New home wire install...CAT6, OM3, OM4, oh my...

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DogChainX

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Building a new house, two story with a basement. Here's my initial thoughts.

-RG6x2, CAT6x3 to each bedroom.
-RG6x3, CAT6x4 to living room and home theatre
-RG6x3, CAT6x6 to office (no need for a switch there)
-CAT6x4 to attic, with POE switch located in attic for security camera system.
-Conduit from network closet to strategic locations:
  • Office
  • Home Theatre
  • Living room
  • Attic

I found 1000'ft bulk fiber OM3 (two fiber) for $250. Would it be worth running OM3 to each room while running RG6 and CAT6 as well for that price? Its not terminated, so termination would have to be done in the future. Conduit would remain unfilled and ready for pulling wires 10 years from now. I know current spec'd 25GBE can run over a two-lane (two fiber) for future expansion.

Is OM3 a good bet for the next 5 years? Difficult to terminate? CAT6a and CAT7a seem to be a waste and added bulk for no real benefit. CAT6 solid UTP seems to be the choice. Has ability to do 10GBE, easy to work with, etc.
 
the CAT6a vs CAT6 distinction comes with how long your runs are... if over 40m, you need 6a for 10gbps...

i'd be more concerned about putting a POE switch in your attic... why not just bring your attic cables down to your main switching area and power it from there? the goal is to have a single patch panel and a single switch.

i would maybe run some fiber to my office area, that's it... maybe for a wkstation i wanted 10g to... my server would be in my main switching area/rack... otherwise, just run a piece of conduit to those areas you might find need some expansion down the road, like office areas or maybe entertainment center...
 
Amount of wire is good, skip running the fiber for future use and just run conduit. Either run everything to the basement or put in a small closure on each floor with OM3 between each floor. Don’t place equipment in the attic.

Don’t forget to run conduit from your main distribution point to the demarc location, usually next to the power meter. I usually terminate the conduit into a sealed 12x12x4 box on the outside of the house. It allows installers to drill a hole in the bottom of the closure outside and run everything in through the conduit.
 
That’s a lot of RG6 for all of the ??? you plan on having. I mean seriously what does that much coax accomplish when you don’t need 3x cable boxes in each room.
 
Ocellaris said:
That’s a lot of RG6 for all of the ??? you plan on having.
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That’s not “a lot” at all, office is the perfect example. Modem, antenna and cable/satellite STB. Most providers can’t utilize a diplexer to combine signals into one wire.
 
Why the extra RG6? Because I'm not paying someone to run the RG6 wire as I'll be doing it myself, and its dirt cheap, and I'd much rather just run a handful of cables all at once. I had my old house that both RG6 cables were dead going to my office, so no cable modem there. I had to use an Ethernet over Power adapter to my main system, since everything else was CAT2 or 3?, 15mbps on a crappy old-wire house. So, I'd much rather pay an extra $2.50 in cable to have a spare cable or two in each room for whatever.

POE to the attic I could do from the main area hub, I haven't decided. There will probably be both options going up to the attic. CAT6 is cheap, and I'd much rather leave conduit open, unused for future expansion and run a lot of extra (spares).

My main concern is the OM3 fiber. I just have zero experience terminating it or anything fiber. I could buy pre-terminated but with the runs I would be doing, would be about $300 and the rest of the house would be CAT6. 10gbe is more than enough for most anything I can think of, but who knows what the future brings. OM3 is at least 25GBE on two-fiber cabling currently, and that bulk price is just insane. Has anyone terminated OM3?

Or should I just forget the bulk OM3 and rely on CAT6+preterminated OM3 fiber+Conduit and call it good?
 
bds1904 said:
Amount of wire is good, skip running the fiber for future use and just run conduit. Either run everything to the basement or put in a small closure on each floor with OM3 between each floor. Don’t place equipment in the attic.

Don’t forget to run conduit from your main distribution point to the demarc location, usually next to the power meter. I usually terminate the conduit into a sealed 12x12x4 box on the outside of the house. It allows installers to drill a hole in the bottom of the closure outside and run everything in through the conduit.
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Exactly what I was thinking with conduit to the outside. Nice big fat 2" pipe, just in case. I do plan to run everything to the basement in a network area with a server rack, so most everything is centrally-located. I'm just not sure of the OM3 bulk. Its just a steal at that price, but terminating it could be a real pain in the arse.
 
To have someone come in and terminate the fiber can get real expensive fast.
Many companies wont terminate it unless they run it.
That leaves preterminated, which is a bit of a pain to run as you have to be extremely careful.
Also you can a lot of times get a run of preterminated for less than the connectors alone for short runs.

When running fiber I prefer to use 4 strand min. single mode as it is the most future proof.
 
DogChainX said:
Exactly what I was thinking with conduit to the outside. Nice big fat 2" pipe, just in case. I do plan to run everything to the basement in a network area with a server rack, so most everything is centrally-located. I'm just not sure of the OM3 bulk. Its just a steal at that price, but terminating it could be a real pain in the arse.
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I do not recommend terminating your own fiber. I terminate and splice fiber every day and without about $900 in tools it’s impossible to get a good, reliable and long lasting connection, even with modern mechanical splicing or through-the-connector ends.

For a home network run 1” corrugated conduit (smurf tube) and use patch cords in them. Cheap, easy to come by and easily replaceable.
 
I'll run conduit, the smurf tube stuff, to key locations, but have them empty for future use.

There's so much out there to read about fiber, and varying opinions. I have been looking at 15m and 20m OM3 multimode LC-LC pre-terminated for a few runs, mainly from the server closet to my office, to the home theatre area, and to the living room (TVs, 4K content, etc...want to be able to quickly scan and skip through the movie file of 30-60GB 4K content). Why run single mode? Is 4 strand just to be able to use 50GBe in the future?

My head is starting to spin a little from all of the marketing hype and white-papers of the Ethernet Alliance roadmap.
 
DogChainX said:
I'll run conduit, the smurf tube stuff, to key locations, but have them empty for future use.

There's so much out there to read about fiber, and varying opinions. I have been looking at 15m and 20m OM3 multimode LC-LC pre-terminated for a few runs, mainly from the server closet to my office, to the home theatre area, and to the living room (TVs, 4K content, etc...want to be able to quickly scan and skip through the movie file of 30-60GB 4K content). Why run single mode? Is 4 strand just to be able to use 50GBe in the future?

My head is starting to spin a little from all of the marketing hype and white-papers of the Ethernet Alliance roadmap.
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It doesn’t matter what you plan for now, you’ll find a reason to pull different cables within 5 or 10 years.
 
Just remember if you get fibre in bulk you need a fusion splicer to splice it and those are not cheap, at all. I would personally stick to cat6/cat6a for throughout the house, MAYBE do fibre if there are any outbuildings as it will provide electrical isolation. Could also do fibre behind the rack for going between servers/storage and so on.
 
I recommend Cat6, it is cheaper and definitely enough for your bandwidth requirement now. Also, you can run conduit, so that you can replace the cable easily.
 
One rule of thumb, NEVER drywall your basement ceiling. You can put drop ceiling or any other ceiling that can be removed and it makes it really easy to run new stuff any time you want, even without running conduit. (that could be kind of expensive and labour intensive to do and require drilling lot of large holes in joists etc).

To run a new drop you make your rectangular box hole upstairs in the wall, then use a long bit to drill down and then go find the hole in the basement and pass the cable through.
 
Thanks all.

I think I'll stick with CAT6 and conduit, along with three runs of 20 metere OM3 multimode preterminated to the office, to home theater and living room TVs. Conduit will include the attic so hopefully be easy future drops to the rooms upstairs, and conduit runs to the office, home theater and living room covers those areas for the future (10-15 years from now).

I won't run my own fiber. I would love to learn how to terminate it, and perhaps in the future the tools will change, but i really don't want to install cabling that will cost a fortune to terminate (no reason to run it vs preterminated).

My builder's electrician said stick with one CAT5e in each room, and that I'll never need anything else. My father's electrician said that about RG58/59 and phone cords 20 years ago...

4K files are 15-60GB each on my server. Scanning through those, and backing up files, takes forever at 1gbe connections. Can't wait to get my 10gbe connections up and running.
 
DogChainX said:
My builder's electrician said stick with one CAT5e in each room, and that I'll never need anything else.
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Any electrician that says that doesn’t do quality work. The trade has changed over the last 30yrs and so has code. A good electrician understands that needs and code changes very rapidly. Remember, even 20 years ago it wasn’t code to dedicate circuits to refrigerators & dishwashers or common to have 12ga wire for outlets. Good electricians have been doing those things for 50yrs. They did them because they understand how electricity works and how demand changes over the years.

A good electrician will encourage you to overbuild every “wiring related” part of your house because it’s easier to do it now, before the drywall. A bad electrician will say thing like “it’s all you’ll ever need” because they are counting on you calling them back in 5-10yrs to upgrade things.

A good electrician will recognize that if he does quality work the first time he will continue to get jobs over time because of his reputation. A bad electrician can’t see past the job he’s working on because he’s too worried about a paycheck tomorrow.
 
Conduit is the only right answer for wiring the house. As long as you have conduit you can easily swap out the wires for whatever new type you need. Like you already stated, in the past 30 years people have needed to retrofit their houses for phone lines, coax, Ethernet, and now the latest and greatest being fiber to certain locations. It's a pain to have to keep drilling holes and running cables through walls after the fact. Just give yourself conduit on at least 2 walls in each bedroom, 3 walls in the living rooms and offices and you should be fine for most things. I would also toss a conduit that goes somewhere on the kitchen counter, in case you want to ever throw a voip phone, a tv, or some other type of smart appliance that needs to be plugged in there. Then the only other thing is that I would definitely pick a location or two where you'd put access points, and have someone mount a box with a conduit going to that as well.

If you look at current trends, right now the most important thing is Ethernet. Every service that is being offered to you is becoming IP based, and I don't see that changing any time soon. I don't really have a use for dedicated phone lines or coax, because I can accomplish both of those tasks over the network with the right equipment. Even if you wanted home automation, or home audio, you can probably find products that are now IP based so they don't require dedicated runs of special cables to make them work. This is prevalent not just in home, but large business and enterprises as well. A/V studios, radio stations, and several cable / satellite companies are starting to offer solutions over IP.
 
Agreed. There's so much you can push over ethernet and CAT5e/CAT6. Until recently, I didn't know you could do 30Hz 4K over CAT5e/6 cables with extenders. That changes a lot for me on media closets/etc. But bman212121, you're correct in saying that conduit is the only right answer.

Thanks all for your input and insights. Greatly appreciated. When this thread is 14 years old, I'll be sure to resurrect it with thanks when I'm running 1 terabyte ethernet through my conduit. =)
 
DogChainX said:
Why the extra RG6? Because I'm not paying someone to run the RG6 wire as I'll be doing it myself, and its dirt cheap, and I'd much rather just run a handful of cables all at once. I had my old house that both RG6 cables were dead going to my office, so no cable modem there. I had to use an Ethernet over Power adapter to my main system, since everything else was CAT2 or 3?, 15mbps on a crappy old-wire house. So, I'd much rather pay an extra $2.50 in cable to have a spare cable or two in each room for whatever.

POE to the attic I could do from the main area hub, I haven't decided. There will probably be both options going up to the attic. CAT6 is cheap, and I'd much rather leave conduit open, unused for future expansion and run a lot of extra (spares).

My main concern is the OM3 fiber. I just have zero experience terminating it or anything fiber. I could buy pre-terminated but with the runs I would be doing, would be about $300 and the rest of the house would be CAT6. 10gbe is more than enough for most anything I can think of, but who knows what the future brings. OM3 is at least 25GBE on two-fiber cabling currently, and that bulk price is just insane. Has anyone terminated OM3?

Or should I just forget the bulk OM3 and rely on CAT6+preterminated OM3 fiber+Conduit and call it good?
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bds1904 said:
I do not recommend terminating your own fiber. I terminate and splice fiber every day and without about $900 in tools it’s impossible to get a good, reliable and long lasting connection, even with modern mechanical splicing or through-the-connector ends.

For a home network run 1” corrugated conduit (smurf tube) and use patch cords in them. Cheap, easy to come by and easily replaceable.
Click to expand...


What bds1904 said, tools are expensive, and unless you do it every day, you're going to waste a lot of ends and fiber learning.

Plus, fiber slivers in your skin............
 
Electrician ^= networking expert.

Extra conduits in new house are good. For those you plan on populating now, include a pull string with the runs. That way, you won't risk damaging existing runs with the fish tape for the new run.

Don't forget power receptacles and ventilation where you plan on putting equipment.

And imagine how you will get to those attic locations once all the dry wall and insulation are installed.
 
So I spec'd out a very, very similar plan for a very large custom house my parents built in the late 1990s. We ran 2xRG6, 2x400Mhz twisted pair (cat5 spec wasn't really out then), as well as a single twisted pair for telephone jacks.

Here's what really happened--most rooms got at least 1 ethernet port working to gigabit specs once that spec was established and we upgraded to a gigabit switch. Other rooms had at least 1 100Mbit port if not 1 100Mbit and 1 gigabit. One room ended up with no ethernet ports (cable is probably unterminated sitting in the crawl space). For the room without the ethernet, we've used powerline and plan to upgrade that to gigabit via a moca 2.0 adapter to one of the rg6 runs. The rg6 is a godsend as it allows us to put any cable internet anywhere we want as well as distribute the security system display to a channel on all televisions via channel modulator. We haven't installed the pbx yet for telephone since cell phones took over in the last 2 decades, but we do have it.

Definitely the most valuable thing will be good conduits. Be sure there's no sharp bends and use larger than 1" if possible, 2" if you can. Otherwise, the conduits can be a bigger pain than drilling holes and fishing cables.

As far as fibre, if you're up there running cable, run whatever you want while you're there--it's just material cost. But I'd definitely look at preterminated cable in places that you can immediately use them (10Gbps cards between two systems/nas/etc). Otherwise, it's just going to be an expensive (and delicate) pull cable for when you get the fibre you really need.
 
Yeah, I got no problem with RG6, RG6u is the best way to extend HD video for sure, and SDI adapters are dirt cheap these days, too

Coax still has plenty of usefulness at this point
 
Conduit, boxes, and pull strings are the best thing you can put in if your walls are open. I wish I had built a house I would have conduit everywhere. Last time I ran cable I ran 6a and my friends thought I was nuts. "You'll never need that!?". I might in 10 years, and if I still live here I am NOT pulling this effing cable again.
 
Outside of my server(s) and NAS everything in my house is wireless. I just don't need that much bandwidth and wireless is good enough these days. But I agree plan for the future I just think OM3 stuff is way overkill but hey its your money. Do what you think you use/need.
 
Wireless is going to always be less than optimal for speeds, but better for convenience.

And when you have 100 aps in the spectrum (like in our apartment complex), wireless becomes downright unreliable.
 
OM3 is for current 10GBe connections, possibly 25GBe in the future, that don't depend upon CAT5e/6/6a termination reliability. That and most 10GBe SPF+ transceivers are $10-30, so those two-to-four 10GBe ports on a rack switch can finally be used without having to use expensive 10GBe RJ45 transceivers ($300?).. Steaming 4k content right now takes 3-4 seconds to "buffer" when skipping through movies from my NAS. I *really* hate it, and backing up to the NAS on 1GBe takes FOREVER with 8TB worth of crap. I can't wait to try iSCSI and a few other things on my FreeNAS server.

I might start a blog about it.
 
DogChainX said:
OM3 is for current 10GBe connections, possibly 25GBe in the future, that don't depend upon CAT5e/6/6a termination reliability. That and most 10GBe SPF+ transceivers are $10-30, so those two-to-four 10GBe ports on a rack switch can finally be used without having to use expensive 10GBe RJ45 transceivers ($300?).. Steaming 4k content right now takes 3-4 seconds to "buffer" when skipping through movies from my NAS. I *really* hate it, and backing up to the NAS on 1GBe takes FOREVER with 8TB worth of crap. I can't wait to try iSCSI and a few other things on my FreeNAS server.

I might start a blog about it.
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Honestly, how often are you backing up 8TB of data?

Your "buffering" will also have some latency in there. Heck, latency to get the data to app / TV and then to have it start processing and playing it. The TV I have on the same switch as my PC takes about 2 seconds to start streaming just with regular HD. You won't fix that with 10/25GB. I don't think your movie buffering has much to do with throughput as you only need a constant 25MB to stream 4k. It would be similar to saying that SSD will speed up your streaming.

Not saying don't do, just that the streaming is not going to get fixed by going there. If you are doing 8TB a week of backups, sure....just not sure I would do that for a once a month / year type of scenario.
 
evilwon said:
Honestly, how often are you backing up 8TB of data?

Your "buffering" will also have some latency in there. Heck, latency to get the data to app / TV and then to have it start processing and playing it. The TV I have on the same switch as my PC takes about 2 seconds to start streaming just with regular HD. You won't fix that with 10/25GB. I don't think your movie buffering has much to do with throughput as you only need a constant 25MB to stream 4k. It would be similar to saying that SSD will speed up your streaming.

Not saying don't do, just that the streaming is not going to get fixed by going there. If you are doing 8TB a week of backups, sure....just not sure I would do that for a once a month / year type of scenario.
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If i have the 4K content on the HTPC's hard drive, skipping around has no issues. Doing the same thing on the network, 4K takes a bit to catch up on it. As far as OM3, the cable is only $35, the runs simple, and I'm running RG6 and CAT6 anyways. Also, RJ45 10GBe ports are expensive compared to 10GBe LC transceivers. It goes down to why not for $35.
 
Vashypooh said:
If you are doing fiber, use singlemode, not multimode.
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Thanks for the input. I'm new to fiber, so I'll need to ask why. Single mode transceivers seem to be about 4-10x the price for 10gb speeds, and I'm only going maximum 75 feet (if that). I can run single mode cable at the same time to future proof it if I want, but its $57/cable for armored 20m with LC LC connectors. If i'm running conduit, and can pull SM fiber or whatever else is desirable, what's the main pro to single mode now to offset the insane cost of the transceivers?
 
DogChainX said:
Thanks for the input. I'm new to fiber, so I'll need to ask why. Single mode transceivers seem to be about 4-10x the price for 10gb speeds, and I'm only going maximum 75 feet (if that). I can run single mode cable at the same time to future proof it if I want, but its $57/cable for armored 20m with LC LC connectors. If i'm running conduit, and can pull SM fiber or whatever else is desirable, what's the main pro to single mode now to offset the insane cost of the transceivers?
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Singlemode will last way longer than Multimode due to it being meant for actual lasers, not LED. Decide you want 25 gb? Change optics. 50gb? Change optics. 100gb? Change optics. %newcrazystandard%? Change optics. With multimode you will have to replace the fiber to the new OM standard for the speed specification. There is a reason most large datacenters are all moving to singlemode for everything fiber, and it has to do with not having to deal with MMF cables anywhere because its a pain in the ass when you decide you need more speed but the cable you have won't cut it for the transmission.

The transceivers do cost every so slightly more, yes but we are still talking <$40 an optic here (https://www.fs.com/ is $34).
 
Vashypooh said:
Singlemode will last way longer than Multimode due to it being meant for actual lasers, not LED. Decide you want 25 gb? Change optics. 50gb? Change optics. 100gb? Change optics. %newcrazystandard%? Change optics. With multimode you will have to replace the fiber to the new OM standard for the speed specification. There is a reason most large datacenters are all moving to singlemode for everything fiber, and it has to do with not having to deal with MMF cables anywhere because its a pain in the ass when you decide you need more speed but the cable you have won't cut it for the transmission.

The transceivers do cost every so slightly more, yes but we are still talking <$40 an optic here (https://www.fs.com/ is $34).
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Oh wow! I guess I've been searching incorrectly/incompletely. I thought optics started at $75 used and new at least $125-200 new. Thanks for the heads up. Guess I'll be ordering single mode cable soon.
 
Yes single mode is definitely more future proof. You won't see many interconnects in large datacenters using MM much. We use it while staying inside a rack, all other cross connects get single mode.

In your case, in the house, I'd still do it with single mode to start if you can afford the difference. You won't have to pull fiber again, it's a god send
 
Eickst said:
Yes single mode is definitely more future proof. You won't see many interconnects in large datacenters using MM much. We use it while staying inside a rack, all other cross connects get single mode.

In your case, in the house, I'd still do it with single mode to start if you can afford the difference. You won't have to pull fiber again, it's a god send
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Aye, in our DC we have MMF within a rack, but even within a rack if we touch it, its changed out to be SM. So much easier to just keep a single optic / patch type around.
 
So quick question with SM. LC cables are listed as UPC or APC

20 meter SM LC/UPC-LC/UPC
20 meter SM LC/APC-LC/APC

I guess APC is angled cut to lower feedback, so aren't most connections based off of UPC? Keystone jacks, cables, etc? I just want to make sure everything lines up and I get the most compatible setup.

Btw, again, thank you for informing me. I've ran over 5000 feet of CAT5e/CAT6 in my homes/business, but never dealt with fiber until now.
 
All standard optics utilize a UPC connector. The only ones that don’t you will see them specify APC and the jack will be green.

Use UPC in the house, you aren’t dealing with miles and miles of fiber. APC connectors are used to reduce the reflectance which becomes very important on long links and single-fiber (multiple wavelengths on a single fiber) applications.

Don’t forget you’ll need duplex patch cords, not simplex.

“LC/UPC 9/125 Singlemode Duplex” is what you’ll need if you choose to run SM.

I also highly recommend using bend-insensitive patch cords if they are going through conduit to the back of a wall plate. Much better bend radius. From the wall plate to the device use armored patch cords to prevent damage if they get smashed.
 
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bds1904 said:
All standard optics utilize a UPC connector. The only ones that don’t you will see them specify APC and the jack will be green.

Use UPC in the house, you aren’t dealing with miles and miles of fiber. APC connectors are used to reduce the reflectance which becomes very important on long links and single-fiber (multiple wavelengths on a single fiber) applications.

Don’t forget you’ll need duplex patch cords, not simplex.

“LC/UPC 9/125 Singlemode Duplex” is what you’ll need if you choose to run SM.

I also highly recommend using bend-insensitive patch cords if they are going through conduit to the back of a wall plate. Much better bend radius. From the wall plate to the device use armored patch cords to prevent damage if they get smashed.
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Thanks.

Yup, found myself some some 20 meter LC LC SM duplex armored for inexpensive $20. Before installing I'll test them, and at that price I'll run 3-4 of them as redundancy lines.

As far as the bend-insensitive, are there any major issues using an LC-LC duplex COUPLER to go from the armored to bend-insensitive before it gets to the wall plate keystone?
 
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