7 ms·

My Home Fibre Network Disintegrated

• isoprophlex 8mo ago
  This is why you always bury a rugged, big diameter tube, and run the cables inside of that.
  • timzaman 8mo ago
    Pvc also dries out and cracks. But yes.
    • sfeng 8mo ago
      If it’s underground (meaning not in the sun) the lifespan of PVC is 100+ years. It seems unlikely it will be his problem if it ever cracks.
      • fulafel 8mo ago
        PVC used in water pipes had some surprises, the lifespan there turned out to be less than optimistically expected when PVC pipes came to the market. 100 years might be hard to test for...
    • isoprophlex 8mo ago
      You can always splurge on some military grade pvc conduits :^)
  • gleenn 8mo ago
    My friend also always runs multiple string lines through during construction. Later if a wire breaks or you want an additional cable or upgrade, you attach your new wire to a string and pull the string from the other end all the way through. If they had done this, they could have simply dragged a new fiber optic cable through.
    • aarmot 8mo ago
      You can pull the wire and second string together so you have always a single string in conduit.
• johnboiles 8mo ago
  That seems incredibly fast for plastic to degrade like that. I wonder if you could have something generating ozone in there.
  • alienchow 8mo ago
    I'm not sure either. It's not an air tight bomb shelter and it's used like an average storeroom, storing stuff like winter jackets, suitcases and paint. I do use small amounts of Calcium Chloride based dessicants to keep the room dry.
    • chneu 8mo ago
      If it's underground at all, check for radon.
      • CamperBob2 8mo ago
        Radon is a noble gas. It's not going to affect fiber or wiring... but yes, if you're going to spend much time down there, definitely a good idea to check for it.
        • VanTheBrand 8mo ago
          Radon is radioactive. The alpha particles it emits can break down polymers and degrade plastics.
          • bluGill 8mo ago
            Interseting - I have high radon (mitigeted in the house via a fan), if I burry fibre what will I need to do to get something that will work? I have an outbuilding that I want to give internet.
            • lima 8mo ago
              No, radiation from radon at naturally occurring levels won't cause any damage to plastics.
• joecool1029 8mo ago
  I’ve had this failure on soft-touch usb cables from the 2000’s, not related to movement, just in a box in room temperature storage they disintegrate like this. It was described to me as thermoplastic elastometer degradation but I’m not really satisfied with that vague of an answer. Main comment thread when I first jumped in to discuss it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28054090 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28054090
  • golem14 8mo ago
    I have a couple of USB cables from the 2000's like this, some of them original apple cables. But most are fine. While some show brittleless, more plstics goes gooey and tarry - especially some ABS coating that makes the material more grippable,like computer mice or binoculars.
    • joecool1029 8mo ago
      With the new information from OP we might have an answer. My phone cables were in box with phone and battery, enclosed space. I believe the battery electrolyte decomposing over the years outgassed and caused the TPE to degrade. mayyybe small amounts of hydrogen fluoride.
• russdill 8mo ago
  If you buy a consumer product labeled "military grade" you are buying snake oil. And not just snake oil, incredibly over priced snake oil.
  • deleted 8mo ago
    [deleted]
  • anonym29 8mo ago
    Military grade: mass produced by the lowest bidder
    • snowmobile 8mo ago
      I only use handmade artisanal networking equipment.
      • pseudohadamard 8mo ago
        Hand-beaten from Tibetan silver by buddhist monks who live in a cave in the Himalayas. You just have to make sure the chakras are aligned correctly when you've installed it.
    • daedrdev 8mo ago
      There are plenty of things where mil spec is extremely strict and high quality. They wont be sold to consumers as they are priced accordingly
      • esseph 8mo ago
        A company can not sell a product to consumers cheaper than it can sell to the federal government, and the federal government contract normally comes first. A lot of the stuff you can buy (minus restricted items), it'll just cost you.
        • bluGill 8mo ago
          They can't sell the same thing but they can sell something slightly different. put a different type of paint on it and you can sell for different prices.
• Bedlow 8mo ago
  Is it a humidity problem? in our climate in the Med all kinds of plastic, pu and rubberised materials will just start cracking and flaking after a year or two.
  • rhplus 8mo ago
    About page on OPs blog says Singapore, so yeah.
  • userbinator 8mo ago
    PU is especially vulnerable to degradation via hydrolysis.
• rhplus 8mo ago
  Buried under cement/concrete. A good reminder of the benefits of planning to install some conduit.
  • dbetteridge 8mo ago
    Came to the thread to see if anyone else had mentioned conduit. It's cheap as chips and saves you a lot of future brick cutting or concrete breaking
    • alienchow 8mo ago
      I do have PVC conduits under the flooring. You can see the photos here: https://alienchow.dev/post/homelab1/ https://alienchow.dev/post/homelab1/ In theory I can pull a new cable through. But practically it might be tough due to the number of bends (shelter -> wall -> vent -> ceiling -> wall -> floor -> room). In the worst case scenario I can give it a try, but it's probably going to destroy the new fibre cable when I pull it through. For now the connection still works, so I am hoping it doesn't get to the point where I have to give that a try.
      • dbetteridge 8mo ago
        Fair enough! I had a cursory search in the post for mention of conduit and couldn't see anything obvious so wasn't sure. AFAIK fibre cable should be pretty flexible, though not a massive fan of tension. From memory bends shouldn't be less than 5cm radius or thereabouts so it depends on your conduit size! Nice post btw, appreciate the detailed planning involved.
      • hvb2 8mo ago
        I've seen dummy wires being put in when the conduit goes in. Say initially you need 2 wires from A to B. That probably means there's plenty of room left. So you just put 4 more other wires in there. When the time comes you need to pull a new one, you pull in the new by pulling out the old
      • duk3luk3 8mo ago
        you can always try the plastic bag + vacuum cleaner trick - take a thin flexible rope, tie it to a small plastic bag, stuff the small plastic bag into the conduit, use a vacuum cleaner at the other end to suck the plastic bag & rope through. You can then use the rope to pull through new cable. If you make the rope twice the length of the conduit, you can keep it in there indefinitely to pull through new cable whenever you want.
• defrost 8mo ago
  > A main component of why I was in sheer horror was the fact that I had stupidly buried all of these cables under my cement flooring in PVC trunking from my shelter to all of the rooms in the flat. This I don't quite get .. as I understand it "PVC trunking" is a type of cable channeling / ducting. I do a lot of cable and pipe layout around houses, farms, workshops, worksites, etc. and it's routine to use pipes / ducting / channels to allow other cables to be threaded through after or to replace bad cables. As much as cable deterioration sucks it should be a relief to have ducting to pull good through after the bad.
  • alienchow 8mo ago
    The electricians mentioned that in order to curve the cables along underneath the floor tiling they couldn't use metal trunking which would cause sharp angles, so they used PVC pipes to do curvy trunking for the fibre cables. I could theoretically pull a new cable through by ripping out the wall outlet if this cable actually fails. You can see it in my earlier homelab post. But due to the length of the trunking and the number of bends, I'm not too sure if I can safely drag a new fibre cable through. But yeah, maybe it's not that bad after all. I hope it won't get to that point.
    • defrost 8mo ago
      I feel for you & yeah, fingers crossed :-) One of my love / hates is Australian parrots and cockatoos - fantastic birds, noisy as hell - and they can rip out and shred unprotected wiring from rural camera and sensor systems like winged can openers.
    • fc417fc802 8mo ago
      > due to the length of the trunking and the number of bends, I'm not too sure if I can safely drag a new fibre cable through. I saw someone commented elsewhere about a plastic bag and a vacuum. Another option to keep in mind is a lubricant intended specifically for the task of pulling cable through a conduit.
  • ErroneousBosh 8mo ago
    In the olden days, when things like TVs and VCRs had cabinets made from polystyrene and PVC-jacketed power cables, you'd often find that if something had been put away with the mains lead coiled up on top, it then left a "scar" on the case. This is because the plasticiser in the PVC jacket attacked the polystyrene, leaving the mains lead fragile and brittle and a nasty gooey mess on the case that you couldn't fix. That's why the leads are wrapped in a polythene bag. When people started using polystyrene sheet insulation in houses (thankfully they no longer do this!) the cables running inside the walls were affected in the same way, with the PVC insulation rotting off as the plasticiser leached out and attacked the polystyrene. Of course there you had the added joy of having a potential electrical fire with a source of just-about-inextinguishable fuel, the polystyrene foam made of fuel and air. I wonder if something similar has happened here, something's gotten onto the fibre jackets and pulled the plasticiser out?
• jandrese 8mo ago
  Looking at the pictures it looks like the fiber itself might be inside of that spiral metal conduit in the middle and the outside is just abrasion protection. There are way too many strands for that outside bit to be the fiber. It's obviously bad that the outside plastic disintegrated, but it looks like the buried cables might be fine. I have a similar problem on my car where the 12v wiring is disintegrating like this because the manufacturer tried to switch to a more environmentally friendly wiring. Now the wire jackets turn to dust at the slightest touch or if they vibrate too much. I'm forever tracking down intermittent shorts in the wiring harness.
  • Infernal 8mo ago
    Your car wouldn’t happen to be a Volvo would it?
    • userbinator 8mo ago
      1990s Mercedes would be my guess.
      • pseudohadamard 8mo ago
        This is why you need a 600 Mercedes, made from lead and asbestos and concrete and VOCs and other stuff, that won't fail under any circumstances.
        • defrost 8mo ago
          Just get a https://www.okaaustralia.com/ https://www.okaaustralia.com/ Ugly AF but artisanal and robust. ( Just avoid the original third gen versions from late 1980s (?) that offshored the assembly ) 2012 Bus configuration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fchq6F-gKkQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fchq6F-gKkQ
          • pseudohadamard 8mo ago
            Nothing can beat the 600 Mercedes for cachet though. Look at the list of owners: Idi Amin, Ceauşescu, Saddam Hussein, F.W.de Klerk, Papa Doc, Mugabe, Brezhnev, Tito, Mao, Kim Il-Sung, Ferdinand Marcos, Deng Xiaoping, Mobutu, Jean-Bédel Bokassa, Mubarak, Berlusconi, Pablo Escobar, Jeremy Clarkson, nothing will ever come close to that.
• kev009 8mo ago
  There are very survivable fiber cables designed for stage and A/V setups for instance, and even "real" military grade ones. But the common thin LZSH stuff is surprisingly resilient in my experience, so long as it didn't kink the OP would probably have been fine with a "standard" cable. In any case I would always try to place fiber in a place where it can be re-pulled.. conduit, tray, or a plenum. I bought a big spool of 6 strand Corning stuff a long time ago for various projects, the cost and diameter don't increase much to add some protection lines even if you never imagine using them they can save you a re-pull if you bugger something up in construction.
  • bananadonkey 8mo ago
    The contractors were probably dubious of that resiliency given their lack of experience. I recently ran fibre in my house and have to say I was pleasantly surprised that fiber patch cables (unarmored) can survive a good pull through a duct.
    • madaxe_again 8mo ago
      They can survive a 500m pull (in 100m stages, or the friction is too high) in mud and rain, through active water line. Honestly, fibre, even unarmoured with just a standard Kevlar & HDPE sleeve is hardy stuff. When I first started mucking around with it a few years ago I was like “don’t breathe on it too hard”, now I’m like “tie the fibre in a knot on the bullbar and pull it with the truck”.
      • Sesse__ 8mo ago
        > Honestly, fibre, even unarmoured with just a standard Kevlar & HDPE sleeve is hardy stuff. To be fair, it also got a lot better in the last 20–30 years. In particular, we now have bend-insensitive fiber for the last mile (G.657.A1/G.657.A2) and in general, we just figured out how to make it more robust.
  • madaxe_again 8mo ago
    You can kink the shit out of fibre and it’s fine. Like, I’ve accidentally managed ~15mm diameter loops while pulling and then proceeded to yank on them. The Kevlar takes the brunt. Only time I broke a fibre was when it was me and two other guys pulling on it as hard as possible - and instead of moving it went “ping”.
• userbinator 8mo ago
  The link to the product says "TPU outer jacket". That's thermoplastic polyurethane, which is well known for degrading via hydrolysis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyurethane#Hydrolysis_and_biodegradation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyurethane#Hydrolysis_and_bi... ...so it is a bit amusing to see "TPU Jacket Features Water, Abrasion Resistance" in the product description. PVC or PE would be far better and more common.
  • alienchow 8mo ago
    ... Shucks. I should really have scrutinised the materials.
  • Sesse__ 8mo ago
    > PVC or PE would be far better and more common. Be aware, depending on where you live and where the cable goes, PVC and HDPE outer jackets may not be allowed due to fire safety issues. But yes, neither of those are prone to the same degradation over time, so in many cases they will be a good choice.
• jmward01 8mo ago
  Anyone in the US military that has bought 'military grade' Bates shoes and pulled them out of a locker after a year just to see the soles disintegrate can likely tell you the value of 'military grade'.
  • askvictor 8mo ago
    Shoes need to be used, or the rubber and/or glue holding the sole on will deteriorate.
    • zdragnar 8mo ago
      There's gotta be more to it than that. I've got a pair of dress shoes I wear maybe thee times a year at most, and I've had them for somewhere between ten and fifteen years, perhaps longer. The soles (rubber because winter) are in perfect condition, and the leather isn't too bad either, though I've not really conditioned it enough and it's starting to show.
      • gleenn 8mo ago
        Both can be true. I have specifically heard that shoe glue needs to be repeatedly compressed to be maintained or it will disintegrate. Anecdotally as well, I had a pair of quality, lightly used, but old, hiking boots that had the sole completely separate after a day of heavy use. The runber sole completely detached from the leather shell inner shoe. The crazy thing was that BOTH boots failed within 20 minutes of each other.
        • deleted 8mo ago
          [deleted]
      • pixl97 8mo ago
        Environmental factors can be very picky on what gets attacked and what doesn't. In one of the oddest losses of a pair of shoes, I had fire ants break into my closet and eat the foam rubber out of one pair of extra lite running shoes. Turned the damned things to swiss cheese. Nothing else was messed with. They didn't want leather or rubber, just whatever those shoes were made of.
• ekropotin 8mo ago
  > military grade cable Bruh
• bradgessler 8mo ago
  What’s the advantage of using fiber optics for home networking over 10Gbe Ethernet?
  • clhodapp 8mo ago
    They get less hot (especially the network adapters on the ends of them), can go a lot further, can be a lot denser (including being able to carry things other than Ethernet in the same bundle), and are a lot more future-proof (unless the cable jacket literally crumbles at the slightest movement in a few years).
  • reactordev 8mo ago
    Server-grade fiber optics can get to terrabit/sec speeds. In other words, ludicrous speed. (He’s gone, plaid!)
  • ggm 8mo ago
    Many people believe running fibre between buildings, even in ducts, is safer than running copper because you get opto-isolation from lightning. The second thing is that domestic buildings usually do not come with a consistent ground plane. I worked in a 1960s build purpose made for mainframes and we had ~48v floating between racks at either end of the building and had to do a shitload of work to reground the building, in the 90s (-we were decommissioning an IBM 3033 and deploying a secondhand cray1) the point being somehow, God knows how, prior rs232 serial wiring didn't care and the ground plane for the mainframe was fine at the time. Pre Ethernet this stuff maybe just passed code. I suspect people who build their own home to some spec acquire these theories. Data comms? Not much reason tbh unless you're pushing a lot more data than normal.
    • amluto 8mo ago
      > The second thing is that domestic buildings usually do not come with a consistent ground plane. Ordinary unshielded copper Ethernet doesn’t care: it’s transformer-isolated at both ends. Shielded cable may object to carrying any substantial amount of current through the shield. Anyway, there are a handful of good reasons to use fiber: - Length. Copper is specced for 100m. Panduit will sell fancy copper cable that they pinky-swear works for Ethernet at 150m. Single mode fiber will work at silly long distances. - High bandwidth. Copper will do 10Gbps. High speed specs exist, but there is approximately zero commercial availability of anything beyond 10G using copper at any appreciable distance. Fiber has no such problems. IMO if you are running fiber anywhere that makes it awkward to replace (i.e. not just within a single room), use single mode. Multimode fiber has gone through ~5 revisions over the last few decades, and the earlier ones have very unimpressive bandwidth capabilities at any reasonable distance. Even the latest version, where truly heroic engineering has gone into reducing modal dispersion, relies on fancy multistrand cables for the faster Ethernet speeds. Single-mode fiber, meanwhile, continues to work very well and supports truly huge bandwidth at rather long distances, and even decades-old fiber supports the latest standards. And the transceivers for single-mode fiber are no longer much more expensive than multimode transceivers.
• nevi-me 8mo ago
  I sympathise with burying cables that you think are for life, only to need to replace them later. We ran fibre cables in the ceiling when constructing our house. I requested the electrician to shield the cables with some tubing, but he probably thought I was being extreme. We have 9 cables, 2 of them don't work, likely from being bent by mistake or something. The wiring is intermixed with electrical and ethernet (for cameras) cables, making the process a bit tricky. At least for us we might only have to cut the ceiling boards in a few places to help guide the replacement cables.
  • madaxe_again 8mo ago
    9/10 times the problem is at the terminator - they can get yanked out of position if they are pulled rather than the sleeve. Snip off the pulled end of the suspect line with Kevlar shears and shine an OFF down the other end - and you’ll probably see laser. It’s then a surprisingly simple job to re-terminate with mechanical connectors.
• overtone1000 8mo ago
  Upvote for posting about a failure. We should all be more vocal about our failures.
• jijijijij 8mo ago
  Coiled up high-speed fiber optic cables suffer data-abrasion due to centrifugal forces. Either reduce data speed or arrange those cables in straight lines with space-grade angle connectors.
  • lexicality 8mo ago
    Worse still, the loop-de-loops can make your packets dizzy which is an unpleasant experience for anyone doing a video call with you and makes games such as VR chat completely untenable.
    • fluoridation 8mo ago
      It does highly improve the QoS if you stream Sonic gameplay.
    • jijijijij 8mo ago
      Yes! Although looping dizziness happens in copper, too. If you ever experience this, but can't uncoil the transmission cables, a workaround is to spin your desk chair in the opposite direction of data flow, at about the speed of light (for the respective cable medium). This temporary cancels out the effects of ethernet frame looping induced dizziness. Alternatively, you can treat any sickness symptomatically by chewing on a piece of ginger. The latter also helps with aforementioned data-abrasion in fiber optic cables through means not fully understood, yet.
• adastra22 8mo ago
  FYI "military grade" is code for "cheapest bidder."
  • subscribed 8mo ago
    So what should I buy, "telco"?
• Animats 8mo ago
  Would that be this item? [1] The product description and SKU match. It's not clear who "FS" is. A reseller? A manufacturer? They seem to be in Singapore. There's no excuse for the external plastic sheath disintegrating. They must have formulated the plastic wrong. The terms specify a 30 day warranty. Here's a catalog of real mil-spec fiber optic cables.[2] This is overkill for home applications; you put these in a fighter jet. In between are Telecom Industry Association compliant fiber optic cables. That's what telcos use. There are US manufacturers with real plants and addresses. [1] https://www.fs.com/products/70220.html https://www.fs.com/products/70220.html [2] https://www.glenair.com/catalogs/fiber-optics.pdf https://www.glenair.com/catalogs/fiber-optics.pdf
  • JoachimSchipper 8mo ago
    FS is almost certainly fs.com, who do sell lots of fiber stuff. I agree that less-than-milspec equipment should survive being installed in a home, but... this fiber didn't. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46572962 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46572962 seems to be relevant.
  • unsnap_biceps 8mo ago
    FS is a US company. They are a fairly reasonable option for third party networking equipment. We run a ton of their SPF+ transceivers in our racks, as they're significantly cheaper than OEM parts and indistinguishable in operation and we've had excellent support the handful of times we needed it over the years.
  • wsh 8mo ago
    FS.COM Limited (深圳市飞速创新技术股份有限公司, https://cn.fs.com/ https://cn.fs.com/) was founded in Shenzhen in 2009. They’ve applied to be listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange; here’s the draft prospectus from a month ago: https://www1.hkexnews.hk/app/sehk/2025/107950/documents/sehk25121001631.pdf https://www1.hkexnews.hk/app/sehk/2025/107950/documents/sehk...
• M95D 8mo ago
  When you design, build or renovate your house, always plan for future replacement of cables and pipes!
• vbernat 8mo ago
  From the photos, it does not look like the fibers themselves are damaged. You should check the error rate on both sides. If it is 0, the not optimal values of your speedtest are not related to your fiber. If it is not 0, the more likely issues are in order: connectors to clean (buy a cleaning pen), bend radius somewhere, faulty optics, then the fiber. You can also pay a professional to run an OTDR on your fiber. It would show where the fiber is degraded.
• mkj 8mo ago
  Fs.com are a well regarded company. The OP should contact them and see if there's a recall on those cables or something. Sounds similar to what happened with some mains power cables sold by a hardware store in Australia.
  • nubinetwork 8mo ago
    I don't regard them very well personally... I bought a bunch of DAC cables from them, only to have them start emailing me under the guise of assigning me a "account manager"... I blocked their domain from my mail server and told them to never contact me again.
    • sschueller 8mo ago
      They offer to provide you with personalized service and you block them? What do you do when you walk into a high end watch or clothing store? FS provides account managers and they are very useful if you are working on a project as they can guide you and help you.
      • nubinetwork 8mo ago
        Is it too much to ask to just be able to buy things without being chased around by someone? I have a Newegg business account (and maybe a few more for other pc stores, I'd have to check), but I literally never have them trying to get me to buy things. /shrug
        • phil21 8mo ago
          fs.com sells primarily b2b. Account managers are normal and customary. Just decline politely. They are not a bad company in that regard. I have my issues with FS product itself, as it can be spotty sometimes in terms of compatibility and repeatability (e.g. getting the same optics firmware every time over the course of a couple years) but they typically handle exceptions and problems quite well. Via your account manager contact. Weird reason to hate a company, imo. Would be far different if they continued to spam you with phone calls/e-mails after you declined the request. Sounds like both parties dodged a bullet.
• Sesse__ 8mo ago
  FS.com is great for all kinds of fiber stuff… but curiously, nothing long-distance. I never really understood it; you can get a 40-channel DWDM setup (including tunable 100gig SFPs) just like nothing, but a drum of quite normal G24 loose tube cabling meant for outdoor use? Nope. You'll have to go elsewhere for that. And I guess that's also what happened here; the poster picked the best thing they had for the purpose, and it's just not that good. I've also had problems with their pigtails also being weird, by the way (layers separating so that automated cutters can't stretch the pigtail properly). It's weird when everything else is so good—it's as if they only care about what's going on internal to a data center and you never need to do a splice. :-)
  • sschueller 8mo ago
    I can confirm the pigtails issue. They are a huge pain to strip for whatever reason. Even cheap ones from AliExpress work better.
• ZeroConcerns 8mo ago
  There's no link to the data sheet of the actual cable, but, yeah, looks like this should not have happened in such a short timeframe unless there's something really funny going on in that room, like ambient temperatures above 50 degC. Another thing that should not have happened is installing the cable in loops in this way: any 'building' or 'underground' type cable needs to be of the exact length required at the demarcation point, fastened properly to prevent movement and terminated on a proper patch panel (can be a one-port box-type thingy for small setups), from where you use regular patch cords to connect your equipment. (Loops are definitely allowed though, but that use case is mostly for aerial fiber to enable repair splices, and there are some very specific bend-radius and strain relief requirements, which, again should be spelled out in the cable data sheet)
  • throwawaypath 8mo ago
    >Another thing that should not have happened is installing the cable in loops in this way: any 'building' or 'underground' type cable needs to be of the exact length required at the demarcation point This is awful advice I would discard immediately. It's poor practice and against code. When pulling cable, especially fiber, the ends of the cable should be able to reach the fathest corner of the room. Excess cable should be in a service loop, properly secured to a wall, and terminated on a patch panel. Both ends of the cable should follow this rule. That means you're typically pulling cable that's 15m longer or more, depending on the room and configuration. NEVER buy and pull cable that is the exact size. The cable literally comes from the factory looped up, it's designed to be looped (watch bend radius). >Loops are definitely allowed though, but that use case is mostly for aerial fiber to enable repair splices Again, awful advice that's against code. Underground fiber must have service loops at both ends, and must be terminated to a patch panel.
  • gertrunde 8mo ago
    From one of the photos, the cable spec "G657A2" is visible on the outside - and specs listed for that indicate it's "bending insensitive single-mode fibre", apparently it can tolerate 10 loops around 15mm mandrel. (Which does surprise me). But yes, agreed, a lot of "Er... why would you do it like that?" bits.
• simonjgreen 8mo ago
  I’d be acquiring or borrowing a fusion splicer and splice protectors then getting them into a fixed enclosure on the wall with socket outlets. It seems like wizardry when you first see it, but actually fusion splicing fibre is not hard at all once you’ve done it a few times. The most important part is the cleaving, always use a high quality cleaver. Chances are very high the fibres themselves in the cables are absolutely fine, they are remarkably resilient given their size.
• oakwhiz 8mo ago
  If it's any consolation, you can have fiber without jackets as long as they are cable-managed very carefully.
• borlox 8mo ago
  Regarding the last few sentences about the speedtest, Fibre doesn’t degrade in a way that you get 30 to 40% line speed. DSL did that, fibre doesn’t. Speedtests for 10G are complicated and will show low numbers because of all the different TCP parameters and schedulers. Sometimes because peering links of your ISP or the speedtest providers are saturated.
  • mlrtime 8mo ago
    When I had 5Gbs fiber with a UDM I could never get it to speed test close to 5Gbps. My internet network would would test at theoretical limits with proper iperf2 settings. I tried using public iperf servers but wasn't successful.
• xorcist 8mo ago
  This looks like regular hydrolysis, same thing that happens to shoe soles after any number of years. I don't think it's fair to make fun of the cable specifications, seems to me they held up just fine despite the jacket disintegrating. The article doesn't mention the error rate, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was still zero.
• il-b 8mo ago
  The coils are too tight. The tension on the plastic pulled it apart.
• jeffrallen 8mo ago
  If the point of a home lab is to learn useful lessons where your customers don't pay for your stupidity (or more politely: your learning journey) then this guy's next employer is definitely getting their money's worth. But that reminds me of something: I spend money on hobbies, but I spend the absolute minimum amount of money possible on home IT research and learning. Fuck that noise: if my employer wants a lab, they can damn well pay for one.
• Havoc 8mo ago
  That's weird. Only place I've seen a rapid degradation of cables were those getting direct sunlight. The conclusion paragraph seems doubtful to me though - unlikely that speeds will slow down from a cables external plastic flaking
  • LoganDark 8mo ago
    I imagine there could be some slowdown if the exact wavelength of the transmission also happens to come in from outside where the jacket is missing.
• mikelabatt 8mo ago
  Was there a technical reason for not using corrugated ducts in the concrete, maybe because it's a shelter?
• DannyBee 8mo ago
  I have fs.com armored cable installed for 10 years now. Different times and spools. It is all in perfect shape. They test all their cable. Something is almost certainly disintegrating your cable. If you have any spare old pvc pipe or something in the basement, hit it with a hammer and see if it is brittle (the hammer should bounce). If it is brittle, I would not hang out in the basement until you figure out what is going on. One random guess other than gases of various sorts: If you have the lights on a lot, it's possible you have lighting that is not properly uv filtered somehow. (It theoretically could be lots of heat/humidity vs certain types of cable jackets, but that would be obviously noticeable most of the time) The fiber and even the armor itself looks fine in your pictures and I bet the error rate is zero. Outside of bending, i can't see how you could damage the fiber when the armor is in perfect shape. That armor will unravel if you really damaged it. The speed thing is not how fiber works. It's hard to get marginal link enough to generate retries that degrade your speed by 10%. Most of the time either you have full speed link, no link, or so many errors speed is zero. The optics almost always have rx/TX signal strength DDM you can look at Also did you say you direct buried it in cement? If so it's not rated for that. Direct burial and concrete tight/safe are not the same thing at all, not the least of reasons being concrete is highly alkaline (ph12-13) when poured
  • deleted 8mo ago
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  • wolfi1 8mo ago
    if the PVC is brittle it almost certainly lost its plasticizer, could be that the alkaline eroded it
    • userbinator 8mo ago
      Unplasticised PVC, commonly used for rigid pipe, is normally brittle and will shatter, which is why it's not allowed for pneumatic systems. It doesn't crumble easily, however.
• mindcrash 8mo ago
  This is why should never-ever directly bury cables in the ground/walls/floor and ALWAYS use rigid PVC and/or flexible PVC tubes from site to site and pull the fiber or UTP cables through those tubes. As an alternative if you are networking a single location and you don't mind seeing some finishing profiles on the walls (or want something easy in a pre-existing situation) you can also drill somewhere along the wall and feed the cables directly down to the floor or up the ceiling and cover them up. But always, ALWAYS, make them easily accessible and easily removable. Got plenty of experience to say no cable will survive a lifetime, and if you experience a problem without easy access you are fucked.
• alienchow 8mo ago
  Thanks HN folks for all the comments. To clarify a bit, the cables are pulled through PVC conduits under the flooring before being buried in cement. Currently the hypotheses for why the cable disintegrated so quickly is hydrolysis and paint solvents. Singapore is extremely humid but this doesn't explain why the exposed cabling on the other end is still healthy and not crumbly. The second possibility is that I keep the leftover wall paints (Nippon Paint Vinilex 5000) in the same room and have noticed that much of the solvents have evaporated. It is possible that the solvents in the air might have caused the cable to fail in 3 years. It would explain why the other ends that aren't exposed to the air inside the bomb shelter aren't falling apart. Some other learnings from this. Buried cabling should always be permanently fixed and attached to a patch panel instead of dangling in the open. That was the original plan but I figured it wouldn’t be an issue. I was wrong. Always measure exact length of buried fibre cabling as they aren’t meant to be stored in loops.
  • throwawaypath 8mo ago
    >Always measure exact length of buried fibre cabling as they aren’t meant to be stored in loops. This is awful advice I would discard immediately. It's poor practice and against code. When pulling cable, especially fiber, the ends of the cable should be able to reach the fathest corner of the room. Excess cable should be in a service loop, properly secured to a wall, and terminated on a patch panel. Both ends of he cable should follow this rule. That means you're typically pulling cable that's 15m longer or more, depending on the room and configuration. NEVER buy and pull cable that is the exact size. The cable literally comes from the factory looped up, it's designed to be looped (watch bend radius).
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  • voxlax 8mo ago
    Oh, sry! Your comment came after I posted mine. I had similar experience with a bottle of organic thinner for paints.
  • nadams5755 8mo ago
• voxlax 8mo ago
  I believe, he might have stored some solvent in the vicinity of the cable. Anyway it won't affect the optical performance of the cables. It's just the loss of mechanical protection. The disintegrating sheathing could be repaired by shrink tubing, which is more convenient than by wrapping it up in tape.
• bawana 8mo ago
  Andromeda strain
• melchebo 8mo ago
  First question, bomb shelter?? Next what popped in my head, “Military grade means, made by the lowest bidder.”
• analog31 8mo ago
  Something caught my attention as a musician: Coiling cables can leave them with a permanent twist, depending on how you do it. Musicians are taught an "over under" method for avoiding this problem. Otherwise, if a service loop is needed, it can be hung in a figure-eight pattern to avoid the twist.
• m463 8mo ago
  sunlight? Plastics degrade like this in sunlight due to UV. If you put plastic storage bins outside, in a short time picking them up will usually cause them to shatter in your hands. As a sort of cautionary tale - PEX (plastic) plumbing is quite interesting. It is almost like the fiber-optica cable of plumbing. It is really easy to install without welding and can be snaked through walls easily. However, it comes in lightproof packaging and is not to be left exposed to sunlight - otherwise it must be discarded. Holding back 100psi of water requires strong bonds. Note that this UV exposure might have happened before you installed it. It could have been sitting in the sunlight at a distributor or depot or as a second-hand cable. It could also have been in the sunlight in your house before you pulled it.
• lazylizard 8mo ago
  2cents...at my last job we used to buy only panduit cables..
• quickthrowman 8mo ago
  I assume your PVC conduit had water infiltration which corroded away the metal armor inside the cable assembly. Next time pull indoor/outdoor wet location rated cable with XPLE insulation, it might work better.
• ongytenes 8mo ago
  I've for decades have opted to use pvc conduit for underground installations. This way I can pull/replace wire. Reading this made me realize that putting fiber inside conduit in inaccessible areas would be a safe way to go. Years ago some electronics sensors were replaced and started having problems. I came to realize it was a voltage drop with the new increased load. I was able to pull in new larger wire by using the old wire as the puller.