# Fiber optic line for Home PC



## evol200

i was thnking of adding a fiber optic line into the house (Residential) as a small upgrade and speed up internet connectivity. i'm with cox so i tried calling them to see if that material was going mainstream yet, the cox rep. didnt know. 
anyones thoughts on this please.


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## bigcaddy

Remember your internet download speeds rely on the internet upload speed at the other end. I don't see any improvement by going fiber unless your provider suggest for Phone, data and TV combination. 

Normal internet speeds are below 10mb and fiber capabilities are crazy high. if your provider only supports speeds of 1.5mb or 6mb or even 20mb, the line into your house probably won't be the bottleneck. It's hard to find downloadable files that you can pull faster then 700kb.


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## clb2010

Most (if not all) telco/cable internet providers do not yet run fiber to the house. It goes to the 'can' or sometimes the MPOE and will then convert to copper. So I would not waste the money unless you are planning ahead.


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## Scuba_Dave

I have FIOS & fiber optic to the house
I haven't bothered w/fiber optic in the house
I wouldn't bother


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## evol200

thanx, 
i'm gonna do it anyway. cause i want crazy internet speeds and fast downloads, besides that its the future. i'll be buying another house soon so i'll be on the lookout for fiber optic service.


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## Scuba_Dave

It won't improve your speeds
The cable companies throttle back your connection based on traffic & use
You have to pay for faster service w/FIOS
ANd even then they can throttle back your connection

If you are moving then that's another reason not to bother


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## clb2010

MPOE means Main Point of Entry by the way. And in this case I was using it to describe where the phone company/cable provider would put their "box" to feed your house. 

Go ahead and do it if you like but I would recommend that you pull Cat-6e instead or at least along with it and home run it back to a patch panel that will accept fiber/copper. That way you can tie down your Internet feed which will probably be copper based into a single point of entry then feed from there.


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## Scuba_Dave

FIOS actually does not provide a means of extending their fiber optic from their box that they installed in my basement

It converts over to Coax, no fiber optic connection available


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## bigcaddy

evol200 said:


> thanx,
> i'm gonna do it anyway. cause i want crazy internet speeds and fast downloads, besides that its the future. i'll be buying another house soon so i'll be on the lookout for fiber optic service.


 
your in house setup is designed to run at probably 100mb - 1ghz in speeds.


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## Caromsoft

I started doing some research on fiber for whole house distribution of high definition signals from a single source; i.e. HTPC, Tivo etc. Pretty expensive for home use, much more than running dual CAT6 lines. For internet or PC networking fiber doesn't get you any gains I'm afraid.


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## Scuba_Dave

Fiber optic IN the house will not increase internet access speed

http://www.speedtest.net/

I have FIOS fiber optic & this is my access speed



CAT3 in the house will get you 10mb
CAT5/5e/6 will get you 100mb

So the bottlekneck is your service provider, not the house wiring


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## amybasset

*Not worth the cost*

As stated above, you will not see any speed increase to the internet using fiber. The main use of fiber over copper is for distance or if it's going to be outdoors, since you can get armoured jackets. We pull copper to all drops unless they exceed the 100 meter threshold. We only use multimode fiber for trunk links between switches and that is because they are over 100 meters apart. We run either multimode or singlemode between buildings, depending on how far apart they are and what is feeding them. Some of the newer Cisco switches which use the newer gigabit LC connector SFP are only rated around 750 feet using multimode fiber. Using regular 100mb then multimode can be used up to 2 KM. Anything further we use singlemode fiber. If you do decide to run fiber in your house, factor in the cost of the fiber network cards and fiber switches or at least a bunch of fiber to copper media converters. A fiber NIC runs $100 or more, an 8 port fiber switch is at least $750 and each media converters runs about $55 each. I do this for a living and I only wired my house with Cat5e and running gigabit without any problems. The fiber solution is just a waste of money when you can do the same thing for a 10th of the cost. If you want to future proof, go with Cat6, it will suffice your home use for at least 10-15 years.:yes:


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## Shrute

Scuba_Dave said:


> CAT3 in the house will get you 10mb
> CAT5/5e/6 will get you 100mb


Cat 5e and Cat 6 could get you 1,000Mb/s


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## EdtheMan

*Fiber in the Home*

The prices are coming down. I just ordered a few Fiber NIC's for 10bucks a piece off of ebay, also switches can be had for a couple of hundred. Fiber Optic's is the way of the future. I understand that currently Cat6 will suffice, but for how long? Things are changing fast, with streaming HD, google fiber which will spread like a spider starting at the center of the US (Kansas City) over the country. So yes, I am moving ahead will installing Fiber In my home with 1000 feet of the stuff for $100 on Amazon, that's reasonable. 

So I talked to a FIOS tech yesterday, and he said they can run the Fiber Cable into the house. From that point I need to know Once the Fiber is in the house can I route it as follows:

FIOS: Fiber To Home: to Owner's Fiber Switch, this then acts as a router to route to the various in wall outlets, Verizon's OMT and Action Router (only used for TV and Telephone), then to a fiber optic wireless router. The inwall outlets then would connect to my Fiber Nics to my Home PCs, and HTPC's.

So I have decided to put fiber in every bedroom, the living room, kitchen, and a couple in the basement. Not because I think it will be any faster immidetly, but since I am upgrading all the wiring anyway, I might as well move ahead. They are talking about TeraBytes/sec in the near future...I know that seems like a far way off, but that is only if you don't see the future...


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## rafaelrobertson

amybasset said:


> *Not worth the cost*
> 
> As stated above, you will not see any speed increase to the internet using fiber. The main use of fiber over copper is for distance or if it's going to be outdoors, since you can get armoured jackets. We pull copper to all drops unless they exceed the 100 meter threshold. We only use multimode fiber for trunk links between switches and that is because they are over 100 meters apart. We run either multimode or singlemode between buildings, depending on how far apart they are and what is feeding them. Some of the newer Cisco switches which use the newer gigabit LC connector SFP are only rated around 750 feet using multimode fiber. Using regular 100mb then multimode can be used up to 2 KM. Anything further we use singlemode fiber. If you do decide to run fiber in your house, factor in the cost of the fiber network cards and fiber switches or at least a bunch of fiber to copper media converters. A fiber NIC runs $100 or more, an 8 port fiber switch is at least $750 and each media converters runs about $55 for each fiber optic outlet. I do this for a living and I only wired my house with Cat5e and running gigabit without any problems. The fiber solution is just a waste of money when you can do the same thing for a 10th of the cost. If you want to future proof, go with Cat6, it will suffice your home use for at least 10-15 years.:yes:


My computer and my brother's run Windows 10 Pro and my father's computer is running Windows 8.1 Pro (both 64-Bit)

My family has been using a wireless internet plan for a LONG time, but with our block now wired for fiber optic, and the line extended to our house, the only thing left to do is to buy the plan, get the modem, and set our house up, but frankly, with all the research me and my father have done, we're either missing something, or we're over-complicating it somehow

If our house gets wired for fiber optic, how would we go setting it up for 3 computers all wanting to connect by way of Ethernet?

Me and my brother use the internet for either gaming or other stuff, while my father uses the internet for light Facebook gaming (he really loves his spades plus game), maybe a little bit of RUST (my brother is trying to get him interested), and overall uses it for family genealogy with some smatterings of paying bills online and the like

If we wanted to switch from a wireless internet plan to a fiber optic internet plan, besides the modem that would come with said plan, what hardware would we need to get it set for online gaming?


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## snic

rafaelrobertson said:


> My computer and my brother's run Windows 10 Pro and my father's computer is running Windows 8.1 Pro (both 64-Bit)
> 
> My family has been using a wireless internet plan for a LONG time, but with our block now wired for fiber optic, and the line extended to our house, the only thing left to do is to buy the plan, get the modem, and set our house up, but frankly, with all the research me and my father have done, we're either missing something, or we're over-complicating it somehow
> 
> If our house gets wired for fiber optic, how would we go setting it up for 3 computers all wanting to connect by way of Ethernet?
> 
> Me and my brother use the internet for either gaming or other stuff, while my father uses the internet for light Facebook gaming (he really loves his spades plus game), maybe a little bit of RUST (my brother is trying to get him interested), and overall uses it for family genealogy with some smatterings of paying bills online and the like
> 
> If we wanted to switch from a wireless internet plan to a fiber optic internet plan, besides the modem that would come with said plan, what hardware would we need to get it set for online gaming?


This is a pretty old thread - a lot has changed since 2012.

The fiber optic line would terminate at your house, usually in a box they'll install in your garage or on an exterior wall. From there, they will probably run a cat6 network cable to wherever you specify inside the house. Either they provide you with a router at the end of that cable or you'd use your own. The router will probably have wifi and if your house isn't too big, it will be sufficient to reach everywhere in the house. Which means you won't need any additional hardware for gaming, as long as your gaming devices are wifi-enabled. If your devices are enabled for 5G wifi (as opposed to the earlier 2.4G), that is nearly as fast at 1 Gb wired internet. The downside is that 5G signals don't travel very far, especially through walls. For most ordinary uses, you can't tell the difference between 2.4G and 5G, but maybe you can for gaming.


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