I have a few basic fiber optic cable questions hopefully somebody will be kind enough to assist me with.
Our church is looking to do outdoor services to adhere to the social distancing rules. We have an area 350' from the church to do this. We are trenching and burying power lines to there and we wanted to put network service to film services as well. Being it is 350' to the closest part of the building Cat6 is out so we are looking at fiber optic. The tech guy said 50 micron, multimode, OM3 with LC connectors. So I got a price on Hitachi cable -6, 6-stand as they do not carry 2 strand. But this is the bare cable cut off a spool. By the time we get around the church and into it and to the equipment room we are looking at 550'
So my questions are would it make the most sense to have the electric supply company we are buying the cable from put on the LC connectors? They send it out to do this work. Or do it after the fiber optic cable is in the ground and ends accessible? Would it be okay just to put 2 connectors on each end and just seal the other 4 in case we ever need them? This is outdoor rated cable, not armored so we are going to put it in pvc about a foot above the power lines. Although we were generous with measuring the distance (550') if for some reason we are a little short, we certainly would be in the building, is there a way we could add an additional 10' easily without too much costsay by plugging an additional 10' cable into he existing cable or...? Finally, any rough idea what they charge to put on a LC connector on both ends for 2 strands? I have no idea if it is $50 - $500 or more?
Thanks so much and stay safe
I usually pay under $50 per for field terminations
62.5 micron Multimode is the standard. 50’is becoming more popular and goes a little farther but not much. If you are using 100 megabit and that’s all you will ever need it’s no problem. It can go up to 2 km by specs but honestly it goes at least 4 km or more. It’s not that limiting either. Think about it...people are doing 4K HDTV over the internet (cord cutters) with around 2-4 megabit bandwidth. Few homes or businesses have 100 megabit Internet...that’s strictly LAN speeds.
Gigabit is a little more touchy and you are right at the limit and may have problems with a standard SX transceiver.
There is a way around it. Use an LX transceiver with a mode conditioning patch cable. What’s that? This is technically a single mode transceiver but it will work on multi mode fiber. The special patch cable just handles the fact that the fiber isn’t really single mode. Range is 550 m (meters not feet).
You might also think about going to single mode fiber for two reasons. First the fiber itself is similar in price. Second it can easily do gigabit and if you ever expect to add land it can go up to around 30-40 km. In terms of bandwidth you can use a trick called CWDM. Basically you use transceivers with different wavelengths (different colors of light) connected via a prism on the end of the fiber. This typically allows up to 8 transceivers per fiber. If you need even more bandwidth you can use DWDM transceivers that can go up to OC48 (48 gigabits) or more but this is getting into long distance telecom equipment.
Might also consider wireless. I don’t mean the cheap junk (grade not price) you can buy at Walmart. Look at for instance Ubiquiti who sells really nice outdoor rated Unifi radios for about $150 each that have the same bandwidth and range as what you are looking at. In terms of reliability I currently have a wastewater plant customer with a system. You can easily extend the system with more radios if you need more bandwidth or coverage and you can get directional antennas on these or the Airmax platform. There is a wireless ISP for ranchers that extends from Bend (central) Oregon all the way to Portland, all using mountain tops and old microwave towers, all using Ubiquiti radios for both customer connections and back hauls (connection to company). It’s called Yellow Knife. It is THAT reliable. No trenching, no fragile glass strands that require special contractors to connect.
I mentioned the thought of an access point. We could put it at the corner of the church and it would be 350' straight shot with hardly any obstacles line of sight but one person, a semi-techie thought that with an access point you start out getting good bandwidth but then it fades off and gets quite slow. I have heard good things about Ubiquity. Is there a particular model I could possibly look into? It would need to be able to keep up filming for at least an hour of church service. Do you have a model that you would recommend?
Would it be feasible to say buy an Ubiquiti access point and when we are burying the power lines this week to just bury empty conduit so we have it in place in case the access point doesn't work out we can pull a line of fiber optic.
Thanks again so much.
Ubiquiti kind of has two product lines, Airmax and Unifi. They are very different but have overlapping capability. Airmax is their original product, it is designed for rural telecom systems like beaming internet service to ranchers in the Rocky Mountain states. It has beyond fiber speeds and crazy long ranges. Unifi is more of a stadium/conference center/hotel/university/office system. It is designed for a lot of users and radios in a good size area. It would be perfect for wifi at a revival in a large church where you post the WiFi password for everyone.
Unifi runs around $100 per AP. It’s a mesh system. Generally the radios connect to each other via 5 GHz and to your wireless devices on the 2.4 GHz link. Radios automatically coordinate to pick quiet channels, They also have an Ethernet port that supplies both power and.a gigabit connection for hard wired link devices. The Unifi UAC-AC-M is an omnidirectional outdoor rated unit with 300 Mbos capability on the 2.4 GHz port. The 5 GHz backbone is about 3 times that bandwidth. The hard wired port can use the full bandwidth. It probably meets the range you want out of the box. If it won’t make it you can swap the rabbit ears for an optional UMA-D patch style sector antenna ($100) that is directional and will considerably increase the range to hundreds if not thousands of feet. If you want more bandwidth the UAC-M-PRO is over 1 gigabit on the 5 GHz port. This one is $200. They have some crazy high bandwidth and range stuff but I doubt you will need any of it.
Ubiquiti hardware is top notch. They use the very solid Atheros chips but “unlock” their full capability. Their radios are a bit “leaky” compared to say $10,000 Dragonwave radios but other than that you get equal performance. These are mostly used for professional wireless systems like wireless ISPs in mountainous areas of the country or wireless coverage of stadiums, colleges, and conference halls. It is not homeowner grade.
From experience I would just go ahead and get a couple more and put at least one near your server or router. This will be the main link back. Then you just power up APs where needed, no network cabling at all. Indoors they have a bunch of options in either a wall wart shape or a round “UFO” ceiling or wall mount shape. With my mostly industrial customers I just used the same outdoor radios.
The software is different from consumer grade stuff. But you get maid showing you precisely the link quality so there is no guess work on link quality...you will know, My systems continued operating through hurricanes. No slowing down or dropouts except once in a critical radio when the operator shut off the panel that supplied power. It really is that solid, it only takes getting used to because generally you don’t mess with individual radios once they are linked to the network. You configure “the network”.
Then you get WiFi for free for other uses too like wireless microphones or speakers across the same system in addition to the video feed. With the mesh style network you don’t have to plan as much. So in a large church you could place say an AP at both ends, let them mesh the packets for you, and have solid microphone, camera, and speaker coverage inside as well with no dead spots.
Very good advice;
1. I have the Ubiquity at home and at our church (5 access points) . Very robust product, free software to configure.
I have quite a bit of experience with fiber:
2. Fiber is cheaper than copper. 6 count may be hard to find, we used 12 count
3. Around here (Seattle) fiber splicers are hard to find. If you use fiber use preterminated fiber to a patch panel, then run a jumper from patch panel to equipment. Get the correct jumper for the fire rating, just like Cat cable, IE riser, plenum. Jumper cable looks like Zip cord with connectors
4. LC connectors are a good choice
5. Your fiber would terminate in a small patch panel, Leviton has a nice selection.
6. You are limited to 50ft past the point of entrance with most fiber as it is not rated to run inside a building. See article 770.
7. Yes drop a 2" conduit in the ditch with power
8. MM fiber is OK for your application, SM will have faster speeds, but the equipment you light it with is more expensive (LED vs Laser)
9. If you use fiber, I would suggest having someone with cleaning experience and inspection tools help you terminate and test. Its very easy to contaminate the end faces. Have everything ready to connect and test.
10. for the preterminated fiber, pull a mule tape thru your conduit (greenlee true tape is ok but mule tape is way better) They both have footage markers to get your length from. Leave a 20 foot loop at one end.
11. Preterminated fiber and fiber jumpers I would get from Graybar.
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