We just leveled up HARDCORE - Fibre Networking Adventure

[Lurick]

Just now, NZLaurence said:

@Lurick and @mynameisjuan,  Just out of curiosity, what fiber type are you guys recommending for new installs now days (both in the Office and in the DC)?

 

I have been recommending singlemode for all new installs everywhere for years now.

Yah, I see single mode as the move forward for everything my customers are using now. I'd imagine that would be similar in the SP space too.

[mynameisjuan]

1 minute ago, NZLaurence said:

@Lurick and @mynameisjuan,  Just out of curiosity, what fiber type are you guys recommending for new installs now days (both in the Office and in the DC)?

 

I have been recommending singlemode for all new installs everywhere for years now.

Past and current work place (both ISPs) have gone all SM. Price difference of SFPs and fiber has gotten so close, the cost of mismanaged inventory; extra spares to cover both MM/SM SFPs and fiber patches; labor cost due to time by techs grabbing the wrong optic or fiber or re-running from MM to SM; multiple inter-bay panels; etc, it basically equals out or is cheaper in the long run.

[MageTank]

Meanwhile, I can't even get DSL offered in my area, despite an Amazon warehouse being built across the cornfield. It really hurts going from gigabit speeds down to 10Mbps "fiber-fed wireless" with awful latency, lol.

[NZLaurence]

5 minutes ago, MageTank said:

Meanwhile, I can't even get DSL offered in my area, despite an Amazon warehouse being built across the cornfield. It really hurts going from gigabit speeds down to 10Mbps "fiber-fed wireless" with awful latency, lol.

Well...... You can get fiber....... Just not at any cost that makes sense  

[brandishwar]

41 minutes ago, mynameisjuan said:

Fiber is a lot more robust that you are making it out to be, Linus piling it in the box, while bothers me from a sheer cable management view, is not the worst I have seen and is of no concern

That's been my thought watching this "adventure". I use optical fiber for 10GbE in my home. (With exception of 1 short DAC that goes from a MikroTik CSS610 to my CRS317). I used to have them hanging on the walls and just yesterday ran two through my attic to get between a hallway closet (networking equipment) and the rack (NAS, virtualization server). And I certainly wasn't "gentle" in doing that. You don't need to baby the fiber cables the way they were trying to hook up the ingest stations.

[kokosnh]

I will just add, that there are straight, and crossover duplex fiber patch cords, well you can just take them apart and swap, but it's there... 

[Windows7ge]

Not gonna lie I'm surprised it took LMG until 2021 to implement any kind of fiber on the LAN. I've been running a 10Gig fiber network using transceivers and LC cables off fs.com for the past 5 years.

 

From my experience short runs (50ft or less) at 10Gig how clean the optics are isn't mission critical (that's not to say you shouldn't try your best not to dirty it at all). You can acquire a cleaning pen fairly inexpensively but the optic tester is beyond expensive. Better off buying the pen and just running an iperf test to verify if it's good.

 

Glad to see they're finally joining the fiber master race though. Better late than never. 

[Eric S]

Fibres are by nature bidirectional and sending two-way traffic through a fibre is not the limiting factor. If you would split and combine the transmitter and receiver this an optical circulator like https://www.thorlabs.com/newgrouppage9.cfm?objectgroup_id=373 you would be able to have bi-directional traffic over the same wavelength, whether that is a practical solution is a different question. I guess it is cheaper to run a second fibre. 

[mariushm]

I actually wanted to say kudos for LTT for the way they explained  Single Mode / Multimode and OC1..OC5 and connectors on the cables.

 

I wonder why the 25gbps choice instead of 40 gbps and QSFP+ ...there's "cheap" switches with lots of QSFP+ ports that can do 40 gbps, or you can split them in 4 x 10 gbps SFP+ ports.

 

For example, refurbished Arista DCS-7050QX-32, 32 QSFP+ ports for 1299$ :  https://www.unixplus.com/collections/network-switches/products/refurbished-arista-dcs-7050qx-32-32x-port-40g-qsfp-switch

[jasonvp]

6 hours ago, Velcade said:

Bold of you to assume I don't have fiber at home.  

Agreed.  I chuckled when he said that.

 

 

Two MM runs from the basement 10G switch to my second story office.

 

And all that silliness with the Fluke was entirely unnecessary.  Good product placement though, but a complete waste of time.  Fiber is far more durable and tough than what was shown. ;-)

[NZLaurence]

1 hour ago, jasonvp said:

And all that silliness with the Fluke was entirely unnecessary.  Good product placement though, but a complete waste of time.  Fiber is far more durable and tough than what was shown.

The flukes or a like tester are very important when you start running longer runs. The camera on it is a interesting but the main part of it is the certification tester which will confirm the that the fiber good end to end. They will also tell you exactly how long the cable is.

[ahuckphin]

unrelated to networking, I don't watch the behind the scenes videos on floatplane and the new walls interested me. 

[jasonvp]

7 hours ago, NZLaurence said:

The flukes or a like tester are very important when you start running longer runs.

My point stands:  it was a silly product placement bit and entirely unnecessary for what they were trying to accomplish.

[xnamkcor]

Nice to see someone else just puts their case backwards.

[dogwitch]

On 1/21/2021 at 3:59 PM, MageTank said:

Meanwhile, I can't even get DSL offered in my area, despite an Amazon warehouse being built across the cornfield. It really hurts going from gigabit speeds down to 10Mbps "fiber-fed wireless" with awful latency, lol.

i got no amazon.... but 2 blocks from me is a comcast back bone fiber node for the whole state of fl.... then 2 house behide me... 100mb..

me 40 mb not stable and less then 8mb up... if i up i cant do down.

[Required]

On 1/22/2021 at 2:28 AM, jasonvp said:

Two MM runs from the basement 10G switch to my second story office.

OMG that look for me more than a  Firehazard!

 

And I also run  a Fiber Network in our House just for Galvanic Isolation between Floors. There is NO need at each floor. There is a 0 benefit when it come to S/FTP cable.

[Darren]

On 1/22/2021 at 11:46 AM, Eric S said:

Fibres are by nature bidirectional and sending two-way traffic through a fibre is not the limiting factor. If you would split and combine the transmitter and receiver this an optical circulator like https://www.thorlabs.com/newgrouppage9.cfm?objectgroup_id=373 you would be able to have bi-directional traffic over the same wavelength, whether that is a practical solution is a different question. I guess it is cheaper to run a second fibre. 

In a lot of instances yeah you're running multiple fibers. In a larger setting where you're leasing fibres for $$$$/month, CWDM/DWDM and buying tuned transcievers is typically the way to go.

[GDRRiley]

On 1/21/2021 at 11:08 AM, Tristerin said:

I got to mess with fiber for the first time last week.  Did a troubleshoot for the corporate job, we dont have IT on site - thats me lol, and found we had a bad SFP port on our network switches.  Switch port, fixed.  I look like a genius to the plebs (see also, non tech literate), its hilarious.

half my life at work is just working with fiber. The last person who ordered fiber ordered it 20ft to short. they thought the length given was total not to the split point (12 fiber pairs in 1 shield). Before that they over ordered by 40+ feet. Thankfully we have old fiber lying in the floor so we can move it so we don't have to wait for 11 more cables, hopefully just 1.
 

On 1/21/2021 at 12:43 PM, NZLaurence said:

I have been recommending singlemode for all new installs everywhere for years now.

my work is all mulimode in a DC

[jasonvp]

On 1/24/2021 at 7:21 PM, Required said:

OMG that look for me more than a  Firehazard!

What the hell are you talking about?  Fire hazard?

 

Quote

And I also run  a Fiber Network in our House just for Galvanic Isolation between Floors. There is NO need at each floor.

I'm not sure I'm too concerned with whether you think there's no need or benefit.  It was a 100ft run from my second story office to that rack shown in my basement.  Much easier to do with a pair of MM cables than it was copper cabling.

 

[NZLaurence]

On 1/21/2021 at 10:48 AM, Lurick said:

Yup, I've got a few dozen of them right now

 

I know the Cisco PID is QSFP-40/100-SRBD, I'll see if FS.com has any.

What a small world. I was just sitting at a site that had a box of these (unused) in their rack. Looks like they came as part of the 9k ACI bundle. The person that installed the 9K's just used DAC's like the rest of the switches and left the QSFP's in a box in the bottom of the rack.....

[HBChristo]

RE: Mixed Fibre RJ45 Cat 8 options

       Low Decibel options

 

Looking for a mixed Fibre / Cat8 4 port Fibre pref. 25-100/ 12 port 10Gbe switch as opposed to this type of heifer suggested at FS.Com 

Or even small 4-6 port 25-100 Fibre switches? And also a narrow server rack, not the normal-wide versions? 

 

The QNAP 10Gbe switch need restarting if you look at it wrong , as does Foxtel NBN

 

While Cat8 switches don’t exist last I checked, yes I know, for whatever reason, these cables are now out and about. And also Mac 🖥 Connectivity via Thunderbolt 3 adapters. 

 

Sorry-not-sorry-thanks

         … any small Fibre switches around or decent non industrial versions?

[HBChristo]

On 9/11/2021 at 3:30 PM, HBChristo said:

RE: Mixed Fibre RJ45 Cat 8 options

 

Looking for a mixed Fibre / Cat8 4 port Fibre pref. 25-100/ 12 port 10Gbe switch as opposed to this type of heifer suggested at FS.Com 

Or even small 4-6 port 25-100 Fibre switches?

 

And also a narrow server rack, not the normal-wide versions.

 

The QNAP 10Gbe switch need restarting if you look at it wrong , as does Foxtel NBN

 

While Cat8 switches don’t exist last I checked, yes I know, for whatever reason, these cables are now out and about.

 

Sorry-not-sorry-thanks

         … any small Fibre switches around or decent non industrial versions?

 

Answering my own question ?

 

Would this be a nice solution:

S5860-20SQ, 24-Port Ethernet L3 Fully Managed Pro Switch, 20 x 10Gb SFP+, with 4 x 25Gb SFP28 and 2 x 40Gb QSFP+, Support Stacking, Broadcom Chip  

Two ports of 40Gbase instead of four, and then 18 adapters to 25/ 10Gbe.

 

What I don’t like is having to look at mountains of these SFP+ adapters …

 

Keep in mind I looking at this as a consumer, not network engineer .

 

That’s what I have, except I’m realising the decibel problem could rule a lot of them out…. Unless good noise repelling rolling racks can be found.

 

Also the Fibre Optic ingest points for Thunderbolt 3-4 don’t exist yet?

 

Let’s go QNAP, Netgear, Synology, Server makers … use the gear that’s out and right some BigSur drivers will you already… 

[mariushm]

You could give Quanta T5032 a shot .. 32 QSFP+ 40gbps ports for $999 : https://unixsurplus.com/quanta-t5032-ly6-32x-40gbe-qsfp-ethernet-switch-32g-onie-open-network-linux-ppc/

 

24 ports support 40g to 4 x 10g fanout, allowing for 96 x 10g ports... 40 to 80$ for breakout dac cables... so $10-20 per port.

Only downside is no 25 gbps support which may suck in then future if you'll want to do 100gbps (qsfp28, 4x25g)

 

[HBChristo]

Thanks, I suppose part of my goal is to check viability ... will check asap.

 

I am amazed by the price, but how do I research these types of switches? I haven't managed a switch before, the closest thing I've done to managing a switch is restarting the thing.

But probably runs like a jet engine…Thanks though good 1st idea .

 

Alternatives to running snakes of ethernet is part of the questions, or doing things as cleanly as possible without begging for problems after purchase and installation.

[mrhempman]

Sooo just to be clear… What is Fibre good for?

 

A spinning disk hard drive gets like 200 GB/s…. NVME and SSD are faster but not 25GB.

 

DDR3 Ram goes almost that fast.

 

So fibre optic cabling is only used for virtual machines? Or some kind of application that can essentially read directly from a server’s RAM?

 

Cause i thought SAN raid arrays etc could benefit from fiber optic cabling. But i dont see how that’s possible. Would love to see a video with fibre hard drives  if that’s what’s being used.

 

And I’m honestly just asking. Because i saw they posted 12GB/s read and 1 GB/s write. And I’m wondering whats at the end of the server to let them do that.

 

And also the PCIE cards or whatever that give them fibre optics to each server. Seems a lot of important info is missing altho it was pretty funny to watch the other stuff