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Ask HN: Would it be feasible to install dark fiber while building a home?

5 points by jevinskie ↗ HN
With Google rolling out 1 Gbps connections to Kansas City, SSDs easily saturating 1 Gbps LANs (~500 MB/s vs 125 MB/s), and 4k/8k video on the way would it be prudent to outfit a new home with a bunch of dark fiber to all of the rooms? Equipment for 10 GbE is still pricey but falling fast. You could always wait for the non-fiber equipment cost to go down before you switch from, say, using CAT6/1 GbE. Any idea what the dark fiber alone would cost? I would assume that multi-mode would be sufficient but would single-mode fiber offer better upgrade paths?

3 comments

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aquark
Conventional wisdom would be to install conduit in the walls and leave installing the actual fiber until you are planning on using it.
dholowiski
In my opinion, Nope. Speed-wise, for short distances like in the home, copper kicks fiber's butt (when you talk price/speed). Spend the extra money on Cat6e, and running multiple runs (as many as possible) to each room/jack - this leaves you with the possibility of link aggregation in the future (you can get switches capable of link aggregation cheap on ebay).
tectonic
Not sure it's worth it. I was just talking to someone who spent good time and money wiring their new house with CAT5 10 years ago and now laughs about it. Everything is going wireless.