Adventures in home fiber optics

Introduction

In my area, there was finally the option to use 1Gbit FTTH instead of 100Mbit fiber. There was only a small problem, which was that all the cabling in the home was Cat5e, which of course can’t reach the required frequencies. The obvious solution would probably be Cat6.

When building the home, cable trenches were laid to every room of the home with COAX cabling and Cat5e. The COAX cables were not in use anymore due to the move to IPTV. Wouldn’t it be possible to use fiber optics instead?

Yes. It is possible. And it was actually quite easy and cheap to do. I will tell you how.

Requirements

Installation

I already installed two runs of fiber, which have been in use for about a month without any issues. For the first one, the tension spring was connected to the original COAX cable. By pulling the COAX cable through the wall, the tension cable was led to the fuse box. Then, the fiber patch cable was connected with some duct tape and pulled up without a hitch.

The second cable was a lot harder. When pulling the tension spring down, it came loose from the COAX cable about a meter from the end. Pushing the tension cable down didn’t help at all. The cable was stuck. After trying again and again, it still would not move further.

I removed the COAX cable and the spring from the wall, thinking all hope was lost. But after some research on the internet, I found a thread on tweakers.net. Some people suggested to use a small rope and a vacuum cleaner. It sounded totally stupid, but it worked like a charm. I used a long thin rope and some tape around the end. After turning the vacuum on, it quickly went through. I could attach the spring, and then pull the fiber through.

Summary

All in all, I think it all went pretty smooth. The network connections are future-proofed for when the gigabit connection will be installed, and it all seems to work perfectly. If anyone ever needs to upgrade their home network connections, I would really recommend you look at fiber. You never need to upgrade your connection again, and will be ready for the future of the internet.