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I am hoping to run a fibre optic cable from the office/study to the "server" room where I'll have my NAS. The idea is to use a 10 Gbit/s connection.

We are building and are currently framing. Should I run conduit and put the fibre in it, or is it fine just to staple the fibre optic cable (with wire staples of course)?

I doubt it'll need replacing, but who knows.

Peter Mortensen
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pookieman
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4 Answers4

42

Run Conduit

Then if you need a 2nd fiber later, or this one goes bad, or you want to add something else, you're all set.

Plus, one staple that hits wrong, and you've clobbered your fiber - you can't (realistically) splice and patch the way you could with copper Ethernet.

manassehkatz-Moving 2 Codidact
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  • conduit is nice but a pia. what diameter conduit are you recommending? it can be nice for future proofing... i just wonder how often that is a waste of effort. I'd run 2 fiber lines that is 10x easier than running conduit, hell run 3. – Fresh Codemonger Jul 28 '20 at 04:55
  • run microduct, it's basically PEX – Jasen Jul 28 '20 at 07:21
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    @FreshCodemonger try ENT (smurf tube) sometime .... – ThreePhaseEel Jul 28 '20 at 11:40
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    Conduit is not a PIA, and is indubitably the right answer. Network cables are temporary on the lifescale of buildings. Stapling fiber - oh no. – Ecnerwal Jul 28 '20 at 12:37
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    @Ecnerwal Meh, unlike copper, fiber has potential for huge bandwidth improvements simply by upgrading the endpoints. To the degree that a home today will need hardwired network communications in the future, I can't imagine a good fiber needing to be replaced for a very, very long time. Staple-able fiber has also been a thing for over a decade now. It's 2020, eh. – J... Jul 28 '20 at 12:42
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    @FreshCodemonger I'd say having to run another cable once everything is closed up is a much larger PIA. Install the dang conduit so that both you and future owners can marvel at what amazing foresight you had instead of curse you for your shortsightedness. – MonkeyZeus Jul 28 '20 at 12:55
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    One compromise is to run conduit from inaccessible spaces to accessible ones. IE: Run conduit in the wall to the attic or crawl space (assuming you have one). Depending upon the layout of your new home that may be practical, or not! You may have to run conduit the entire way, but I think it's worth it. – George Anderson Jul 28 '20 at 14:11
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    +1 for running conduit up from the walls into the attic (maybe with a bend and more pipe if it is the short part of the attic. This allows one to change what room is the "it closet" more easily as well. – le3th4x0rbot Jul 29 '20 at 08:41
  • @Jasen This is the first I have heard of microduct, it looks AMAZING. – le3th4x0rbot Jul 29 '20 at 08:45
  • "you can't (realistically) splice and patch the way you could with copper Ethernet." Actually, splicing fiber is allowed, but splicing UTP network cabling is explicitly forbidden by standard. You will never get spliced UTP to pass the cable category test suite. – Ron Maupin Jul 30 '20 at 03:27
  • @RonMaupin I know you can't splice like an electric power cable or even a phone cable, but there are ways to splice that don't require a lot of expertise or expensive tools. I haven't looked into it recently, but when I have looked into it in the past, fiber was much harder to splice (or really, to make the terminations in general) than CAT 3/5/5e/etc. – manassehkatz-Moving 2 Codidact Jul 30 '20 at 19:55
  • The ANSI/TIA/EIA standard actually says that splices, taps, and couplers are not allowed. Category 5 has been deprecated since last century, and there is no way to pass the category test suite for any category higher than that with a splice because of the impedance mismatch that causes reflections that decrease the return loss. See this answer for the minimum required tests. – Ron Maupin Jul 30 '20 at 20:00
12

Absolutely without question the industrial strength answer is install an empty plastic conduit pipe, and blow the fiber through later. Make all your bends very gentle so the pull is easy. The conduit needed is tiny and very flexible.

However, you may be using pre-terminated fiber, in which case the needed conduit starts to get large.

See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8PgrvTrwAM for a guide to pre-terminated fiber. NEVER staple fiber. If you're framing, just drill holes and string the fiber from hole to hole. For your redundant backup fiber use different holes.

Bryce
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Scott Brown
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9

Assuming you're installing single mode fiber...

The other answers would have been correct many years ago, but developments in optical fiber technology have come a long way. Construction grade fiber is widely available now that is rugged and robust enough to be laid down like normal building wire. You can staple it, pull it tight around sharp 90-deg corners, and even wind it around pipe without any signal degradation.

Conduit is an option also, but it is absolutely not necessary any more - just make sure to buy the correct grade of ruggedized fiber for domestic construction applications and you can absolutely just run this like any other wire in your house.

You're more likely to break non-rugged fiber just trying to install it, to be honest, particularly if you're not experienced with fragile fiber - the rugged stuff you can't kill without a lot of dedicated neglect and abuse. It's made for builders with hard-toe boots, work gloves, power staplers, and thumbs bigger than their hammers.

If you're building a multimode network that's a different story altogether. I wouldn't invest in building multimode fiber into a building at this point. Go SMF - it will last forever. MMF - conduit, because you'll want to replace it at some point. At that, the extra you'll spend on the conduit and more-expensive multimode fiber would pay for the SFP+ SMF modules, so it seems silly to go cheap here. MMF is dead. I wouldn't bother investing in it at this point. It's not like you're a datacenter and have to shave every dollar off of thousands upon thousands of endpoints.

This isn't to say that you can't put plain SMF in a conduit, though - it does let you add more lines in the future, so that's always a plus, but as long as your SMF doesn't break you should never need to upgrade it - it will be good for 10GBit, 100GBit, 1000GBit, and whatever comes after that.

J...
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  • Interesting! This is the first I've heard of "construction grade fiber" (not that I follow that particular industry...) How does it compare, price wise, to installing conduit & "regular" fiber, I wonder... – FreeMan Jul 28 '20 at 14:58
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    After reading the first link, I note that it only works for OS/2. How does it know?? :) </old computer nerd joke> – FreeMan Jul 28 '20 at 15:00
  • @FreeMan I don't know the exact cost, but when I got FTTh my ISP just gave me a 100ft length of ClearCurve patch cable for free with the modem, so it can't be that expensive. – J... Jul 28 '20 at 15:03
  • Wow... must be dirt cheap if the ISPs are giving it away! – FreeMan Jul 28 '20 at 15:06
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    @FreeMan 100ft of OS2 clearcurve is $40 (USD) at Adorama. Gotta be cheaper than conduit. – J... Jul 28 '20 at 15:10
  • Just clicked the first link out of curiosity... I never thought Corning had such wide business (not that I knew much about them beside Gorilla Glass). – jaskij Jul 28 '20 at 17:16
  • And if that's not rugged enough for you, you can even get FIMT fibers (fiber in metal tube) where the outer sheath is aluminum or steel. Granted that's designed more for industrial uses than it is for residential wiring but still, there are lots of options out there that are more durable than your basic, traditional fiber. – bta Jul 28 '20 at 17:55
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    @JanDorniak If there is glass involved, Corning is in the business. – manassehkatz-Moving 2 Codidact Jul 28 '20 at 18:18
  • @manassehkatz-Moving2Codidact my awareness of them prior to this was limited to Gorilla Glass. Always a new thing learned. – jaskij Jul 28 '20 at 18:20
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    @JanDorniak If I remember correctly (but it has been a very long time) back in 5th or 6th grade we had to write letters to "some company about something" and I am pretty sure I wrote (paper, this was long before the internet) to Corning and got back some beautiful brochures/catalogs/etc. of all kinds of different types of glass that they made. – manassehkatz-Moving 2 Codidact Jul 28 '20 at 19:05
  • Conduit is also good if you want to have supervisory signals to go with your fiber... – ThreePhaseEel Jul 28 '20 at 23:12
  • @ThreePhaseEel Sure, and in a commercial or industrial installation that makes sense. For a home network... maybe it's not so critical to have an RS-232 link to the switch under the stairs. – J... Jul 28 '20 at 23:15
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    @J... -- I was thinking more from a telco perspective -- I really wish that this "lets abandon all the copper and let it rot in favor of fiber" approach wasn't so much a thing because if all you have between you and the other end is a piece of optical fiber, you're boned if you hit enough of a power outage to run out of local backup battery – ThreePhaseEel Jul 28 '20 at 23:19
  • @ThreePhaseEel If you have no power, what good is data? Or do you mean having POTS as a backup? I expect most homes already have copper in the walls for that - this is a line from OP's study to their "server room". I don't think you need a red telephone to the broom closet either. – J... Jul 29 '20 at 01:18
  • @J... a chuckle Aye, I mean having POTS available as a backup, at least in my telco thinking. Closer to home, a good example of something where you'd want copper alongside your fiber would be if you wanted to push video/TV stuff around, although I suppose you could use HDMI-Ethernet and copper-fiber media converters in tandem for that? – ThreePhaseEel Jul 29 '20 at 03:11
  • @ThreePhaseEel I don't think it's economical now, but in principle a single mode fiber could carry anything. You can even mux in entirely independent signals in other channels. The bandwidth of a fiber is enormous. – J... Jul 29 '20 at 03:20
  • @J.. In theory. Like you said, it's not economical. – user253751 Jul 29 '20 at 12:20
  • @ThreePhaseEel Remember that copper phone lines still need power, they just carry their own power from the telephone exchange. – user253751 Jul 29 '20 at 12:21
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You want to use conduit ( flexible non metallic conduit) is the best for fiber use long sweeps for 90’s and you won’t crack your fiber. The conduit will also protect the fiber from damage during the instal. It is not recommended to staple fiber 1 over set staple or missed strike and the fiber is toast. For many years the only thing I used flexible non metallic was for fiber. Fled is about as easy but provides a safe path and put a pull string if you ever need you can pull a new cable or fiber at a later date.

Ed Beal
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