I did an extensive amount of both fiber and CAT6A in my recent house build, totally about 21 miles together. I did a mixture of single mode and multimode only because of some AV device support for multimode, and because all of it was so cheap compared to the labor and time.
I ended up with significant fiber runs between the MDF and IDF closets, the server room, and all of the AV endpoints which is a typical layout. I did run single mode fiber to all 18 wireless AP access-point locations, but I suspect those will not get used much given I also have 2 CAT6A shielded wires to each AP that can support 10G AND provided power. I do use a direct fiber connection in my office to provide 10G to my network core from that desktop, but that could have been done over copper as well.
Perhaps the biggest gain over copper is my switch interconnects which are 40G from the upstairs closet to the server room. If needed it would be easy to upgrade those to 100G, and since there are 24 strands available you really could expand as far as you are every going to need to go with WDM and the like.
The one really good use case for only fiber was running it down my driveway to our gate, which is about a 1/4 mile in distance. That is something that would be more challenging to do with copper. [although I do have copper installed].
From my perspective the cost of running fiber was almost 0 compared to the entire project because so much more cost is involved in path finding and clearing ( cutting holes, etc), and the actual pulling. I was very fortunate to have a large group of friends who spent a couple of days working with me to do the large pulls, combined with many weeks of evenings and weekends doing the rest myself. Many hands makes that task much much easier.
Not surprised to see you on here. I was the guy who got into the discussion about the merits of single mode vs multi mode with a few of your friends on Facebook a while ago. I was in the multi mode camp mainly due to cost reasons whereas they were in the single mode camp for future proofing reasons.
That said, the cost gap between MM and SM optics today is much smaller especially for 10G (and for the fiber itself it seems to have even reversed), so single mode definitely makes more sense. For some reason, MM fiber is still widely deployed in certain niche use-cases though. Not quite sure why.
For example, I know that it's used on modern military jets for their 10GBASE-SR networks. I wonder if it has something to do with being able to repair terminations in the field? I know MM is pretty forgiving that way. Or maybe it's just another case of them adopting whatever was popular at that exact moment.
It was surprising the amount of AV related gear that was multimode specific! The cost differential has dropped so much now you can run either at low cost so if you have the space you can run both.
MM is easier to do mechanical splices on, and does seem to be overall less sensitive to damage. If your need is 10G and less than 300m it works well.
As an aside I ran a USB over fiber repeater that was multimode specific by accident I used a single mode fiber (same LC connector), and it worked perfectly.
It was a new house. The 18 AP locations serve a couple of different long run purposes and reasons:
The first is to have direct nearly-line of sight locations for the majority of the house which is primarily to support higher frequency(60GHz) and beyond which have poor wall penetration.
The second is to provide good wifi coverage due to signal attenuation from the construction techniques. I did many of the walls in double 5/8s drywall, some in green wall, all insulated, and all solid hard doors. Steel cross structures as well. As a result wifi propagation is surprisingly bad across rooms.
The third is to provide lots of locations to aid in flexibility of having the best locations. I do not use all 18 locations right now, but I may use more in the future.
It is also a somewhat large (>10,000 sq ft, ~ 1000 sq meters) house, so that facilitates a need for a bit more coverage.
I'm using Ubiquity Unifi 6 Pros right now, but am going to switch to the Enterprise ones (with 6Ghz) at some point soon. They are all integrated to the same controller (a UDM Pro), so all SSIDs I use are available everywhere. I even have a couple of them down the driveway all the way to the gate so I have wifi coverage all the way out.
> I did many of the walls in double 5/8s drywall, some in green wall, all insulated, and all solid hard doors
I gather you did this for noise isolation? And by green wall do you mean green glue between the drywall layers? I'm only familiar with this for home theater construction, not an entire home.
I did an extensive amount of both fiber and CAT6A in my recent house build, totally about 21 miles together. I did a mixture of single mode and multimode only because of some AV device support for multimode, and because all of it was so cheap compared to the labor and time.
I ended up with significant fiber runs between the MDF and IDF closets, the server room, and all of the AV endpoints which is a typical layout. I did run single mode fiber to all 18 wireless AP access-point locations, but I suspect those will not get used much given I also have 2 CAT6A shielded wires to each AP that can support 10G AND provided power. I do use a direct fiber connection in my office to provide 10G to my network core from that desktop, but that could have been done over copper as well.
Perhaps the biggest gain over copper is my switch interconnects which are 40G from the upstairs closet to the server room. If needed it would be easy to upgrade those to 100G, and since there are 24 strands available you really could expand as far as you are every going to need to go with WDM and the like.
The one really good use case for only fiber was running it down my driveway to our gate, which is about a 1/4 mile in distance. That is something that would be more challenging to do with copper. [although I do have copper installed].
From my perspective the cost of running fiber was almost 0 compared to the entire project because so much more cost is involved in path finding and clearing ( cutting holes, etc), and the actual pulling. I was very fortunate to have a large group of friends who spent a couple of days working with me to do the large pulls, combined with many weeks of evenings and weekends doing the rest myself. Many hands makes that task much much easier.
My particular build is documented in a build thread: https://www.garagejournal.com/forum/threads/jeffs-mountain-s...