Can anybody share experiences laying fiber optic cable for data?

[buickanddeere]

No sharp corners or kinks. Strapping fiber optic down tight with zip ties will block the signal.

 

[aczlan]

I've done the vac thing myself at home on a close to a 100' run, it was easy. I've seen cable vendors do much longer distances. Sometimes they need a pusher vac too to get it moving. I don't recall exactly how they fed the string in on the blow in side though.

I did a hundred and twenty foot run once. I used a leaf blower to push the mouse down the pipe that worked well for that run which already had a large cable TV coaxial cable in it.

Aaron Z

 

[KubotainNH]

No sharp corners or kinks. Strapping fiber optic down tight with zip ties will block the signal.

For sure on the bending of it but you can use zip-ties on fiber especially the outside grade stuff which is quite rugged. With an actual fiber jumper you can break the fiber strand if you tie it too tight.

 

[newbury]

I blew a mouse and strong string through five hundred feet of 5/8" thin wall plastic tubing as an extra measure of protection for my coax. To my amazement it actually worked and then pulled in the coax, out in the open. Actually, I lie. Thinking back, I did it in two pieces, but was still amazed.

Dang! must have shaken the mouse up

 

[buickanddeere]

For sure on the bending of it but you can use zip-ties on fiber especially the outside grade stuff which is quite rugged. With an actual fiber jumper you can break the fiber strand if you tie it too tight.

This was fiber optic with little mechanical protection ran temporrly along the frame of the inspection machine from one hub to another . The fiber was cinched down with a zip tie and the signal disapeared until the zip tie was removed.

 

[newbury]

No sharp corners or kinks. Strapping fiber optic down tight with zip ties will block the signal.

Since fiber optic is glass I'm amazed that once it's broken it would fix itself when loosened.

I did have an occasion in Germany when that happened with stranded twisted pair copper. The soldiers had hooked up the network, tested the network and then tidied up. However when they tidied up they made tight loops of the "excess" cable for neatness. The network went down frequently and randomly. We'd go to a machine, undo the loop of cable so we could pull the computer out and it would work. Put it back in place with the cable looped, it would be flaky. On real close examination we determined that the stranded cable had strands breaking when looped, and they must have "reconnected" enough when loose to pass a signal.

 

[Industrial Toys]

I'm sure fiber either works or it's broken. That is to say maybe some fibers have gone dark (like that term), but maybe not all.

I have heard stories about laying fiber through wet lands with a tracked plow and the machine basically started to lean badly breaking the fibers a good distance away.

 

[KubotainNH]

It's not quite that straight forward. Seeing it's glass letting light through, some may still go through when broken (maybe just a crack in the glass) or bent and work fine. You may get a little to high DB loss or total loss. This is where tools like OTDRs are a huge help. This makes me think of a peer telling me how a telco vendor had a single mode circuit that ran too hot but didn't have any attenuators, he tied a knot in the fiber tight enough to get the light level he wanted until he could get the proper parts.

When we have a circuit getting errors the first thing we check is how much light loss is on the run. Each connection will drop .5DB, sometimes a bit more. The fiber itself should be under 1DB.

 

[newbury]

Well I like to "wrap up" threads.
Bottom line is that I got "Mobleyed" and it travels with me.

Right now our internet wired data link is supplied by the local phone company. We pay a hefty price for a mere 5Gb link that I was going to hook up to the fiber.

I was wanting 20Gb max. My cheap-20-month-stand-alone is giving me 20GB NOW without an antenna. Streams lots better than the local phone company and the local is talking about jacking rates soon. And I plan on keeping my Mobley until AT&T phases it out or something better comes along.

So we got the water running with no new costs, total cost for water was about $1050, that included plumber and helper for 3 hours, excavator, operator and helper for 4 hours, 500' of 3/4 PEX, and probably about $50 to $100 of Sharkbite fittings and 12 gauge tracer wire. But I learned about fiber and RG6.