How to create a 10gb fiber optic backbone in your home

Hitting a wall with 1gb ethernet speeds? Then you are in the right place to learn about how you can setup and run a cheap 10gb home fiber backbone. Buffering woes will be a thing of the past as complaints about slow network speeds hit the road. A few considerations about what you can achieve with a fiber backbone, costs, effort and scalability as you grow your home network are included in this guide.

The first decision is if you are going to use traditional coax to span the runs, or if you are going to run fiber. This decision comes down to a few factors.

1. Do you have existing ethernet cable ran in your house and rooms already? If so do you have a good diagram of which runs start and end where?
2. Do you need to have 1gb or 10gb ran between every room or wall (referred to as drops) or do you need to just bridge switches in a few areas?
3. Are you connecting to servers or to desktops? Multiple servers in a single location?
4. Do you anticipate needing to have more then 10gb connectivity? If so at what points?
5. Do you have a ruff map drawn of the locations and speed needed at each location, switching capability needed at each hub, and server(s) at a location. (here is an example of my

Once you have the answer to these question you should evaluate if you have adequate

I would recommend against having an electrician do the work, unless they have some examples on their phone of prior low voltage runs they have done and can answer a few basic network cabling questions. One easy question is to ask them the maximum distance an OM3 MM fiber cable can be ran inside a house before needing to be switched or received (hint, its 1000ft, so you will be good inside most houses very easy.)

A 10gb network will have a few components that are needed to ensure the stability and speed meet your needs. You have a few decisions to make along the way depending on the level of interest and tools that you have available to start with. Very likely you will need to get a few tools or more, but the costs of doing this home upgrade yourself vs having it done by a professional low voltage installer is significant.