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Question

Fiber network in house - what about switches?

Jul 19, 2016 11:45AM PDT

My home was built in 1998 and pre-wired with both Cat5 (not e) and fiber. I'm still using the Cat5 for a number of PC's, AppleTVs and servers as even my 5Mhz wireless can be spotty, but really want to up it to 1G and am thinking about using my fiber. I have 300MB time warner service to the home. Problem is I don't see any switches out there with enough SFP ports except for a Juniper box that costs $32k! Any ideas?

Discussion is locked

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Answer
Very few folk install optical fiber in a home.
Jul 19, 2016 11:48AM PDT

It's very expensive so what is more common is the fiber comes to the ISP gear and then from there it's Ethernet.

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It's already installed - see next
Jul 19, 2016 12:17PM PDT

thanks!

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Answer
(NT) What's wrong with 1 Gbps Ethernet in house?
Jul 19, 2016 12:07PM PDT
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Not a thing!
Jul 19, 2016 12:16PM PDT

The problem is the house is pre-wired with Cat5 so only good up to 100MB and it's already prewired with fiber.

My option seems to be to tear out the existing Cat5 and replace with Cat5e/6/6A or use the fiber to get to at least 1GB wired.

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I see some prior banter on that.
Jul 19, 2016 12:24PM PDT

Cat 5 is good up to 100M as in meters.

http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=365732 kicks it around a lot with:
"802.3ab specifically calls out Cat5, not Cat5e

You'd think this would be a dead issue by now... "

I'm sure cable sales folk have some bridges for sale as well.

So what would I do? Get a nice 1Gb switch and move up. I would NOT do this if someone installed a patch panel. I'd remove that and just terminate the ends proper.