Structured wiring: fiber optic or not?

B

Bob E.

Guest
A friend is having a new roof put on his his 50-year-old, flat-roof home.
This provides access to all kinds of new wiring possibilities for the
structure.

He wants to do 2xCAT6 and 2xRG-6 throughout. I'm not sure what to recommend
re. fiber optic.

Is it too soon to know how this will be an advantage to existing homes?

I hear there are several FO standards (62.5 micron, 50 micron). Is there
strong competition, or is one the clear favorite into the future?

What should I recommend?

Thanks.
 
On Mon, 2 Aug 2010 20:03:51 -0700, Bob E. <bespoke@invalid.tv> wrote:

A friend is having a new roof put on his his 50-year-old, flat-roof home.
This provides access to all kinds of new wiring possibilities for the
structure.

He wants to do 2xCAT6 and 2xRG-6 throughout. I'm not sure what to recommend
re. fiber optic.

Is it too soon to know how this will be an advantage to existing homes?

I hear there are several FO standards (62.5 micron, 50 micron). Is there
strong competition, or is one the clear favorite into the future?

What should I recommend?

Thanks.
How about some big conduit and some fish lines, so anything can be
added later?

John
 
"John Larkin" <jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote in message
news:472f56tqej53pc7avpp9ld5ekt7j5o5dj1@4ax.com...
On Mon, 2 Aug 2010 20:03:51 -0700, Bob E. <bespoke@invalid.tv> wrote:

A friend is having a new roof put on his his 50-year-old, flat-roof home.
This provides access to all kinds of new wiring possibilities for the
structure.

He wants to do 2xCAT6 and 2xRG-6 throughout. I'm not sure what to
recommend
re. fiber optic.

Is it too soon to know how this will be an advantage to existing homes?

I hear there are several FO standards (62.5 micron, 50 micron). Is there
strong competition, or is one the clear favorite into the future?

What should I recommend?

Thanks.

How about some big conduit and some fish lines, so anything can be
added later?

John
If you are going to run fiber, use single mode. The optics are getting
cheaper and
at some point will displace MM fiber entirely.

tm





--- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: news@netfront.net ---
 
How about some big conduit and some fish lines, so anything can be
added later?

John
Hadn't thought of that. It's a great idea.

Thanks!
 
Bob E. wrote:
How about some big conduit and some fish lines, so anything can be
added later?

John

Hadn't thought of that. It's a great idea.

Thanks!

Second that. Fiber has been around for decades and never really caught
on for internal communications. It's great for moving lots of data over
really long distance, but within a building there is just not much
advantage over copper and a lot of disadvantages.
 
On Mon, 2 Aug 2010 20:03:51 -0700, Bob E. <bespoke@invalid.tv> wrote:

A friend is having a new roof put on his his 50-year-old, flat-roof home.
This provides access to all kinds of new wiring possibilities for the
structure.

He wants to do 2xCAT6 and 2xRG-6 throughout. I'm not sure what to recommend
Yes - always do 2 (or more) of each so you can do loopback tests.

Put in some lines in the attic and to the roof for satellite, antenna
on the roof, and antenna in the attic.

Cat 6E might be for real now, so try for it instead of Cat 6.
The cables I put in in 2004 say "CAT6E", but it certainly wasn't
an official specification then.

See if you can find out what the cable company runs to your house.
It would either be better than RG-6 or better than RG-6 that you
choose at random. Also, get the kind that has a separate wire for DC.

\
re. fiber optic.

Is it too soon to know how this will be an advantage to existing homes?

I hear there are several FO standards (62.5 micron, 50 micron). Is there
Single mode. The stuff I put in 2004 works with the 1Gb/s
interfaces that I got 6 years ago that were made for the larger
diameter multimode stuff [wouldn't work over kilometers, does work
over 100 meters] Single mode interfaces are still till expensive, but
coming down in price. Multi-mode won't handle much over 1Gb/s; single
mode should hit more than 1Tb/s over 100 meters in a while.

There probably is a specific type of connector that you should use for
the fiber-optics, but I never figured out what it was.

strong competition, or is one the clear favorite into the future?

What should I recommend?

Thanks.
 
On Mon, 2 Aug 2010 21:18:10 -0700, Bob E. <bespoke@invalid.tv> wrote:

How about some big conduit and some fish lines, so anything can be
added later?

John

Hadn't thought of that. It's a great idea.

Thanks!
When we did our building, we put runs of rectangular plastic downspout
pipe into the walls and floors.

John
 
Fibre needs it's own conduit. It is still fragile, limited bend radius and
subject to shock. Secondly, it will be corning glass so thin that it bends.
Plastic fibres have too much opacity, went out with hooped skirts and is
limited to toys and lamps now.

If you damage it you may not realize it until you wonder why the bandwidth
is so bad. Stick with copper inside a buiding as James stated.. The fibre
optic providers do. Glass fibre has never been faster than the copper
circuits that feed it.


"James Sweet" <jamesrsweet@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:i38b9f$jtg$3@news.eternal-september.org...
Second that. Fiber has been around for decades and never really caught
on for internal communications. It's great for moving lots of data over
really long distance, but within a building there is just not much
advantage over copper and a lot of disadvantages.



Bob E. wrote:
How about some big conduit and some fish lines, so anything can be
added later?

John

Hadn't thought of that. It's a great idea.

Thanks!
 
On Mon, 2 Aug 2010 20:03:51 -0700, Bob E. <bespoke@invalid.tv> wrote:

A friend is having a new roof put on his his 50-year-old, flat-roof home.
This provides access to all kinds of new wiring possibilities for the
structure.

He wants to do 2xCAT6 and 2xRG-6 throughout. I'm not sure what to recommend
re. fiber optic.

Is it too soon to know how this will be an advantage to existing homes?

I hear there are several FO standards (62.5 micron, 50 micron). Is there
strong competition, or is one the clear favorite into the future?

What should I recommend?

Thanks.
Recommend any system that allows easy upgrades, such as conduit with
pull cords installed. Then he can pull through whatever the current
cool stuff he wants.
 
On Tue, 3 Aug 2010 14:17:27 -0400, "Josepi" <JRM.@easynews.com> wrote:

Fibre needs it's own conduit. It is still fragile, limited bend radius and
subject to shock. Secondly, it will be corning glass so thin that it bends.
Plastic fibres have too much opacity, went out with hooped skirts and is
limited to toys and lamps now.
Jacketed fiber is tough. One trick is to blow it into existing
underground gas pipes, with a little parachute/umbrella sort of thing.
A quarter inch bend radius has no effect on the stuff we use.

But shock?


John
 
On Aug 2, 8:03 pm, Bob E. <besp...@invalid.tv> wrote:
A friend is having a new roof put on his his 50-year-old, flat-roof home.
This provides access to all kinds of new wiring possibilities for the
structure.

He wants to do 2xCAT6 and 2xRG-6 throughout. I'm not sure what to recommend
re. fiber optic.

Is it too soon to know how this will be an advantage to existing homes?

I hear there are several FO standards (62.5 micron, 50 micron). Is there
strong competition, or is one the clear favorite into the future?

What should I recommend?

Thanks.
There are companies that make data and RF bundled cable. Just a
thought.

I'm not so sure running RF is all that useful these days. I own a few
boxes that pipe video over either data cabling . Silicon Dust for TV
and a USB satellite box. But there are satellite boxes that support
data cables directly these days.
 
All glass fibre optics need a large radius for the bends. 1/4" radius will
definitely break any of the corning glass products we used to build a four
city wide MAN fibre optic network.

I was warned of this bend problem early in my installation training and
thought it was bunk. I was using electrical tape boxes (about 4.5" dia.) to
store spare flexible jumper leads for usage in the field instead of making
two trips from the site to warehouse each time. It took a few months to a
few years for the fractures to show up in the glass and become problems for
customers once they achieve high bandwidths and cannot attain them, due to
data errors...fractured glass strands = reflected light and bad light
conduction.

One day a contract cross country fibre optic company we used to do all our
splices, showed me, with his laser light indicator, what happens when you
bend the stuff too sharply. Red light spills out the sides at the fractures
and you can see it right throuygh the jackets too. Most strands never
recover but still work fine, depending on tolerable light losses. We stopped
storing the flex jumpers in small round boxes from then on. Behind the
scenes I began seeing all our installed jumpers being replaced due to data
errors (light impedance)....ooops!

Check the specs and although these jacketed outdoor cables with many strands
looks tough they cannot make the sharp bends. Most specs will tell you to
use no smaller than 2-3" conduit to enforce slow turns.

Shock?
A few incidents where cables between poles were hit, one by a dumptruck, and
a pole hit in an accident (IIRC), shattered some (or all) of the strands in
50 or 100 strand aerial cables. The contractors started cutting back cable
sheaths to find the start of the good glass sections and make a splice
there. One fracture from the dumptruck with dumper up, stretched the cable
so badly before snapping, the inside the fractured strands when over 1 km in
one direction and almost 1/2 km the other, due to longitudinal mechanical
shock. The injuries are restrung back to the nearest splice box now, without
test, and it it takes a few km of new cable it is faster and cheaper. The
drivers not looking pay big time for those ones.


"John Larkin" <jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote in message
news:fpvg56thporsijb0aq81qges0ke0ktf7hg@4ax.com...
Jacketed fiber is tough. One trick is to blow it into existing
underground gas pipes, with a little parachute/umbrella sort of thing.
A quarter inch bend radius has no effect on the stuff we use.

But shock?


John


On Tue, 3 Aug 2010 14:17:27 -0400, "Josepi" <JRM.@easynews.com> wrote:

Fibre needs it's own conduit. It is still fragile, limited bend radius and
subject to shock. Secondly, it will be corning glass so thin that it bends.
Plastic fibres have too much opacity, went out with hooped skirts and is
limited to toys and lamps now.
 
On 3 Aug, 18:19, Mark F <mark53...@gmail.com> wrote:

Cat 6E might be for real now, so try for it instead of Cat 6.
The cables I put in in 2004 say "CAT6E", but it certainly wasn't
an official specification then.
Do you mean Cat. 6A? I've never heard of 6E.
 
Single mode interfaces are still till expensive, but
coming down in price. Multi-mode won't handle much over 1Gb/s; single
mode should hit more than 1Tb/s over 100 meters in a while.

There probably is a specific type of connector that you should use for
the fiber-optics, but I never figured out what it was.

strong competition, or is one the clear favorite into the future?
I think OM-1 is 220m with Gigait, 1000 base SX. OM-3 laser optimised
fibre will do 10 Gb, 10G base SR, at several hundred metres, I think
it's 300 m.

The longer wavelength optics normally used with single mode fibre are
significantly more expensive. It is possible to run 1000 base LX over
OM-1 and OM-2 multimode fiber using special mode conditioning patch
cords, but you'd probably only do this if you already had existing
older fibre installed.

As for connectors, ST were the most common at one time, but later
equipment tended to be SC. In more recent times the smaller LC
connector has become very common, and is probably the most popular.
It is also the recommend standard for use with OM-3 fibre. We've
found all of these connector types to be reliable, and MTRJ to be very
unreliable.
 
In sci.electronics.equipment furles@mail.croydon.ac.uk wrote:
Single mode interfaces are still till expensive, but
coming down in price. Multi-mode won't handle much over 1Gb/s; single
mode should hit more than 1Tb/s over 100 meters in a while.

There probably is a specific type of connector that you should use for
the fiber-optics, but I never figured out what it was.

strong competition, or is one the clear favorite into the future?

I think OM-1 is 220m with Gigait, 1000 base SX. OM-3 laser optimised
fibre will do 10 Gb, 10G base SR, at several hundred metres, I think
it's 300 m.

The longer wavelength optics normally used with single mode fibre are
significantly more expensive. It is possible to run 1000 base LX over
OM-1 and OM-2 multimode fiber using special mode conditioning patch
cords, but you'd probably only do this if you already had existing
older fibre installed.

As for connectors, ST were the most common at one time, but later
equipment tended to be SC. In more recent times the smaller LC
connector has become very common, and is probably the most popular.
It is also the recommend standard for use with OM-3 fibre. We've
found all of these connector types to be reliable, and MTRJ to be very
unreliable.
none of this matters.

nobody is going to be hooking up fiber devices in their home, no matter
what's in the walls already.
 

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