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.

My first thought exactly. I know someone who inadvertently melted a ton of stuff with overuse of an ozone generator, similar kind of effect

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.

Military grade: mass produced by the lowest bidder

Military-grade just means it has a spec, now, I will admit having a spec is nice, very nice. but in general it says little about the actual quality of the item. And if the spec can't be found or there is no spec. Probably best to stay away, in those cases they are not even selling you the snake oil but the sound of it sloshing in the bottle.

Exactly. It's a very successful marketing play on MIL-SPEC:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Military_Standar...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_grade

"Military-grade" has a very specific meaning: it's at least 10x overpriced and painted black.

Basically same with any company with "Patriot" or "Veteran" in the name.

It's just a weak pander to people's weak egos. Freedumb, if you will.

What if it's Military Grade Snake Oil?

If you buy a commercial product labelled "military grade", you are also buying snake oil.

"Military grade" is generally shit. It's built down to a price, manufactured the cheapest possible way, so they can get the lowest possible tender submitted. Bonus prize if the manufacturer is owned by either someone already in government, or with close ties to someone in government.

The only "military grade" devices I own are some woefully unsuccessful radios, which failed in the market because they were actually good - easy to use, reliable, and easy to repair - which made them about 5% more expensive than the cheapest option which was made by a company part-owned by the government and part-owned by someone who donates heavily to the Conservatives.

But shitload of vendors won't bother and just sell you a "military grade" or, even in non-english speaking countriess, say a "MIL-SPEC Daniel Defense AR-15". They won't list every spec in detail. And they make good AR-15s (but not cheap).

Anyone who thinks the triggers listed as MIL-SPEC from, say, Geissele here:

https://geissele.com/triggers.html

aren't totally fine is out of his mind. They're amazing triggers, widely used and loved.

And they don't say which specs its passing (at least not on the main page): it's just MIL-SPEC.

As a sidenote my very best laptop passes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIL-STD-810 but most people will just say it's "military grade" or "MIL-SPEC".

Guess what? Its screen never broke overnight like the one of my MacBook M1 Air did (the infamous "bendgate").

I can bend my LG Gram's screen and it's keeps working fine. I can let it drop. Friend who sold it to me stepped on it when he woke up once.

There's a very big difference between saying: "There are shady vendors" and saying "Military specs do not exists and it's impossible for consumers to buy items passing military specifications".

Yes, there are dishonest vendors.

Yes, military specs do exist.

And, yes, it's possible for consumers to buy products passing (and even surpassing) actual military specs.

About page on OPs blog says Singapore, so yeah.

PU is especially vulnerable to degradation via hydrolysis.

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

The article mentions PVC trunking, which I take to mean conduit.

and always install extra guide wire

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.

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?

Your car wouldn’t happen to be a Volvo would it?

The outside strands are kevlar. The fibers are inside the armored core often inside another jacket.

The metal coil will hold the actual fibre itself, yes - after a few more layers of protection. This is what is usually called “armoured” cable and is suitable for suspension and direct in ground. Dunno why he’s using it indoors.

Honestly, this writeup is… weird? Dude doesn’t know you can terminate fibre at home with like $50 of gear?

I had the fucking fox attack a freshly laid 500 meter line, literally the day before I was going to stuff it in conduit and bury it. Didn’t just break the fibre, she (I know this fox, well) chomped it into pieces, hauled on the exposed Kevlar, generally had a party.

Did I despair? Did I launch a baby complete with bathwater into the sun?

No. I bought a cleaver, some alcohol wipes, some stripping pliers and a whole bunch of mechanical terminators.

Needn’t have worried. Repaired it, outdoors, first attempt, in the rain, and have since buried it - no problems five months on.

Yes, the whole thing is built like bike brake cables, with a spirally metal support core, the goodies up the inside, and then a nylon braid and PVC jacket over the top.

I have issues with the PVC-jacketed cables under the bonnet of my nearly-30-year-old Landrover, where the plasticiser has been baked out of the insulation and they've gone brittle. Worst affected are the wires to the fuel injectors and the lambda sensors, presumably because the former are at the top of the engine and get reflected heat off the bonnet, and the latter because they're near the literally red-hot exhaust downpipes.

That's okay for an old vehicle that you'd expect to repair, though.

I've seen the same problem in three-year-old Toyotas, and that is Just Not On.

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.

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”.

... Shucks. I should really have scrutinised the materials.

> 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.

Shoes need to be used, or the rubber and/or glue holding the sole on will deteriorate.

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).

Server-grade fiber optics can get to terrabit/sec speeds. In other words, ludicrous speed.

(He’s gone, plaid!)

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.

It's one of those "just because" moments. The idea was to future proof my home infra for a 25G NAS connection. Most ethernet connections tap out at 10G. While theoretically speaking Cat 8 cables can do 40G, hardware support for full 40G Cat 8 NICs is rare. Fibre is very very flexible with its potential bandwidth and SFP28 transceivers are relatively affordable (if you don't do what I did by using SMF. Home networks should only use MMF if the property isn't a mansion.)

Also much lower power and heat.

I kinda want some just 'cause it's cool, with the only problem being that I haven't been able to find an excuse to justify (to myself) needing it.

For me, it was for a nearly 100ft run that try as I may to get a good termination, I'd often find my Mac Studio and Ubiquiti EdgeSwitch struggle to negotiate at more than 5gbps. So I got a smaller switch upstairs, ran 10GbE to it, approximately 10ft, and then ran OM-3 fiber for the 100ft up into my attic, across my house and down into the garage. Rock solid at 10 Gbps.

10GbE rj45 (normal ethernet jack) spf modules tend to burn power and get extremely hot, like to the point of burning you if you touch it - the manual for my switch said to leave adjacent ports unoccupied if using one of those. The fiber ones run cool to the touch.

Also, not needing to rerun any cabling if we want to bump up speeds in the future, you just change the laser module on either end. These should be good to >100x current speeds. Not the case with copper.

If they're using spf+, it's almost certainly ethernet on the fiber. Do you mean, why not use copper twisted pair?

Ethernet runs on many mediums, as well as over the ether.

Ethernet can be run over copper or fiber cabling, it's not an alternative to fiber networking. Assuming you meant what's the advantage of fiber over copper: you can use faster speeds, longer distances less power on fiber plus it's not electrically coupled.

(speeds: 100 gig today, but faster speeds are coming.)

10G is looking to be the end for twisted-pair copper.

25GBASE-T and 40GBASE-T were standardized 10 years ago, but there are still basically zero products available with support for it. The datacenter market just wasn't interested and chose to use fiber and DAC instead. Worst of all: it requires Cat8 cables and is limited to 30 meters. This means it can't reuse existing cabling, and doesn't have the reach for many home applications - OPs blog post mentions the longest run in their apartment being 55 meters.

Combine that with the general death of wired networking for home & office use, and it is extremely unlikely the market of hardcore tech enthusiasts is big enough to warrant massive investments into developing some kind of 25G-over-Cat6-for-100m standard.

10G is pretty much the standard for high-end gear these days. This means any kind of future-proof setup needs to be prepared for a future upgrade to a fiber-based technology.

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.

Pvc also dries out and cracks. But yes.

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.

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.

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 seems to be relevant.

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.

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.

I can confirm the pigtails issue. They are a huge pain to strip for whatever reason. Even cheap ones from AliExpress work better.

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.

Thanks, I really appreciate the SMEs commenting here. I'm learning a lot.

Definitely learnt it the hard way this time. You're right that buried cables should be exact in length and fastened to a patch panel. I'll probably look into better conduit design as well for the next time (in 15 years?). Having shared conduits means I would risk damaging other cables if I tried to pull a new cable through.

> 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 hasn't been my experience with fiber entrance cables terminated by ILECs, Spectrum, and Lumen. They typically leave a significant service loop bound to the cable ladder or backer board-- usually 15-20 feet.

> 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)

How exact is exact? :-) I once had to reterminate some fiber that was cut and terminated to exact length, which means there was literally two centimeters from the wall to the connector. I literally had to squeeze the fiber splicer up against the wall to have a chance at splicing on new pigtails, but I had two mis-cuts and I was hosed. :-)

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.

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.