Is cat 6 good enough?

[hiriskpaul]

We are having a lot of work done on our house at the moment, so a good time to run a network cable, while the floor is up downstairs. I would like a cable from the study on the first floor at the front, where the broadband comes in, to the ground floor at the back. Total distance about 20m. 1Gbit is absolutely fine at present, but I guess 10GBase-T might be desirable at some point in the future. As far as I can tell, cat 6 should be ok for this distance even with 10Gbit, so should I stick with cat 6 or go for 6a, 7 or 8?

[Infrasonic]

If you only need 20m initially go for the higher spec 6a/7 as the price difference won't be that prohibitive and the extra shielding is always worth having.

Some of the NAS' that are coming into the SOHO space now are 10Gb (and even 25Gb) ethernet capable and the speed of NVMe SSD's these days can saturate 1Gb easily (even the better HDD's can).
So a multiple machine network read/writes situation could quite easily justify 10Gb capability.

[hiriskpaul]

Thanks. Is there any difference in the faceplates? Is a cat 6 faceplate the same as cat 6a, or is it just marketing?

Cannot seem to find cat 7 faceplates.

[Infrasonic]

Thanks. Is there any difference in the faceplates? Is a cat 6 faceplate the same as cat 6a, or is it just marketing?

Cannot seem to find cat 7 faceplates.

They have more shielding as you go up the specs, so 7 is a fair bit thicker/stiffer than 6.

The link discusses the various pros and cons, installation issues.
https://www.avforums.com/threads/cat6-7 ... e.2092122/

[Infrasonic]

https://community.fs.com/blog/should-we ... ase-t.html
Favours 6a over 6 and 7 (which can be a bit fiddly because of the thickness/stiffness and is more fussy on the shielding hygiene).

[starquake]

If not too late, I'd also put a strand of single or multimode fibre in as well. Fibre has lower latency, optically isolated, is less of a pain than cat6, and generally isn't as expensive as you think. Anytime I have things up/available I run both fibre and copper, and have yet to see need for > Cat5e in home usecases. Don't misunderstand me 10G is great, as is 100G, but there is history on new tech only coming on fibre first, and it's best to have both in my mind.

Imagine scenario in future, if you get a say 10G delivery on fibre into house, without fibre to upstairs you'd have to put a media converter to convert to copper, which adds latency and a failure point. Joy of optics, that happens in future you just optically couple it - no hardware required.

Just saying - it's a good idea to have both...

But if I was going new, I would go Cat6, not Cat7. Cat7 = pointless same reasons...

[starquake]

Oh I'd add I'd add single mode in preference to multimode, as today, all external fibre is USUALLY single mode. So a pair of single mode is very useful for extensions

[Infrasonic]

Out of genuine interest Starquake how do you get in and out of your fibre run cost effectively with domestic equipment?

Ethernet has an advantage of being ubiquitous amongst even relatively humble hardware.
Routers/switches have it, most PC's have it, or you can get active adapters for USB, Thunderbolt, mains wiring (Powerline), co-ax (MOCA) et al, and it's relatively cheap through commoditization of standards like RJ45/8P8C. (Although that might change as the higher protocols above 10Gb are pretty much all SFP or 'other' currently...).

[hiriskpaul]

Out of genuine interest Starquake how do you get in and out of your fibre run cost effectively with domestic equipment?

Ethernet has an advantage of being ubiquitous amongst even relatively humble hardware.
Routers/switches have it, most PC's have it, or you can get active adapters for USB, Thunderbolt, mains wiring (Powerline), co-ax (MOCA) et al, and it's relatively cheap through commoditization of standards like RJ45/8P8C. (Although that might change as the higher protocols above 10Gb are pretty much all SFP or 'other' currently...).

A question I was going to ask. What do I have to buy to lay a fibre cable? What are the faceplates/terminals on each end? How do I connect to my existing network?

[starquake]

Okay I've opened a can of worms on this to explain standard terminations on fibre and an essay is below:

So Single Mode is whats used by BT etc out in street as mentioned so exterior connections will come in SM format even today (if you order from BT a site to site 10G link, they will usually not give you 10G copper ! They'll give you a 10G single mode LC connector.... Multimode is used commonly "in server room" type environments as has a max length of about 3-400m depending on "grade" of MM - this is complex again as differing grades offer different max lengths. SM optics cost more than MM optics - think usually £100 per optic on SM, to £30-40 on MM (which is why people still use MM). LC connectors are the ones you want in the "wall" and a LC connector can hold Single or multimode. As said, I've pre-ran single mode from where my house ingress is to where my router lives for "future" needs.
Wallplates are : https://www.fs.com/uk/products/13413.html?currency=GBP&paid=google_shopping&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIlYjZwIbh4AIVpgrTCh2sVAGUEAQYAiABEgLHx_D_BwE That website is good for DIY fibre "stuff", but I've always got a Pro in myself.

Really modern (but expensive stuff) you can run yourself is something called MTP, which comes in Single or Multimode varieties. The TLDR in that is 8-16 fibres on a cat5 dimension cable, with a plug/socket arrangement you can then break out with "break out cables" - ie plug into wall with one cable with 8 LC connectors on end to plug into "stuff"... I havnt' done this yet, but have used it commercially within Datacentres for similar requirements (ie taking connections from a meet-me room to a server room). Whats neat with MTP is it is a lot more bend-capable than old-school fibres, ie, you can have nicer cable runs without paying as much attention to bend-radius).

But yes, it's easy-ish, you do need more than a "cat5 laying" sparkie, you need a proper copper/fibre sub-contractor here, but you really need that for Cat6 that will do 10G without "errors" anyhow. Thats the thing people gloss over with Cat6, even in datacentre, a sub-optimal, non-tested connection will be useless at 10G in the real world... too many errors. Work had in-datacentre faults on even cables ran by pros when running 10G on copper. Fibre has a FAR lower failure rate, it tends to work, or not and NOT fail with horrid in between error states - which makes it better for reliability.

On the question on connecting the fibre to PC connections/server/routers are usually SFP as mentioned (10g fibre cards that are inside PC's usually for some time have had SFP+ ports, and you can buy optics cheaply in either single or multimode format). Personally at home, I use network card on my server that takes SFP+, a SFP+ optic for the cable (single mode) and a equivalent SFP optic in my switch (which has > 1 SFP port). Thats how you connect stuff. Most decent routers/switches/firewalls will take SFP or SFP+ - consumer grade kit won't, but some lower-end gear is available.
https://linitx.com/product/mikrotik-routerboard-4011igs-rackmount-router-10-1gb-ports-rb4011igsrm-routeros-l5-uk-psu/15597 is an example of a piece of gear I use personally at one client to terminate a few connections. With 2x https://www.comms-express.com/products/d-link-dgs-1510-20/ used as a switch (the 10G is the between floor connection, and what connects to the NAS). Bear in mind you need SFP+ for appropriate connections on top of this, and these are £50-100 each, fs.com is a good supplier for cheap SFP+.

Why else do I have fibre - well I used to run a NAS that I "acquired" from ebay that presented what is called Fibre-Channel storage at 8Gig to a PC FC card (which presented to the OS) cheap off ebay. Fibre channel storage is a hugely complex topic, but it's used usually in enterprises to run VM farms - and this allowed me to have a lab for this at home, with the noisy storage being in garage, and the server running it upstairs - all interconnected with no loss of speed using multiple paths (something FC supports natively)..

Fibre also has another interesting piece, something called DWDM - you don't always need to add more glass in the walls or installed run to increase capacity. You can get "passive optic" wavelength splitter devices allowing one fibre to handle say 16 actual connections by using a combiner module, and wavelength specific SFP's. These splitter devices are usually not powered.... This is all too complex usually for home use, but a friend with a larger property, with that property fed by fibre from his house (way over cat5 limits) used this recently to enable several additional connections to a part of his farm for a tenant without him needing to dig up the fibre run and run more cable (which would have cost him in time, more than the kit costed).

[starquake]

Ref: how I afford all this.

Optics can be had for CHEAP on ebay. Ditto older Server grade FC and Fibre gear for connecting PC's via PCIe cards. The bit you can't get away from is paying someone to put the cable in generally - at home I paid for a contractor, was ~£400 ish for both cat6 + fibre runs with LC terminatation in wall, see the picture linked above. Old Server-grade Fibre channel gear can be hard SUPER cheap, like £80 from ebay, you can't run non-storage networks on that, but it's useful if you have a source of old NAS gear from enterprises - in my line of work I have been known to save old NAS to allow my lab to be built. That said, it uses far too much power to have on all the time!

The routerboard stuff I linked though is really good, and a "better" replacement for say a BT Homehub at home if you have the technical skill to use one. Can do all sorts of quality of service shennegins and testing with such a device.

Other home stuff I have on top of the routerboard is a pair of Ubiquity AC pro AP's to provide whole house, 1Gig plus wifi speeds. Even comparing these with consumer grade wifi is laughable - they are the best thing we have, as means we have full speed wifi everywhere, nearly as good as wired if you have a device capable of full usage of them.

Ref the on-topic fibre connections I have today:
I have today a single single mode run from my BT ingress point to my office (unused, for future) and a multimode 2x LC connections (so 4 actual fibres) to my garage) from same. This allows me to run stuff in garage and test things without noise being an issue for wife. Copper would also work at these lengths, and does, but as mentioned for some things I test (like FC gear) = it's not even possible to do on copper.

All above and some copper work was £400 as mentioned...

[starquake]

And to answer how you connect to the fibre in laymans terms:
A switch both ends as linked, 2x SFP+ at 10G to match the fibre layed, and you can connect the 2 switches together at 10G with no resliency.

[Infrasonic]

^^ Thanks for that.

I've watched a few Linus Tech Tips videos where they've bought second hand enterprise equipment very cheaply off eBay, to try out fibre/SFP+ et al for their video storage server room. As they now shoot 4K native it was becoming a requirement for real time throughput.

Generally they've run into issues as the knowledge is pretty specialist and they are basically PC/Video editing guys with a bit of networking knowledge thrown in.
It always seems to end up with them emailing or phoning someone else to advise on how to get all the fibre kit to talk to each other...

[starquake]

Oh it's not that hard, Linus stuff they get stuck on is mostly down to some bad choices on "kit" and other pieces. The needs for video editing are actually one of the reasons fibre channel (not nas) storage was created... but totally agree his videos are fun. To put into context though - Linus environment is ~ a 0.5% of the size of my last contract clients storage. And interoperability issues are rare, you just have things to know like a FC SFP can't really be used for ethernet, and vice versa, and Cisco switches prefer "own brand" SFP's - which are required for "support from Cisco". In practise it meant you had a load of off-brand SFP+ as miles cheaper, and enough branded ones to swap them out with before a support case, as they mostly all interoperate just fine. As said, a fibre link either works, or it doesn't - if it works FAR more unlikely to have errors, unlike copper...

Ref: old client:
Think storage "heads" with 30 10G or 16G FC connections to the backend, and a single blade chassis with ~ 40Gig to each chassis and a entire room of it, with a 1Pb-2Pb a year growth rate (ie new storage on top of existing). It's high end stuff, but it actually is amazing and built for performance - its where I first encountered the MTP fibres, as it's miles easier to pull a high capacity single MTP cable to each chassis and break out at the back of the chassis with its 4x10G connections, and 4xFC connections all off a a SINGLE mtp patch lead. Something to bear in mind you can get converged high end switches that do FC and Ethernet in same chassis now, but even ~6 years ago storage networking was a separate physcial network to the ethernet.

But in home cases:
Getting 10G from point to point between say a NAS and a PC doesn't EVEN need a switch - just needs a 10G port each end and static IP addressing.
The key thing is what to search on.... to make that possible.

fs.com is very useful for NEW cheap Chinese fibre stuff/cabling/etc - ebay too.

[Infrasonic]

^^ Again thanks for taking the time to explain in detail, much appreciated.

[Infrasonic]

Ha, LTT must have been reading this post, some cat7 10G use in the wild here...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kk5TTjx ... K1wecd%3A6

[Infrasonic]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EC267rV ... Q288M6%3A6

The price of 10 gig ethernet gear is coming down. I picked up a Netgear XS505M 10 gigabit switch and a Thunderbolt 3 NIC to put it to the test. I found that even Cat 5e wiring will work given shorter distances.

[paulnumbers]

Fibre has lower latency, optically isolated, is less of a pain than cat6
...

Electromagentic waves through copper (speed c) are faster than light through glass (0.7c) btw, so technically copper will have lower latency. It’s partly why for the very lowest latency links (chicago <> nyc stock exchanges) they use multi hop microwave links (and also as it’s a direct path). I suppose it makes limited difference in this use case!

[Infrasonic]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7CIlZIZB5k&t=0s

LTT get 10Gb internet, plenty of fibre/LAN discussion here, with the usual LTT lack of planning...