Outdoor fiber cable recommendation?

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Blue)(Fusion

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Mar 1, 2017
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I'm wondering what is recommended for an outdoor multi-fiber cable run. I'll go with whichever is cheaper - SMF or OM3. I'll need about 150 meters and it needs either 2 or 4 fibers.

This is going to be run from my house to my detached garage. Currently, power is overhead, and will probably like to run it along that. Maybe running it across the fence is an option, too. Eventually, I will be cutting the overheard power wires to the garage and going underground.
 

mrkrad

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Oct 13, 2012
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I'd test the cable strength at nearing 100 meter. we had some sketchy cables at that length! maybe om4 if approaching 100meter!

we're talking 10gbe right?
 

Evan

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Jan 6, 2016
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Armored single mode would be the normal pick for this although MM should do I don’t know if you will have as many robust armored versions to work with.

Having said that I can certianly vouch for MM at 200+M running 10G without issues but quality cable and install (usually 12 pair in a very heavy outdoor rates cable). Costs a bomb if done correctly though.
 

mstone

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Mar 11, 2015
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I wouldn't ever do a multimode run that long. The price difference for single mode isn't that big, and it's a lot more futureproof/reliable.
 

Evan

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Jan 6, 2016
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I wouldn't ever do a multimode run that long. The price difference for single mode isn't that big, and it's a lot more futureproof/reliable.
Well depends, if the whole rest of you fiber and SFP is MM and you doing a lot of links , eg LAN, SAN, Security zones cross likes the large price difference in SFP price have an impact.
Working on many campus type situations where MM between computer rooms of building does make sense.

I always generally preferred MM where it was possible just to keep everything same but now that MM tops out at 40G BiDi and it makes sense to use 100G (or more) in your backbones then SM makes more sense.

Without be googling anybody know if 32G FC is the end of the road ? Standards after that ?
Edit: ok just googled, pretty much before adopting FCoE type standards
Roadmaps
 

mstone

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Mar 11, 2015
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Well depends, if the whole rest of you fiber and SFP is MM and you doing a lot of links , eg LAN, SAN, Security zones cross likes the large price difference in SFP price have an impact.
Working on many campus type situations where MM between computer rooms of building does make sense.
In a campus type deployment I'd expect that it's professionally installed and terminated, so you can push the limits a lot easier than you can in the context of a guy running a couple of fibers to the garage. But even with a campus deployment, the cost factor is going to depend heavily on how cheap/easy it is to rerun the fibers. I've been doing this long enough that I remember people running lots of 62.5u fiber for future proofing back in the FDDI days, then ripping it out to replace it with 50u for GBE, then ripping that out to replace it with OM3 for 10GBE, then needing OM4 for 40/100GBE. Meanwhile the SMF that was installed next to the 62.5u MMF just keeps on running. (If someone had the foresight to install both, the 62.5 was just abandoned and everything moved to SMF rather than retrenching.) If you're in a location where you can pull a new cable bundle easily for the next generation, great! Run the MMF--especially if you know exactly what your requirements are, because then you know for certain whether the solution will work. But if you want to never deal with it again, run SMF--especially if you're running extra "just in case I need it later". (There are issues with what kind of SMF you want for longer runs/heavy multiplexing, etc, but at these distances that shouldn't be a factor. If you're running a multi-km link, hire a professional.) I would recommend terminating at a patch panel, because it's a lot easier to replace a patch cord than re-terminate when the end of the fiber gets stressed over time from being plugged & unplugged.
 
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Aestr

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Oct 22, 2014
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When it's time to move your power cables underground would you consider running conduit for data at the same time? It will make changes much less painful if/when new standards make you want to replace the run in the future.
 

Evan

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Jan 6, 2016
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@mstone you make a very valid point in this instance.

It’s hard to believe it was less than 4 years ago the 40g bidi was available and now in 2018 we deploy 40/100 bidi on MMF. I didn’t really expect that as I thought we may have hit the end of the road for MMF but seems not.
Thing is it’s so nice just to run to a rack only MMF and not have to run SMF to every rack as well.

If SFP prices were less for SMF it would be so much easier decision but when you paying a couple of hundred for a MM SFP vs a couple of thousand for SM SFP, do that a dozen times on one run and it adds up.
 

Terry Kennedy

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Jun 25, 2015
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Well depends, if the whole rest of you fiber and SFP is MM and you doing a lot of links , eg LAN, SAN, Security zones cross likes the large price difference in SFP price have an impact.
For 10GbE fs.com charges $16 for MM SFP+ and $34 for SM SFP+. For GigE the prices are $6 and $7. In the "old days" there was a big difference between the prices for MM and SM optics. These days it is pretty much irrelevant compared to the cost of the equipment the optics are going into.

Even in our satellite nodes, we use SM except for certain legacy connections where the customer doesn't want to change to SM (usually because the old cross-connect was installed as a one-time charge and policies have changed so that new cross-connects have a monthly recurring charge). Even between pieces of equipment in the same rack that are only GigE, we use SM instead of either MM or CAT 5. All of our new builds are SM only and we don't even offer MM to customers.

 

mstone

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@mstone It’s hard to believe it was less than 4 years ago the 40g bidi was available and now in 2018 we deploy 40/100 bidi on MMF. I didn’t really expect that as I thought we may have hit the end of the road for MMF but seems not.
Thing is it’s so nice just to run to a rack only MMF and not have to run SMF to every rack as well.
There's plenty of bandwidth left in MMF, the max distances just shrink. The 62.5u fiber that was laid for 10base-FL and FDDI still works for 10GBE, but only for 100 feet or so without LRM and mode conditioning patch cables that erase any potential savings from MMF (but can be a life saver for some isolated old runs). The same basic idea (reduced distance with increased bandwidth) is true for different grades of SMF, but the distances are so much longer to start with that it doesn't matter on the scale of a few buildings.
 

Evan

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Jan 6, 2016
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@Terry Kennedy fs.com is certianly and option for some but I am only dealing with oem setups, that means genuine Cisco sfp and fiber only from r&m etc.

so 10g-sr is list at 995 and 10g-lr is list at 3995, 4 times more expensive (yes I know I don’t may anywhere near list but still the difference is there)

Even with 70% discount etc Cisco 100g sfp is pretty ugly pricing. 40/100 bidi is vastly cheaper than the 100g short range SM sfp.
 

Evan

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There's plenty of bandwidth left in MMF, the max distances just shrink. The 62.5u fiber that was laid for 10base-FL and FDDI still works for 10GBE, but only for 100 feet or so without LRM and mode conditioning patch cables that erase any potential savings from MMF (but can be a life saver for some isolated old runs). The same basic idea (reduced distance with increased bandwidth) is true for different grades of SMF, but the distances are so much longer to start with that it doesn't matter on the scale of a few buildings.
Yep that’s true I guess, many a time I have run reduced speeds to make use of a bad or long fiber run.

Let’s see where we go after 100g, the 400g rollout maybe not as fast as 100g as I think the power budget and another challenges start to happen, but of course some big trunk links will still use it.
Looks like 2019 will be the year of 100g :) if not 2018.
 

Terry Kennedy

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Jun 25, 2015
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@Terry Kennedy fs.com is certianly and option for some but I am only dealing with oem setups, that means genuine Cisco sfp and fiber only from r&m etc.
Even when I was at one of Cisco's largest customers, we didn't buy optics from Cisco (other than getting stuck when the optics were permanently part of the line card and not pluggable). I actually use Solid Optics for most of my optics these days. If you buy a bunch of optics you get their Fiber Multi-Tool which lets you change the branding of their optics so you can move them between (for example) Cisco and Juniper. It also lets you change the channel on their tunable optics. If you need to, buy 1 of each type of optic you're using from Cisco (in case you need to demonstrate a problem, you'll have a Cisco-branded optic) and source the rest elsewhere. The switch / router vendors don't bring anything special to the party - the optics are generic parts from a manufacturer they got the best deal from, and then programmed with the "magic footprints" so they are detected as a Cisco part. It is even more of a scam than "special firmware" on disk drives . Buying their optics just works to convince them that they can keep their prices totally decoupled from reality, because people will still buy them.
 

Evan

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Jan 6, 2016
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@Terry Kennedy I would probably do the same if my choice or certainly consider it but not with this customer and with the millions in volume they have with the vendor the discounts are steep enough it’s not a problem