I have been lurking for a few days but this is my first post so please excuse if some variation of this has been asked a million times before. I recently moved into an older house which has no Ethernet anywhere. Long story short I am going to have to pull something from the machine room in the basement where I am setting up router/switch etc to my office on the second floor. Originally I was going to do Cat6A, but I think that it makes more sense to make the long run with fiber. Runs to the first floor will be easier since I am planning on opening the ceiling anyway and putting in hanging ceiling (likely just running cat6A for those and changing for fiber in the future if I need more bandwidth).
I don't have any extreme bandwidth demands but I would like to futureproof the long run at least to 100G ethernet so that the main run doesn't have to be pulled again for the many, many years. Distance is hard to gauge because the "easiest path to pull" goes all over the place and so won't be straight at all. Best guess is 30-40m total distance. Likely will be putting Brocade ICX switches on either end of this run for now.
Options are:
- Cat6A: copper cable is cheap and likely easier to pull than fiber but likely will never be able to do anything more than 10Gbe.
- OM4 Duplex: cheap-ish transceivers, cheapest fiber, 100G transceivers exist and there's an IEEE standard in the works. 2nd hand switches with 40G aggregation are cheap and likely the next logical step after 10G but no IEEE standard for 40G transceivers in simple OM4 duplex (this is probably not an issue?). Maybe the best bet?
- OM4 MTP: Complicated and expensive fiber, cheapest transceiver as data rates go up. 40G transceivers exist and can be split into 4x10G which could be handy . Don't think it's worth dealing with the associated hassles
- OS2 Duplex: cheap fiber, transceivers are expensive but probably will get cheap in the future since they are widely used.
Re-reading my post, I guess the question is duplex MMF or duplex SMF. I am leaning towards duplex MMF for the cheaper transceivers. MMF having a larger core also makes it less problematic to clean MMF has a straightforward path from 10G to 100G and honestly, I can't see any scenario in the next 10+ years where I would need more than 100G.
Thoughts?
I don't have any extreme bandwidth demands but I would like to futureproof the long run at least to 100G ethernet so that the main run doesn't have to be pulled again for the many, many years. Distance is hard to gauge because the "easiest path to pull" goes all over the place and so won't be straight at all. Best guess is 30-40m total distance. Likely will be putting Brocade ICX switches on either end of this run for now.
Options are:
- Cat6A: copper cable is cheap and likely easier to pull than fiber but likely will never be able to do anything more than 10Gbe.
- OM4 Duplex: cheap-ish transceivers, cheapest fiber, 100G transceivers exist and there's an IEEE standard in the works. 2nd hand switches with 40G aggregation are cheap and likely the next logical step after 10G but no IEEE standard for 40G transceivers in simple OM4 duplex (this is probably not an issue?). Maybe the best bet?
- OM4 MTP: Complicated and expensive fiber, cheapest transceiver as data rates go up. 40G transceivers exist and can be split into 4x10G which could be handy . Don't think it's worth dealing with the associated hassles
- OS2 Duplex: cheap fiber, transceivers are expensive but probably will get cheap in the future since they are widely used.
Re-reading my post, I guess the question is duplex MMF or duplex SMF. I am leaning towards duplex MMF for the cheaper transceivers. MMF having a larger core also makes it less problematic to clean MMF has a straightforward path from 10G to 100G and honestly, I can't see any scenario in the next 10+ years where I would need more than 100G.
Thoughts?