IMHO, fibre for internal (house) use is pretty overkill - i've never even seen it done, but hey I'd love my house all fibre... It looks cool, it works fast, and I wouldnt have to worry about the damn lightning that's been haunting me lately. Lost 3 dsl modems this year so far !
 
CAT6 dude, fiber is mainly used for connect core switches to distribution switches and high end servers. It would also be very expensive. CAT5e supports 1GBit/s so CAT6 would be more than adequate.
 
Cat6 wins hands-down in this case. Much cheaper to implement and way easier to install. As Juggy said, Cat5e already supports Gigabit ethernet, so Cat6 will work a treat.

Can't beat the coolness factor of fiber, though :D
 
Yeah you can.... just wait for Rouxenator to pop in.. Wireless trumps any wired connection for coolness factor
 
For utter future proof situations fiber takes the cake, and as a bonus it's also immune to interference from power cables and so on. However it still carries a price premium, and CAT6 will suit your needs perfectly.
 
ToxicBunny said:
Wireless trumps any wired connection for coolness factor
Click to expand...
bleh... for me: wireless + home networking = :sick:
It's of course kewl to have an AP system covering your home for laptops etc, but when it comes to ADSL to my Desktop, and interconnection with other desktops in my house, cat5 does the job best for me, much like I prefer the efficiency of a CRT to an LCD. Being a gamer requires speed, low latency, and stability, and wireless is the opposite of that. Fibre of course would be more than welcome :)
Of course wireless has the benefit of mobility and is great if you just cant implement a wired network for whatever other reason
 
Cat 5e is all anyone needs, unless you've got money to burn. And I do mean burn, when you talk about fibre you're talking about several thousand rand, PER PORT.

You need to get it professionally installed (unless you've got over R 20 000 to drop on kit). The fibre itself is cheap enough, but the wall sockets, patch panels, patch cables and installation are very costly. Then you get to switches, make sure you're sitting down when you read the quote. Have someone standing by with smelling salts.

Compare that to cat 5: a few hundred bucks for tools and you can get away with under R 100 per port (everything included, even the switch).

Fibre is great, but it's only viable for specific applications, like inside server rooms and long distance (over 100m) links. I've used plenty of cat 5e outdoors without any issues (if it's properly done).

As for future proofing, new standards are always released on fibre first, like 10 GBE and faster. Eventually they get developed to work on cat 5. Follow the progression from 1000 mbps over fibre to 1000 base T. Cat 6 will never go away, and you'll be able to upgrade to every new speed standard a few months after it's released for fibre.

As for wireless, it's more expensive, slower, less reliable and trickier to set up. You'd have to be insane to use it for a house.
 
Gigabit on Copper (CAT5e or CAT6) has some VERY drastic limitations in terms of distance... Search arround a bit on cisco.com - they have the specs and recommendations there, but there is instances where max recommended distance is as little as 10m for best performance...

What you want however, is more than likely overkill against what you need... People don't realise just how much 100mbit/s actually is. Invest in propper decent switches, you'll be amazed at what a difference it makes
 
savage said:
Gigabit on Copper (CAT5e or CAT6) has some VERY drastic limitations in terms of distance... Search arround a bit on cisco.com - they have the specs and recommendations there, but there is instances where max recommended distance is as little as 10m for best performance...

What you want however, is more than likely overkill against what you need... People don't realise just how much 100mbit/s actually is. Invest in propper decent switches, you'll be amazed at what a difference it makes
Click to expand...

Yeah, around 175 meters for a run of cat5e UTP or more for STP which can also be used outdoors.

Last server room I was involved in planning we were told by the cabling specialists that 10GBit/s had been tested over CAT6 and works fine upto 100 meters at least.
 
JUGGY said:
Yeah, around 175 meters for a run of cat5e UTP or more for STP which can also be used outdoors.

Last server room I was involved in planning we were told by the cabling specialists that 10GBit/s had been tested over CAT6 and works fine upto 100 meters at least.
Click to expand...

Yea cat6a can support 10GBaseT at a distance of up to 100m
 
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Very cool ... you got a network diagram to see what you're planning?

I'd love to do it. Though, I need a house to live in first ... ;)
 
Cat6 all round to connect all the "end-devices"
You might want to consider using fiber for all "rackmount-devices"

You'll need a 16 port 10/100/1000 switch, with fiber uplinks - i think 16 ports will be enough to cover each room, incl. the toilet?

Your living room will probably have 4-6 wallboxes, to support your xbox360, dstv hd pvr decoder, bluray player, etc...

You do get HDMI to LAN converters, so you could in theory stream your DSTV HD PVR decoder's signal via the LAN to your streaming server, to the rest of the house.

For laptops, you would want ideally one or two Wireless Access Points, i.e. living room and bedroom, and maybe the toilet. (I use my iPhone wireless all over my house, which is connected to ADSL router)

In the end, it matters about the physical connection a device has. i.e. your laptop does NOT have a fibre connection where you can just plug the fibre in, its still based on RJ45 connector. Same with bluray player, PC, or any media player with network capabilites... its NOT going to have a fibre connector at the back (and NO, you cannot plug a fibre network into the optical out[sound] ... lol)

You could buy a rackmount server with RAID-HDD config, and a fibre NIC, which will stream all the video to all your devices

Ja, a network diagram is where you'll want to start (use MS Visio)
If the project is big, give it to professionals to do

Enjoy and good luck
 
The Majority of the traffic on the wired network will be AV, CCTV, controlling the house automation.
wireless for laptop connections to internet..

I suppose most of my devices(none pc) are gonna be ethernet..

So it looks like cat 6.. just need to look at the the cable length and the need for a switch on each floor.
 
I've used Ethernet over Power. It's slow and too expensive. You might as well buy yourself some lan cables for the same price that the adapters will cost you.

Just remember. If you're going to be using Fibre Optics in your house, the transmission speed from location to location through the fibre cable itself will be (yes, I'm going to say it) at the speed of light. BUT once you get to the other end, you're back down to lan speeds again. Cat6 is your best option at this point.
 
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