How to Build a 10G Home Fiber Network?

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With
the wide application of the 10GbE technology in the commercial sector and the
popularity of FTTH (fiber to the home), the cost of deploying a 10G network has
been reduced to some extent. This trend has driven some home users to think
about the upgrade of their current 1G fiber optic home network to a 10G
network. Worries and hesitation are common, however, as the 10G network is
still a new field for most home users. Thus this post brings some useful tips
on how to build a 10G home fiber network from 10G home network basics to
network assessment, selections for best home network devices, and a typical 10G
fiber optic home network cabling.

 

Why
Need to Build a 10G Home Fiber Network?

Starts
from Network Assessment

Before
the decision on deploying your 10G
fiber network, it’s necessary to have an overall network assessment for
your home environment so as to ensure the network deployed can handle all your
traffic needs. You should probably ask yourself a few questions, such as how
many computers, printers, and other peripherals will connect to your network?
How much wireless coverage will you need at your location? What type of mobile
devices will access to your network? Do you have to supervise all network
devices? Are there any special functions that you want for your network
devices? Where would you like to have 10G connections and where would you leave
it at 1Gbps?

 

Know
What Makes a 10G Home Fiber Network

To
have a better assessment, you also need to have a rough idea about the basics
of a 10G home network. For a 10G home network, several components are
indispensable: 10Gb home switch, home router, and wireless access point for
home (AP). According to different needs, some optional devices can be also
included in your home networks such as network-attached storage (NAS) devices
(like a network server), 10G network cards, PoE switches, and end devices like
PC and security camera.

 

How
to Choose Your Best 10G Home Fiber Network Devices?

Once
you decide to upgrade to 10G network, choosing the most suitable home fiber
network devices is vital to you, among which home network switch, home router,
and AP for home are the most essential and important three types. Next, I take
the selection of three types as examples to show you how to choose the best
home network device.

 

Home
Network Switch

For
a 10G home fiber network, you probably need the 10G Ethernet switch and PoE
switch. To choose the best home network switch, you can take into account the
following three factors:

 

Features
& Performance

 

Generally
speaking, a home Ethernet switch especially the managed switch has many
features. However, there is no need to select a home network switch with all
features. Besides the basic features such as advanced QoS, VLAN, and security,
you’d better take switching capacity, max. power consumption, continuous availability
into consideration. PoE support is also a common requirement as users have many
security cameras these days and also access points that provides Wi-Fi to the
whole family. Moreover, fanless and stack designs are important factors as
well. Fanless design helps to reduce power consumption and keep your home quiet
and noiseless, which matters a lot for home users. As for the stack design, it
can bring great flexibility to your network. When you want to upgrade the
network or add more network devices into your network, stacking multiple
switches can be the simplest solution to realize your needs without changing
your original network infrastructure.

 

Ports

 

Usually,
a home network switch comes with copper ports, optical ports, or hybrid ports.
The copper port can connect with an Ethernet cable like Cat6. While a home
network switch with SFP/SFP+ port can connect with SFP/SFP+ transceivers and
fiber optic cables. Apart from port type, the port number to connect with your
devices should also be considered. If you don’t have many network devices to
connect, an 8-port or 12-port 10Gb switch is enough to cover all your needs;
otherwise, you will need a 24-port or 48-port switch, or even multiple
switches. You can choose a suitable one based on your needs.

 

Cost

 

The
cost of an RJ45 port is lower than an optical port. Therefore, a home switch
with copper ports will be cheaper than a fiber switch. And a managed switch
with high performance is also much expensive than an unmanaged one. When you
have already determined the type of home network switch you want, you can
compare the price from different vendors and choose the most cost-effective
one.

 

Home
Router

Connecting
your home network to the Internet, the selection of the best home router is
also important but much simpler than a home network switch. First, you should
contact your ISP (internet service provider) or look at your account details to
get your Internet speed. Your router is required to handle your Internet speed.
Considering you are cabling a 10G home fiber network, at least one SFP+ port
should be equipped in that network router. Then you need to figure out what
type of router you need: wired router or wireless router. Although a wireless
router provides both WiFi and Ethernet connections, the coverage of WiFi
signals is limited and the price will be more expensive than a wired one.
Therefore if the area needs to be covered by the network is large, a wired router,
combined with the additional wireless access point(s), is preferred for its
cheaper price and more stable connections.

 

Wireless
Access Point for Home

When
connecting your wireless devices to an Ethernet network, the wireless access
point for home is indispensable. Similar to routers, you also need to figure
out the amount of space the wireless network to cover and the number of
wireless devices to connect which will help you determine the number of AP you
demand. The wireless AP that you are going to buy should be able to handle that
figure. And these days Wi-Fi 6 AP seems to be a new trend, if you want to try a
fresh wireless network experience, 2×2 MU-MIMO dual-band Wi-Fi 6 AP is
definitely enough for your home use.

 

A
Case of 10G Home Fiber Network

After
the network assessment for your home and purchasing all network devices needed,
it’s time to deploy your 10G fiber optic home network. As you can see in the
following diagram, we now have a good number of devices all over the house.
Having counted the possible connections, we take the 24-port 10Gb switch as the
core switch in the home, which has 24 RJ45 ports to connect with most of the
end-devices and 4 10Gb SFP+ ports to connect with a PoE+ switch, router, NVR,
and server. As for the PoE devices in the courtyard, garage, and living room,
we use an 8-port Gigabit PoE+ switch to cover them all.

 

Conclusion

Deploying
a 10G home fiber network is not so hard and expensive as you might have thought
while pretty much similar to a Gigabit fiber network. What you need is a
complete network assessment for your house and a smart choice of affordable 10G
home network devices. Based on these, you can build your best 10G fiber optic
home network.