[colug-432] cat6 or cat6a?

[Rick Hornsby]

On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 8:17 AM, Richard Holbert <holbert.13 at osu.edu> wrote:

>
> I would have them pull fiber optic cable at the same time. Like Stephen
> said, the main cost will be for the labor.
>
>
In this case, the 'them' is me.  I've never really looked at fiber gear and
admittedly don't know much about it, but it seems like it would be very,
very expensive -- the cards, the switches, the terminating blocks, etc?
 When I say 'consumer grade' I mean, within a reasonable price range --
there aren't any consumer grade devices on the market that I can find which
support fiber for communications.  I have a couple of devices that can do
fiber for audio (ie my tv, receiver, and BD player), but those are meant to
be very short runs and only for audio?

I really don't see fiber making a big dent in the copper ethernet space
anytime soon (10 years?), especially when you're talking about short runs
within a small structure like a residential house.  Based on my limited
knowledge, I think it makes sense for longer runs, or for very very dense
and high I/O like enterprise SAN.

Also, not making a dent in the copper space means the cost is going to
continue to stay high for a while.  I did some quick checking, and just the
cable itself is really expensive.  It also looks very difficult to run -
you can't just attach a snake and pull?

Perhaps if the house was still under construction, I'd consider running the
fiber lines before the drywall went up - or putting in conduits for running
new lines in the future.

Someone mentioned resale value, but this is a limited ROI prospect,
especially when it comes so something so technical.  Most consumers today
(even some smart technical people where I work) figure that wireless is
good enough.

It may be that as FTTP makes inroads, fiber runs will start to replace RG6
runs to better support things like HDTV over IP within the premises, not
just to.

As I said though, fiber is not an area that I've done much research into.
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