SOT: Home WiFi and Mesh system

You *can* do IPoverRNDISoverUSB if you plug a mobile into a PC.

a "mobile" phone

I was thinking of a VOIP phone, since you obviously can plug that directly into your router.

FYI: That link doesn't find anything, neither does entering the item number.

"10m OM4 LC-LC Fibre Optic Patch Cable Duplex Multimode Aqua 50/125 LSZH"

for a fiver.

Prices for optical parts are getting incredibly low. 25Gbit/s single-mode SFP28 transceivers can be bought new for £15 each for next day delivery.

If you already have multi-mode fibre in place, single-mode transceivers will work fine over short distances. At 1Gb/s they should be OK for a few hundred metres before dispersion causes errors, just as it would with multi-mode transceivers over multi-mode fibre. If you do use single-mode transceivers over multi-mode fibre the larger capture area of the fibre means that the receiver may flag an optical input overload error. However, a couple of dB excess drive seems to be well tolerated by the units I have tried, despite the warning.

Something else to look out for is "invisible optical fibre", best bought direct from Ali-Express. This is single-mode, so it can be used to extend an FTTP service if the right connectors are used. Point-to-point links need bidirectional transceivers which are also very cheap now. The fibre looks like thick fishing line and can be bought with various connectors fitted in a variety of lengths. It could be useful for installations in listed buildings or recently decorated homes. The transceivers need to be bought as matching pairs as they use different wavelengths for each direction over the single fibre.

John

Those do look handy, and they're new not ex-datacentre which is nice.

The main problem is still the high cost of switching. SFPs plus optical for point to point links make a lot of sense, but the usual star topology would need a switch with a lot of SFPs and those are still expensive.

There are some 'consumer' grade 10G switches starting to come through, eg:

My new router is a Quantum Fiber W1700k which has two 10G copper ports - they're sold cheap on ebay US as they're ex-ISP and useless unless you reflash them with OpenWRT at which point they become a decent performance

I'd not come across that, looks interesting. Could be useful for wiring access points, although you'd still need to give them power. And they take an optical input, of course.

Theo

Still 'item cannot be found' in Pale Moon browser but can with Vivaldi. Doh! Didn't think to try another browser. A second attempt & now it shows in Pale Moon. Thanks Andy.

What I've found that with both 2.4GHz and 5GHz having the same SSID attempting to connect a new only 2.4GHz device to my router fails unless the 5GHz is temporarily disabled. Once the new device has been connected the 5Ghz can be re-enabled.

Sounds like a biblical pestilence.