bitch light is so fucking sensitive to distortion and the cables dont just "plug" into sockets like good 'ol electrons, you need specialized tools to connect and disconnect joins, FO to Digital converters and the other way around, Ethernet encapsulation and basically be a fucking techie to even do the equivalent of "RJ45 from A to B"

>>54685573
I'm well aware, but everyone has to starts somewhere. Advice is welcome on some things to google or read :)

>>54685605
If you want the "instant mash" version, just get two FO NICs (PCIe cards that go into each computer) and if your fiber isnt capped, look up what to buy and how to go about affixing it to either end and voila, a very expensive ethernet replacement.

Speed? same as copper <100m. Does not drop over distance like copper does. You'll be capped by your storage using FO.

Unless you want to connect two computer literally kilometers apart this is a waste of money. However if you have like a cabin in the midle of the woods and your home is on the edge of town you could realistically run a single cable to it, no repeaters, as far as a few kms.

Yes, assuming you want to connect a few PCs together you'll require fiber NICs for the PCs, a fiber switch for PCs to internetwork, and a handful of fiber patch cables dependent on the media type the NICs / switch want.

Your roll of fiber optic cable is cool and all but unless you have access to a fusion splicer which is probably the $1500 you are referencing and frankly a $1500 will get you a very temperamental device it's just a roll of cable taking up space.

To actually get a switch, 2x NIC, 2x SFPs, and 2x patch cables it'll probably cost you about $550 assuming you want to see gigabit speeds.

The final question you should ask yourself is why, fiber is just a different medium for signal to be carried through, it doesn't really have any inherent benefits unless you want to do something that would saturate that 1Gigabit/sec your plain old copper already provides most likely.

If you want a small fiber network that exceeds those speeds as well that $550 pricetag will move up.

>>54685240
>Do I really need $1500 equipment?
Pretty much yeah. You need the following:
-A PCI card for each computer in which to terminate the fibre connections.
-A network switch with SPF ports at minimum, often with copper ports so you can connect the computers to the internet.
-Equipment to terminate fiber connections which can be rather expensive/tedious. Not really sure how much it costs or what all you need but I've seen people do it. Keep in mind, it takes guys a long-ass time to do this (hours) if they've done it for a while.
-Equipment to test the fiber connection. Again these tools are probably expensive.
Honestly 1500 is probably lowballing this a bit.I think you would be better learning standard networking and getting a job at Centurylink etc. to terminate fiber.

>>54685736
>>54685752
>>54685827
Thank you all for the info, I guess I'll have to give up on the idea for now then. Never knew it would be relatively useless for hobbyists, but it makes sense.

>>54685240
I think it's only really beneficial for connection speeds of over 10Gbps. There's no cost benefit or advantage to fiber at all until you start pushing past 10Gbps, where latencies start becoming a significant factor in copper connections.
Of course, a single 10Gbps NIC will set you back at least $395 and is a PCIe 2.0 4x card at minimum. Most of those NICs don't even have the connectors installed, so you'll need to fork over another $20 for a decent pair.

And then there's the issue of 10Gbps being overkill for most home and prosumer file transfers, since that bandwidth far exceeds what SATA3 is capable of, even an array of SSDs in RAID0. I'd say port teaming with 4 Gigabit Ethernet lines is a much more cost effective and reliable than a single 10 Gbps fiber line.

>>54685827
>SFP ports

he'll need SFP+ if he wants anything above 4gbps

>>54686322
>2016
>not having PCIe flash

>>54686845
>PCIe SSD at one end
>HDD array at the other
Even a tech illiterate can tell you that you won't need 10 Gbps connections for that