Can’t fish Ethernet? Use “invisible” fiber instead

elevation

If your CAT6 is down to 100 Mbps, check that all the conductors have been properly crimped into the connector -- or consider re-crimping. It's possible the building has shifted and damaged the fished cable, but it's more likely the problem is with the connector(s).

piphq70

ran into this exact thing last year, bad crimp on one pair killed gigabit negotiation but 100M worked fine. Took five minutes with a toner to find.

jrm4

I confess, I've read this twice and I don't really get what's going on here; and I have both MoCA and Powerline going on in my house as well, so I'm like -- why not one of those?

favorited

This is how my apartment complex retrofitted all 300ish units with AT&T fiber. Fiber runs from your building's telecom room to a small hole they drilled above everyone's front door, then along baseboards and around door jambs until it reaches ~the center of the unit (concrete walls...) in the living room. It is genuinely invisible until you get up close. You're far more likely to notice the spots where someone got sloppy with the glue in some corner than the fiber itself. With proper attention to detail during installation (and assuming you have white door jambs and baseboards) it would be basically invisible.

dale_glass

You can fish standard fiber very well too. It's thinner than pretty much all network cable. The biggest part is the LC connector, and you can just take that apart and put it back together -- just remember which was the left and which was the right wire. That should save the need for special hardware.

readthenotes1

I guess there is no point in taking a picture of invisible fiber

zamalek

GoCoax/MoCA is a fantastic non-destructive option if your copper can handle it. Just make sure you install a filter at your ingress point to prevent sending data to neighbors (MoCA does have encryption, but why trust math when you can trust physics and math?).

rbanffy

Last time I cabled my house I laid out two cables between the switch and every spot, precisely for this reason. I think now I’d lay fiber as well, for future use.

mscdex

I recently switched to "invisible" fiber after having used various generations of MoCA/G.hn/Powerline ethernet over the years. The best part is that you can get such cabling down to 0.6mm thin (akin to fishing line) and get it pre-terminated, meaning you don't have to drill holes anywhere as it can easily fit through doorways and supports very tight bend radii without breaking (exceeding G.657.B3). Also, pairing it with bidirectional transceivers means you only need to run one cable to each endpoint.

sonicvroooom

German here, living in single digit distance to military areas.... The shit they buried under argon et al decades ago, man ... tap in if you have the patience ... gives you seconds around the globe

wyager

These days you can get a cheap-o chinese fiber splicer kit for like $500-800. They work pretty well and are in many ways simpler than terminating ethernet. Super convenient for wall pulls and so on.

pak9rabid

I'd be curious to see what the actual link speed is between the two endpoints, rather than a speed test out to the ISP. Are you able to do a speed test with something like iperf3 locally?

ghostly_s

Article really offers no explanation of what "invisible fiver" is. Its just fiber with a thin, white jacket meant to be glued along baseboards where it is discreet. I’m sure there are some safety issues I’m not considering that make it impractical to pump a high-powered laser into a wall cutout, burn a line-of-sight through all the studs, and install an optical link along the resulting path...

avidiax

Related: https://michael.stapelberg.ch/posts/2020-08-09-fiber-link-ho... As to the author's core complaint (CAT5/6 degrading to 100mbps), I've found that the issue is almost always the termination at the jacks. Reseating the wires with a punchdown tool, or failing that, cutting a bit more off the ends and ensuring that the pair twists run all the way to the punchdowns has been enough to restore 1000mbps negotiation the few times I've had this issue.

eqvinox

> The SFP+s use the same SC connector used in PON networks, but otherwise use Active Ethernet. I’m not sure if they’re using IEEE standards or are proprietary on the glass, but I’ll assume the latter. It's actually standards compliant (unless they screwed something up). IEEE 802.3 clause 158: 10GBase-BRx, where x = 20 in this case, at least the ones on the Amazon link say 20km. The 1G/2G support is "bonus" beyond the spec. You can get them with LC connectors too, which I'd in fact recommend because those are smaller, a bit more precise, and waaaaaay more common these days. https://www.fs.com/eu-en/products/36351.html (note you need a pair of "23" and "32")

zamadatix

Great post! In every apartment I've lived in I've done something similar and it keeps the wife happy enough, even though there are technically cables running everywhere (just make sure to not make a mess of things at the switch side if you run a lot...). Some other notes for those trying to adapt things to their own situations and set ups: - As others have said, give ample time to trying to recrimp the cables first. It seems this post skips past that as it didn't work out for the author, but it should be the first step for anyone reading. - RJ45 SFP+ adapters that don't get super hot and do the full range exist now if you need to use them somewhere. Just don't expect them to be the cheap ones! - If you do try to go with a wireless mesh, make sure it's APs which can mesh on the 6 GHz band. It won't help you punch through lead lined walls or anything but stuff like the HP25s with only 2.4+5 GHz can only ever give misery to begin with. Not that Wi-Fi will compete with glass regardless, but it can actually be pretty decent with 6 GHz mesh. - The media converters and SC transceivers do use IEEE standards. Functionally they are 2 port switches in transparent mode. More expensive to build something custom when the goal is just to transport Ethernet with Ethernet media anyways, plus it increases the use cases of the product to be normal Ethernet on both ends rather than just a paired device for solely this scenario. - As such, if you do multiple runs consider putting a switch with SFP/SFP+ ports at the head end instead of media converters. Try not to spend more than ~$120 on an 8 port 10G switch for this if you go this route, it's easy to spend more to get less. - Instead of media converters, consider getting mini 4+2 switches (4 RJ45 up to 2.5G + 2 SFP+ up to 10G) from Aliexpress or wherever. They tend to be about the same size as a media converter and go in the ~$30 price range. The benefit being if you ever need to plug another device in near that one you have 3 other ports already available to use that 10G uplink with. You can also daisy chain them with the 2nd 10G port, which works great so long as you don't need all 10G to a single device all the time. The only case it's not great is when you really want to turn that run into a single 10G RJ45 port, here the media converter would be significantly cheaper. - Unless you have another reason to (e.g. have existing cables or free stuff), I'd recommend going with single strand LC fiber. SC is pretty much only found in service provider networks these days and also has a bulkier end. Not that LC is "wrong", but if I were buying new for home networking I'd probably do LC. Regardless what you go with, make sure to get the bidirectional transceivers for it. - If you're cheap you can go for 1G transceivers & switches, but if you're doing all of this instead of dealing with Wi-Fi you're probably in the group that would like to just spend slightly more for a 10G network. You can spend a lot of time reading about singlemode vs multimode, APC vs UPC, SC vs LC, and further details of each but none of it will really matter in a home. E.g. if you take an SR optic connected to an APC cable which is butted to a UPC cable and then plug that into your switch it'll probably work fine. Just don't let your local network guy see it or they might throw up. The only things you REALLY have to get right are: - Match the bidi optics on each side. If you order a pair this is done for you, if you order individually make sure to buy both types instead of 2 of the same type. - Connect them with a fiber cable. But if you want a chef's kiss from your local network guy get LR, OS2, and consistently order APC/UPC, with APC being the preferred all else equal.

Havoc

This also comes in translucent type - basically looks like fishing line so very close to actually invisible. When it's against a wall you can't see it unless you've got a flashlight and are centimeters away. And it'll carry 10gig just fine. Good stuff even though it's a bit of a pain to route it along a path that makes sense, has the right bend radius & doesn't get squished by doors etc. Currently trying to decide whether to do the same for other rooms.

throw0101d

Apalrd had a video on this a few months ago, "Hidden ETHERNET at home using FIBER": * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2FbzCyiNr4