Not yet, at least not really. Broadcom has designed some "Optical Power Converters" that will supply the receiving side with with a few hundred miliwattsPower over Fiber? Pretty sure that's possible, but the other side transciever will need a heck lot of cooling for the laser diode that powerful.
Well…full fiber for home (IMO) isn’t really needed unless you have multiple rooms with 40Gbit+ equipment, and you are really planning to shoot that much data down the pipes between them as part of your setup - which is quite a niche case. For most homes (from small apartment to the McMansions) fiber is more of a "good idea" to, get reliable networking where signal from multiple Wifi APs can't traverse through (masonry walls, heavy EM/Spectrum pollution), your conduits have limited clearance, and you have so much noise in your electrical circuit that broadband over power line (HomePlug AV/AV2) is just not practical. Its more like a future-resistant backhaul between distribution points in a home network, using a media that is easier to thread through walls and conduits (or easier to hide under mouldings in walls). Depending on your home you might have to armor up the fiber (New York City rats will chew through OS2 like nobody's business) or hide it well.Going full fiber for home is one of my long list of unrealized dreams. Lower latency, lower power consumption (Hey, I know it is not that much but it makes me proud), no chance of issues related to electrical discharges, and you may be able to use a faster link speed if using newer gear without changing the actual cabling.
I know it is absolutely unlikely to happen, but how much would the Motherboard BoM change if instead of using NICs with built-in Ethernet PHYs for RJ-45 Ports they changed those to optical PHYs and SFP/SFP+ Cages? 1G Ethernet modules are dirt cheap so we can say that backwards compatibility with existing networks barely increases the price, but you get the choice of migrating to direct fiber later on. I do think than the very deep cages could actually conflict with traditional placement of the Processor and DIMM Slots, so it may be hard to put those on the I/O back panel...
I believe that gaming = cabling. More reliable.For most homes (from small apartment to the McMansions) fiber is more of a "good idea" to, get reliable networking where signal from multiple Wifi APs can't traverse through (masonry walls, heavy EM/Spectrum pollution), your conduits have limited clearance, and you have so much noise in your electrical circuit that broadband over power line (HomePlug AV/AV2) is just not practical.
Aren't Routers/Switches technically a "fiber/copper interface"? For PoE, I thought that you could get fiber to some PoE specialized Switch with a SPF Port for uplink like the MikroTik RB260GSP and call it a day.Then you have to think about the fiber/copper interfacing (media converters and the like - do remember that a 10GbE SFP+ to copper media converter runs around 600 USD, and you might need pairs of devices), and the requirements for PoE - Power over Ethernet.
I know consumer stuff has no SFP/SFP+, but theorically they COULD, and there has been a few Server/Workstation Motherboards that came with those like several Supermicro (Mostly Xeon D, but also a few on the Xeon E5 / Scalable platform) or the Gigabyte GA-6PXSVT. Rare, but it has been done.Most consumer equipment do not/will not come with SFP+ cages (although I would be surprised and delighted if my next Wifi6 router comes with them), and even if the optic transceivers are built-in and it's at a reasonable cost (look at the Allied telesis AT29M2-SC that's available for 10 USD meant for HP 3/4 series thin clients and able to be shoehorned in certain M.2 Key A+E equipped devices), you might still have to do an SC/LC, MM/SM or fiber/copper media transition. AFAIK the NIC on that card (good old Broadcom Tigon) is considered obsolete and not supported on VMWare ESXi 7, which is not really a full solution. Even when some hardware comes with its own 10Gbit NIC built-in, very often the hardware integrator did not even bother to wire it up (a good example would be the 10Gbit NIC built into each and every AMD Ryzen embedded chip - which is almost never connected to a PHY and then a switchport - not exactly a vote of confidence on AMD's relatively new embedded NIC).
Possibly - but for gaming if your wifi was acting up you would've usually dealt with it ASAP - even if it meant dragging copper ethernet across rooms with couplers. Of course, instead of running ethernet you'll just mount some OS2 up on the conduit (or gluepad it to the ceiling mouldings), put a media converter on both sides and go to town as-is.I believe that gaming = cabling. More reliable.
Aren't Routers/Switches technically a "fiber/copper interface"? For PoE, I thought that you could get fiber to some PoE specialized Switch with a SPF Port for uplink like the MikroTik RB260GSP and call it a day.
I know consumer stuff has no SFP/SFP+, but theorically they COULD, and there has been a few Server/Workstation Motherboards that came with those like several Supermicro (Mostly Xeon D, but also a few on the Xeon E5 / Scalable platform) or the Gigabyte GA-6PXSVT. Rare, but it has been done.
And I was a big critic of AMD not exposing Zen builtin 10G MACs on any other line but EPYC/Ryzen Embedded since that being part of Zen becoming public. I was even more dissapointed about Motherboard vendors NOT exposing those even when available, and I recall Patrick mentioning something around the lines of most vendors having a full network stack that included the Hardware NICs, so they didn't want to replace them with AMD new one. But, ironically, on consumer, where a dull 10G NIC without SR-IOV or offloading capabilities of any kind could be reasonable, AMD decided to not expose it at all, which is where it would actually see more use due to not being part of a full stack, nor behind on features.
AMD had a chance to Conroe the consumer networking market besides CPUs. Instead, we got some lame middle-speed 2.5G and 5G on dedicated PCIe NIC ICs instead of using AMD builtin stuff... Still salty about that.
Hello @WANg can you please refrain from telling @Patrick this is a bad idea until after we've seen it? I want to see the outcome.Well…full fiber for home (IMO) isn’t really needed unless you have multiple rooms with 40Gbit+ equipment, and you are really planning to shoot that much data down the pipes between them as part of your setup - which is quite a niche case.
Actually, I am referring to those of us who doesn’t need to turn our homes into a hardcore data center, and frankly, he’s not wiring a home - it’s a business campus…so not quite the same.
I think for most people in the past year and a half there were some crossovershe’s not wiring a home - it’s a business campus
Ehhhh…to the point where you need to run fiber in your house to deal with bandwidth demand…?I think for most people in the past year and a half there were some crossovers
I mean...I don't really need 2 dual-socket servers, a disk shelf, 6 switches, 4 access points, god knows how many servers and computers in my lab, and at least 1 desktop computer on every floor in my house.. but I have itEhhhh…to the point where you need to run fiber in your house to deal with bandwidth demand…?
Patrick's project is a good motivator. Instead of relying on my switch telling me the lengths of my longest drops, I confirmed through their sheathing today. TDR calculated 3 m more. Purchased housing and cassettes a couple of days ago.The only real reason I don't have fiber strung around the place is because I am busy and lazy.
On today's STH video : man builds data center meet-me room, pulls a John Cusack with a Corning toaster oven, and worries about getting enough fiber.So a bit of an update. The long 144 fiber single mode spool seems like UPS lost even on an in-state shipment.
Ordered a new longer spool that was 110ft longer because it was the fastest one I could get given current lead times. Apparently, that one because it is ~25% longer needs a bigger and more robust spool. Between the cable length and bigger spool, it weighs ~145lbs without a box. As a result, it will go over the standard FedEx / UPS ground shipping weight. So now it is heading here freight.
Meanwhile, the copper network is pretty well sorted at this point. We re-keyed all of the phone jacks that were Cat5e in the wall to Ethernet and RJ45. Testing those out, all are doing 5Gbase-T speeds. Some are doing 10Gbase-T. Interestingly enough the 10Gbase-T ones even at ~75ft tend to be the ones run using outdoor cable through the walls. Odd, but can only complain so much. We are going to run a bunch more copper for cameras/ APs but at least some baseline capability now with what is here.
Hopefully tomorrow we start actually pulling cable and the new huge spool arrives Tuesday.
Hi @PatrickIt is happening!