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Posted by alienchow 1/11/2026

My Home Fibre Network Disintegrated(alienchow.dev)
269 points | 227 commentspage 2
borlox 1/11/2026|
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 1/11/2026|
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.

rhplus 1/11/2026||
Buried under cement/concrete. A good reminder of the benefits of planning to install some conduit.
glitchc 1/11/2026||
The article mentions PVC trunking, which I take to mean conduit.
danw1979 1/11/2026||
Then why the drama in the article ? Just pull another one through.
dbetteridge 1/11/2026|||
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 1/11/2026||
I do have PVC conduits under the flooring. You can see the photos here: 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.

duk3luk3 1/11/2026|||
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.
barryvan 1/11/2026||
This is an unreasonably effective way of running cables. The first time I used it it felt like magic with how quick and painless it was.
dbetteridge 1/11/2026||||
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 1/11/2026||||
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

angry_octet 1/11/2026||||
That's why they invented cable lube. That number of turns is no obstacle, even with existing cables. But you should also have a pull cord spool.
sgarland 1/11/2026||
To anyone reading this and assuming it applies equally to electrical conduit, it does not, which is why the NEC specs a maximum of four 90 degree bends between pull points. You could probably manage five, as was described, but it is technically disallowed (again, for electrical wiring - the NEC doesn’t care about networking).
oakwhiz 1/11/2026|||
Bends ideally need pull boxes, but given the lack of pull boxes, you might be able to use fish tape where where fish rods / glow rods don't work, if you cannot get a pullstring / pull cable going.
ta988 1/11/2026||
and always install extra guide wire
mkj 1/11/2026||
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 1/11/2026|
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 1/11/2026||
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.

jeffrallen 1/11/2026|||
Right, but sometimes your account manager's job is to manage a giant RMA as a result of their manufacturing department f'ing up. So while I am greatful she did a good job, I would have preferred to not need an account manager at all...
nubinetwork 1/11/2026|||
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 1/11/2026||
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.

overtone1000 1/11/2026||
Upvote for posting about a failure. We should all be more vocal about our failures.
nevi-me 1/11/2026||
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 1/11/2026|
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.
jmward01 1/11/2026||
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 1/11/2026|
Shoes need to be used, or the rubber and/or glue holding the sole on will deteriorate.
zdragnar 1/11/2026|||
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 1/11/2026|||
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.
pixl97 1/11/2026|||
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.

lostlogin 1/11/2026|||
And because they are military grade they need to be used for some military stuff.
Bedlow 1/11/2026||
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 1/11/2026||
About page on OPs blog says Singapore, so yeah.
userbinator 1/11/2026||
PU is especially vulnerable to degradation via hydrolysis.
isoprophlex 1/11/2026||
This is why you always bury a rugged, big diameter tube, and run the cables inside of that.
gleenn 1/11/2026||
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 1/11/2026||
You can pull the wire and second string together so you have always a single string in conduit.
timzaman 1/11/2026||
Pvc also dries out and cracks. But yes.
sfeng 1/11/2026|||
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 1/11/2026||
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 1/11/2026|||
You can always splurge on some military grade pvc conduits :^)
voxlax 1/11/2026||
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.
userbinator 1/11/2026|
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_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.

Sesse__ 1/11/2026||
> 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.

alienchow 1/11/2026||
... Shucks. I should really have scrutinised the materials.
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