Home LAN, fiber or cat6

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Alkine

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I'm moving to a new home and I'm designing a LAN so that I can connect all my devices to the Internet and each other. I have in the past used ethernet over power as well as Wifi and found both to be less than ideal.

I thought of running cat6 to all the rooms through the same conduit as the power for the sockets in the rooms, however it seems that this is against electrical regulations and it would such not to get an electrical certificate because of this when I sell the house one day. I'm also not looking forward to installing separate conduit in existing brick walls, through cement floors, etc.

How feasible would it be to use fiber optic links in the conduit? I have seen fiber multi mode media to ethernet converters available for purchase but I'm struggling to find fiber switches. Also I have no idea how much this will cost. Apparently you can get a polymer fiber which is much more forgiving than glass with a very narrow bend radius.

Please point me in the right direction here. What equipment will I need, and what is a ballpark cost for these components? Where can I purchase the equipment, and who can I get to attach the connectors to the fiber?
 
Use normal CAT5e, also if you run Ethernet parallel to power cable you will get interference.

Take a angle grinder to the walls and install the Ethernet in a Thin PVC pipe, its the only way.
 
Its not recommended to run ethernet with electrical cables anyway. The best would be to install separate conduit or use trunking.

It would be very expensive to run fibre as you would need fibre to ethernet converters for every network point and will still be limited to 1Gbps. Just use normal Cat5e or Cat6 cables with a Gigabit switch.

Edit : You also need to power the fibre to ethernet converters.
 
Depending on size use WiFi and power socket wifi/ethernet that dlink stuff you plug into the wall
 
Alkine said:
I'm moving to a new home and I'm designing a LAN so that I can connect all my devices to the Internet and each other. I have in the past used ethernet over power as well as Wifi and found both to be less than ideal.

I thought of running cat6 to all the rooms through the same conduit as the power for the sockets in the rooms, however it seems that this is against electrical regulations and it would such not to get an electrical certificate because of this when I sell the house one day. I'm also not looking forward to installing separate conduit in existing brick walls, through cement floors, etc.

How feasible would it be to use fiber optic links in the conduit? I have seen fiber multi mode media to ethernet converters available for purchase but I'm struggling to find fiber switches. Also I have no idea how much this will cost. Apparently you can get a polymer fiber which is much more forgiving than glass with a very narrow bend radius.

Please point me in the right direction here. What equipment will I need, and what is a ballpark cost for these components? Where can I purchase the equipment, and who can I get to attach the connectors to the fiber?
Click to expand...

Grasmuis said:
Its not recommended to run ethernet with electrical cables anyway. The best would be to install separate conduit or use trunking.

It would be very expensive to run fibre as you would need fibre to ethernet converters for every network point and will still be limited to 1Gbps. Just use normal Cat5e or Cat6 cables with a Gigabit switch.

Edit : You also need to power the fibre to ethernet converters.
Click to expand...

As already stated, you should never run copper based comms cables or even sound system cabling in parallel with electric cables, it is illegal anyway, and in high lightning areas all you are doing is setting yourself up for some very expensive failures.
Separate conduits are required.
Cat 5 or cat 6 is still the only affordable solution for small home LANS.

I was experimenting with various fibre solutions (sm, mm, ploymer) when field trialing a 10 Gbps FSO system and you are still in the end faced with having to convert somewhere to copper.
Ended up with one centrally located fibre termination point and cat6e running to small 1Gbps switches where required terminating on normal LAN points.

Wi-Fi is second prize, and third prize are the endless variety of power line solutions.
 
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Depends on the residence price tier. Don't put copper next to power lines. Wifi will always be acceptable to buyer.
 
Put in cat5e everywhere. cat6 if the pricing is similar (no real benefit for most cases).

jansdejager said:
Wifi will always be acceptable to buyer.
Click to expand...
Have you looked at wifi IRL throughput rates? Current tech (n) will do like 50mbps IRL while next gen (ac) will go like 100. Meanwhile there are areas rolling out gigabit fibre. So unless you're aiming to use 10% of your line only there are definitely cases where wifi isn't acceptable.
 
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Don't go with fibre - that will be a massive pain - unless your house is massive and spans multiple buildings.
 
Thanks for all the input.

You guys made a few good points.
1. It is not recommended to run power alongside Ethernet due to interference.
2. It is illegal to run Ethernet alongside power in the same conduit.
3. It is expensive to run fiber since you need to convert from Ethernet to fiber and back again.
4. You are currently limited to 1 Gbps on the fiber to Ethernet converters.
5. Running Ethernet alongside power increases the risk of lightning damage (although I think you may suffer where ever you lay a long piece Ethernet cable, not just alongside a power cable).
6. There is always WiFi and Ethernet over Power, however these are slower & less reliable.

Cost is not much of a concern to me, and I have a huge issue with laying new conduit in an existing brick wall & through concrete floors (the ground floor and the top floor have to be connected as well).

For fiber you get the converters at a not too steep price (less than R400): http://www.computerstore.co.za/TL-MC220L-TP-Link-Gigabit-Ethernet-Media-Converter-Buy-p-84674.php

My main concern is how much the fiber cables cost, how easy it is to get connectors on the ends of the cables, and if one can save cost by buying a fiber switch as opposed to converting to Ethernet and then plugging into a switch (which I have not yet seen).

For me fiber is a very good option considering my budget & unwillingness to lay new conduit.
1. It can go alongside power in the same conduit (I don't know of a regulation that prevents plastic / glass & light from being in the same conduit as 220V AC).
2. No EMI / RFI or worries about lightning.
3. Thinner cable makes for easier installation.
4. Future proof to some extent as the media converters are the limiting factor at this point, not the fiber itself.
 
Necropolis said:
Don't go with fibre - that will be a massive pain - unless your house is massive and spans multiple buildings.
Click to expand...
Why will it be more of a pain than installing new conduit? That to me sounds like a massive pain ;-)
 
It might be possible to get the made up fibre into the conduit if you pull out the electrical cable and then install them together. Also consider getting ruggedized fibre.
 
daniellgr said:
As already stated, you should never run copper based comms cables or even sound system cabling in parallel with electric cables, it is illegal anyway, and in high lightning areas all you are doing is setting yourself up for some very expensive failures.
Separate conduits are required.
Cat 5 or cat 6 is still the only affordable solution for small home LANS.
Click to expand...

Not being aware of the illegality of it, I ran a length of shielded twisted pair from the ceiling down to the power outlet, alongside the existing mains wiring. In the years that I lived there, I never had any issues, although I was only expecting 100Mbps (and got it, reliably). The distance was quite short, though, about 2m.
 
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Alkine said:
Is there a reason why you cannot use this same media converter on both ends? (Ignoring the extra size and cable you will need to connect to a switch).
Click to expand...

The GBIC is needed for the converter you linked to in your previous post. There are converters available that has this built in. Link
Note the one linked is using SC connectors which are a lot bigger and will not fit through the conduit.

You can either use a converter on each end, or use a fiber switch with a converter. You just need to make sure the switch and converter is transmitting and receiving on same wavelength and speed.
 
Have you considered using powerline converters placed in the power sockets?

The speeds are okay for most use cases.
 
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