To split fiber line or route ethernet?

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ChrisThomas

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Apologies if this is a topic already covered, I tried searching and couldn't find what I was looking for.

My question,

Currently staying on a plot, we have a fiber line routed to one of the properties that we share. For all intents and purposes we have more than enough bandwidth in the fiber line to suit our needs, the issue is, that I moved to a different house on the same property, and have routed an ethernet cable from the main box to my house, however I have huge latency and frequent drops. It's about 30 - 40 meters I would say.

Is there an easy way I can boost the ethernet, or would it better serve me to have the fiber line split and run a fiber daisy chain of sorts into my house? I had a professional come to quote me on this and I am not sure if there was a misunderstanding but he quoted me for something completely different, so before I ask anyone else I thought I might ask if there is an easier way to do it myself. I am quite technically adept, but networking is something I have never really tackled. Looking online I am getting a lot of conflicting info on what would be most practical for my use case.
 
You shouldn't be having any trouble with Ethernet over that distance.

Cable in good condition, didn't get nicked, bent or knotted funny?

Have you got a decent router? Is there any hardware between your device and the router?
 
If that is the case then it's an easy solve. I bought the most expensive cable I could find on takealot, but it might have gotten damaged who knowss, are there any brands you'd recommend? I will try another cable before I go off down a rabbit hole.

The main source router shouldn't be the issue, it's currently feeding two other houses with no issues, just mine which is a lot further away. My router in my place is this one:

https://www.mi.com/global/product/mi-router-4a/

Edit, the brand I bought is Ugreen for the cable, I went back and looked. It's a 50m Ugreen Cat 6 cable.
 
Just elminate what you can using different ports/devices etc before you buy another cable.

I'm not sure brand matters that much. The last long length of cable I used I had made up at Matrix and worked perfectly for years. A shop around you somewhere might have a cable tester too you can have them test your current cable with.
 
ChrisThomas said:
If that is the case then it's an easy solve. I bought the most expensive cable I could find on takealot, but it might have gotten damaged who knowss, are there any brands you'd recommend? I will try another cable before I go off down a rabbit hole.

The main source router shouldn't be the issue, it's currently feeding two other houses with no issues, just mine which is a lot further away. My router in my place is this one:

https://www.mi.com/global/product/mi-router-4a/

Edit, the brand I bought is Ugreen for the cable, I went back and looked. It's a 50m Ugreen Cat 6 cable.
Click to expand...

The cable is not going to be the problem.. rather buy a network tester to test your existing cable and make sure it didn't get damaged during installation..

The router has a processor and it has ram.. if it's doing too much and saturating either ram or CPU, this is likely to cause latency, so don't be so quick to rule out the router..
 
WAslayer said:
The cable is not going to be the problem.. rather buy a network tester to test your existing cable and make sure it didn't get damaged during installation..

The router has a processor and it has ram.. if it's doing too much and saturating either ram or CPU, this is likely to cause latency, so don't be so quick to rule out the router..
Click to expand...
To add to this, disconnect everything else from the router and see if it works fine?
 
Unplug the rest of the cables and just leave yours in the router and check if it helped. If not then it's definitely the cable. I once bought a 30m pre-crimped cable and it was faulty pc network was on 100mpbs instead of gigabit.
 
There is one other thing to consider. This is the primary reason we don't run copper outside under any circumstances.

If there's a three phase electricity supply going into the property, one phase could be going to the primary location where the fibre terminates while a second phase runs to the property you are in. Those phases could be imbalanced.

We have experienced the same issues you are experiencing in the past. We used top quality shielded cable in conduit with good connectors, crimped properly, but the cable just doesn't want to work.

A work around is a to buy something like this
scoop.co.za

MikroTik Cloud Router Switch 5 Port SFP 1 PoE/SFP Port | CRS106-1C-5S

MikroTik's RB-CRS106 is a Cloud Router Switch featuring 5x 1.25Gbps SFP ports, 1x 1.25Gbps SFP or PoE Input Combo Port and is powered by RouterOS with a Level 5 license.
scoop.co.za scoop.co.za
Buy some drop cables

Fibre Cable | Scoop

Fibre cable uses light to transmit data ensuring the fastest data exchange rate possible. Our range of high strength, single mode fibre cabling is designed for FTTX applications and conveniently packaged in 2km drums or pre-terminated at various lengths. The fibre is reinforced with phosphate...
scoop.co.za scoop.co.za
And some SFP modules
scoop.co.za

Cudy Single Mode 1.25G LC Bi-Directional SFP 20km | SM100GSB-20AB

Cudy's CD-SFP-SMB is a pair of Bi-directional modules designed for Single Mode fibre deployments up to 20km at 1.25Gbps. Bi-directional SFP's reduce installation costs by utilising a single fibre for duplex transmission.
scoop.co.za scoop.co.za

And either fibre to copper converters
scoop.co.za

Cudy Gigabit Ethernet Media Converter | MC220

Cudy's CD-MC220 is a Gigabit Ethernet to Fibre media converter. The unit supports both half and full duplex and includes support for jumbo frames up to 9 KB. *Note: SFP module sold separately.
scoop.co.za scoop.co.za
or generic routers with SFP cages for the remote site(s).
 
One thing that you should be aware of is that copper cable also attracts lightning. If that network line gets hit you will lose equipment on both sides of the connection unless you have lightning arrestors attached to the cable. And even then it is not a guarantee that everything will come out unscathed from the strike.

I would actually also recommend what @portcullis suggested, rather install a fibre setup between the two buildings - no interference on the signal and a much lower risk for lightning strikes. Installation is also actually quite simple if everything is prefab, plug the cables cross-over style (TX into RX) into the converters and off you go.

Not sure if you did this, but I would also recommend that you place the cable in PVC pipe (used for electrical cabling) on the outside of the buildings as an added layer of physical protection. Be mindful of sharp bends in the fibre cable though, as it can break the glass in the cable and render it useless.
 
Last edited:
ChrisThomas said:
If that is the case then it's an easy solve. I bought the most expensive cable I could find on takealot, but it might have gotten damaged who knowss, are there any brands you'd recommend? I will try another cable before I go off down a rabbit hole.

The main source router shouldn't be the issue, it's currently feeding two other houses with no issues, just mine which is a lot further away. My router in my place is this one:

https://www.mi.com/global/product/mi-router-4a/

Edit, the brand I bought is Ugreen for the cable, I went back and looked. It's a 50m Ugreen Cat 6 cable.
Click to expand...

Are you getting a full speed link on the cable when you plug any device directly into it?

Two 10/100M self-adaptive LAN ports (Auto MDI/MDIX)

You should be seeing 100Mbit/Full Duplex, if not then something is definitely damaged on the cable, or in a very rare case could be the connection on the router side.

I've used Ugreen without issue in the past, but as with all things mass produced failures do happen.

****

It could also be that you've Double NATTED by using the WAN port instead of the LAN port which could introduce some latency and generally bad connectivity.

Ultimately you don't want your Router to be doing any routing whatsoever and leave that to the main router, otherwise you are going to have a router behind a router with all sorts of loops.

You want to have DHCP disabled on your Router as well as any firewall and plug your connection into the LAN port so that all devices on your end get an IP in the same range as the Main Router and directly gateways to that.

If it has the option you can just configure it in Access Point mode and that should achieve the same.

But start by connecting a device directly on the cable and testing it like that first. Ping to the main Router IP and check what connection you get to rule out the cable first.
 
Thanks all, I will do some further testing and see what I come up with. As mentioned we do have 3 phase electricity, not sure if that might be the issue.

Hopefully it'll be a relatively simple fix. It's just difficult to test because when I tested the line with my gaming laptop directly it was fine, and the router in my place for the most part is also fine, but there will be days or times when it just either gets incredibly slow or goes out altogether with relatively little pattern or anything. I probably have it all setup incorrectly tbh. I can take apart and put computers back together, hell I will rebuild your car but I know so little about networking the entire subject is just a mystery to me.
 
ChrisThomas said:
Thanks all, I will do some further testing and see what I come up with. As mentioned we do have 3 phase electricity, not sure if that might be the issue.

Hopefully it'll be a relatively simple fix. It's just difficult to test because when I tested the line with my gaming laptop directly it was fine, and the router in my place for the most part is also fine, but there will be days or times when it just either gets incredibly slow or goes out altogether with relatively little pattern or anything. I probably have it all setup incorrectly tbh. I can take apart and put computers back together, hell I will rebuild your car but I know so little about networking the entire subject is just a mystery to me.
Click to expand...

Ek gaan 'n klip in die bos gooi.

We were once asked to run LAN cable on the outside wall of a property and then drill through and only have a keystone box on the inside. We used indoor FTP and the system worked well for years.

Then suddenly proverbial random k... en drama.

We found that they'd sunk a borehole and run the armoured power cable from the DB to the borehole DB right next to our large plastic trunking. The power cable was armoured. The network cables were shielded, but each time the borehole ran, the electromagnetic field was enough for the network cables to not transmit data properly.
 
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