Wiring a house

Thread view:

Enable EMail Alerts

Start New Thread

Thread rating:

Mikhail Teterin - 04 Jul 2008 14:58 GMT

Hello!

We are renovating a just-bought (old) house, and I'd like to run as many
wires through the walls now as I can, so as to not have ugly "rat-nests"
later...

The basement is likely to house the "heavy" computer equipment (like
storage -- eBay has plenty of slightly used equipment) with those on the
living floors having (mostly?) light -- possibly diskless -- desktops.

Assuming I want to do this with fibre (rather than plain old Ethernet), what
cables do I want, and what, in general, is there to watch out for?

Will I be able to use this same cable for some other purpose -- like
transmitting digital audio to one of the rooms, or propagating Verizon's
FiOS, or an (optical) FireWire-link from one of the rooms to the server in
the basement -- or are those all completly different and incompatible kinds
of "fiber"?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

-mi

Reply to this Message

Gene S. Berkowitz - 06 Jul 2008 04:02 GMT

> Hello!
>
[quoted text clipped - 18 lines]
>
> -mi

You need to know that with Verizon FiOS, the fiber terminates at an
Optical Network Terminal (ONT) box, that is installed either outside or
inside the home (mine's in the basement). The ONT provides two outlets,
for ethernet cable, and for coax. Most recent installs use the coax
only, with a MoCa (Media over Cable) router from ActionTec. The router
provides ethernet jacks for your existing network wiring and/or
computer. The set-top box (STB) used for FiOS TV is MoCa enabled, and
uses the coax for delivery of the video, and to connect to the router
for the channel guide and on-demand ordering. As near as I can tell,
there is no provision to connect more fiber to the ONT.

Verizon used to provide a Network Interface Module from Motorola (the
NIM100) that would allow a non-MoCa router to use the coax backbone.
These are now pretty scarce, but do show up on Ebay. In Q3 of 2008, D-
Link is supposed to be launching their own NIM/MoCa router for around
$100. The speed attainable over coax using a couple of these approaches
gigabit ethernet rates.

For Verizon, it's just simpler to use the existing coax backbone (likely
installed by the incumbent cable company) with some smart boxes rather
than run fiber through the walls.

--Gene

Reply to this Message

Mikhail Teterin - 07 Jul 2008 15:40 GMT

> For Verizon, it's just simpler to use the existing coax backbone (likely
> installed by the incumbent cable company) with some smart boxes rather
> than run fiber through the walls.

Thanks, Gene, for the overview of Verizon-related options, but my question
was mostly about in-house fiber in general. One "big idea" is to have a
small-scale SAN-box in the basement and no (noisy and heat-generating)
disk-drives on the living floors.

Also, what about using some of the same cables for, say, digital audio --
I've never been exposed to the practice of fiber-cabling -- do they differ
drastically depending on application (like, say, serial vs. Ethernet), or
are the cables the same?

-mi

Reply to this Message

Badnitz - 08 Jul 2008 16:00 GMT

If you REALLY want to use fibre, I suggest you consider 50/125 multimode
cable, that should suffice even if you wish to run 10Gb in your house.

Use minimum 4 cores to each location, preferable "ruggedised" cable because
you can terminate that directly without too many hassels.

Yes you will be able to run access control, CCTV and possibly PLC signals
accross the same fibre type.

Regards

Signature

Albert Badnitz
P.O. Box 8
Doonside 4135
SOUTH AFRICA

Always interested in :-
"BADNITZ"

> Hello!
>
[quoted text clipped - 20 lines]
>
> -mi

Reply to this Message

Mikhail Teterin - 08 Jul 2008 18:04 GMT

> If you REALLY want to use fibre, I suggest you consider 50/125 multimode
> cable, that should suffice even if you wish to run 10Gb in your house.
>
> Use minimum 4 cores to each location, preferable "ruggedised" cable
> because you can terminate that directly without too many hassels.

Thank you very much for the pointers. Would one of these (to every location)
be sufficient:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=330249629119

Or did you mean, I need four of these to each location?

> Yes you will be able to run access control, CCTV and possibly PLC signals
> accross the same fibre type.

Cool! Are the connectors and sockets standardized, though? Thanks again!

Yours,

-mi

Reply to this Message

Natural Science Forum / Physics / Optics / July 2008

Wiring a house