I’m in the process of switching from cable to fiber internet (mostly for price). I use MoCA on the 2 PCs since my house has coaxial jacks in every room but no ethernet run. I am a huge brainlet when it comes to networking - would there be any reason to run fiber or ethernet in-home instead of the cable?
Alternatively, let me know if anyone can recommend any resources for learning more about local networks that might help me at a beginner level - I used to have a basic Windows LAN back in the day but nothing since I switched to Linux. Thanks!
In my opinion, fiber in a local network does not bring any benefit when each line connection is below 10 Gbit/s and 100m length. That’s something you could get from cat6a cable. The equipment for optics is more expensive (both initial cost and power consumption of SFP modules). Plus on copper cable you can implement PoE (power-over-ethernet).
Optics makes sense for far distribution (several kilometer distance) - FTTx. For ISP (internet service providers) there is also a benefit that they can manage multiple clients from one very fast connection and all they need are passive splitters that do not need electricity to work. Copper cable need active switch so some power has to be provided and it may get complicated to power many deviced over several km distance.
Just read the Arch wiki But on the more serious note I recently switched from cable to fibre, it’s not that hard. You slide the fibre glass access box(That’s how it’s called here) over the connection and then attach your ISP’s router to that with an ethernet cable. Then you can connect your devices to that whether via wifi or ethernet or instead of your ISP’s router you can also place your own router if your ISP supports using your own router. Every ISP I know sends an instruction manual along with how to install it and also have an instruction video on Youtube about it, at least this is how easy it was here.
I guess Arch wiki is always the answer for everything isn’t it, lol I should have known But I am grateful for the responses, it looks like I am going to basically just swap my setup from the cable router to the fiber router and keep rockin along, not planning on going above 1 Gbps anytime soon.
I did forget to add one thing, if you want to use your own router here. Then you have to connect your ISP’s router first to activate the connection. After that’s done, you can switch it around for your own router if it’s supported by your ISP.
If you talking about internet provider side of things - fiber faster cheaper and more reliable.
From your stand of thing - fiber “modem” will consume less electricity and connection will be somehow faster, and probably cheaper.
Coaxial cables internet (ADSL/DSL) is EXTREMELY expensive both in cable - it is lots of copper) and equipment. It is the worst thing ever happened to internet.
Connection vice. You have ethernet cables. In order to connect more than 2 end point to network you need switch with 4/8/16 etc ports.
You connect all your PCs to switch with ethernet(RJ45) cables and - they now all in one network (configuration aside)
Then you want internet, and for this you need router device(router connects local network to global internet)
Wi-Fi router / ADSL modem-router / etc.
Usually this routers already have switch build in, so you have like bunch of rg45 port on them to connect all your home appliances.
I have 10G fiber inside my house and I can tell you that while the internal transfer speeds are intoxicating…it’s overkill for a home environment.
I have two 10G SFP+ managed switches (upstairs & downstairs) with two OM4 LC multimode fiber lines running between them. Each of these core switches are connected to the “access layer” switches which are 2.5G RJ45 ports that run to the components in each rack and to all the rooms of the house. My OPNSense firewall device has two SFP+ 10G ports which handle LAN and vLAN traffic (WAN is on 2.5G RJ45 to the ISP modem). My unRAID server has an Intel x520-DA2 dual SFP+ 10G card in it which provides redundant 10G connection via DAC cables directly to the core switch for the entire house to access.
If I had to do it all again, I’d probably run fiber in the walls to each room. Yes, I’ve got a problem.
The main benefit of migrating from MoCA to Cat-5e RJ45 is that networking gear for RJ45 is plentiful and cheap.
@sconne15 bring Fiber to the box inside your house and internally use a 100Mbps/1Gbps ethernet wiring. It is much more cost effective and has more wide compatibility, i.e. RJ45, than running fiber to each room in the house.
Offcourse if you need more bandwidth in some or most rooms, for example in each room you are gaming/VR, while running a server and doing ML crunching then going for fiber to each room is better.
Do all the storage devices for your pc’s and laptop’s support 10G as well as their network interfaces or was your goal to only to have you internal network devices to support 10G? I have 4G up/down from my ISP. I looked at this once but found out my ssd’s only transfer that fast and my actual big storage devices in my support are normal hd’s which don’t transfer at that speed and I would have to replace the network interfaces of my own pc and my server. Replacing 2x 24T hd storage devices with ssd’s is insanely expensive and to replace my switch with one that supports 10G on all interfaces isn’t cheap either, so I just called it a day and am happy with a 2.5G network.
My server has two M.2 nvme Gen 4x4 drives in a mirror cache for the main array and can saturate the connection, but in practice it never hits those speeds. Each device is capped at 280MB/s by the 2.5gbe connection. But the core switches have the headroom to handle concurrent transfers without bottleneck… Which is nice. Totally overkill though.
My apartment isn’t big but that’s basically what I have 10G between my router(has 2x 10G ports) and my switch (1x 10G port) and ethernet cable that supports 10G cable from the fibre access box to my router. All my other devices that aren’t networking device only have a network connecting supporting up to 2.5G as well.
Wait a few quarters the AI bubble is going to crash and all the RAM and SSD prices will come crashing down. Offcourse NVidia GPUs cost will also come down. You will then be able to build a 24TB NAS build solely on SSDs.
Well strictly speaking one does not need a private Lear jet nor does one need a Ferrari Luce nor Jaguar F-Type. A GR Corolla or RAV4 works just fine. But still Luce and F-Type are sold. Similarly who would not love to have bragging rights of owning a 10Gbps wired home network with 100 Gbps fiber optic ISP connection. It would be such a glorious gaming den in the basement.
Well i have fibre optic right to the modem/router. Then i have Ethernet going to the computer which is plugged into a 10G port on the modem/router and either a 10G network card or a 2.5G Network card on the desktops. I can only get 3G service anyway so as long as you have the proper network card and network cable you’ll get just as fast a speed.
But on the more serious note I recently switched from cable to fibre, it’s not that hard. You slide the fibre glass access box(That’s how it’s called here) over the connection and then attach your ISP’s router to that with an ethernet cable. Then you can connect your devices to that whether via wifi or ethernet or instead of your ISP’s router you can also place your own router if your ISP supports using your own router. Every ISP I know sends an instruction manual along with how to install it and also have an instruction video on Youtube about it, at least this is how easy it was here.