which Optical Fiber Cable to buy?

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pecbear

pecbear

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Sep 6, 2013
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Hello,

I recently changed my ISP to one that offered Fiber Optics connection in my area, the intaller came and did his thing, but when i asked him if i could have the router installed in a specific room he only said that, if i wanted that, i would need to buy a cable and do it myself. I don't mind that he said that, even though i think he should of installed it where i wanted him to, but i was looking online where to buy a fiber optic cable, and started learning more about it, a bunch of words pop out like duplex, simplex, or multi-mode and single mode and connector types like SC and ST etc. i did my reading but still could not find a right answer or the right product. i searched ebay and other online stores but only found a cable with 2 connectors, and my Huawei HG8245, only has one cable on it, and internet work just find. I need help understanding what type of cable a actually need for a home LAN, I'm looking for maybe 50ft of cable, and as cheap as possible,
by looking at the cable i have, i see it has an SC connection type, so anything in that area would be perfect. ill include a picture of the cable for reference:
Here is a link to one i found online

And 2 pictures i took of the cable in my home
Cable 1a
Cable 1b

Extra:

Outside installation from underground. The small white tube
is where the cable is fed from underground to the mounted wall plate, the clear cable loops around inside and meets with the connector, which then had the yellow cable in link [Cable 1a] connected and fed through the wall which then connects to the next picture which is the Inside Wall plate i cann see there is some sort of connector therer, but when i opened it, it seems to just link 2 cables and thats it. Next is the Back of Router for which only has the option for optical.​
 
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From the manual:

The type of the optical connector connected to the OPTICAL
port is SC/APC.

From the specs it looks to be a single fiber (Orange outer is multimode, I believe) But using a single fiber should only allow simplex which would be useless. Unless they're running two-color to give half/full duplex, but that seems too goofy to be real, and the glass would be expensive to be clear to two wavelengths. I really wonder if this cable secretly has two fibers. I'd ask for a head on shot, but we're playing with lasers here, and it might go well for retinas or cameras.

Here's a copy of the manual I found:

http://setuprouter.com/router/huawei/hg8245/manual-165.pdf
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2Be_or_Not2Be

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Aug 23, 2013
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First off, generally speaking, your installer shouldn't have left you with a fiber optic cable inside your house. Usually you have the ONT outside; that's where the FTTH (fiber to the home) terminates. From it, you get either a CAT5/6 UTP Ethernet cable to a room of your choice, or you get a RG6 coaxial able run to a router with a coax input. I would highly recommend that you call the ISP back & tell them you didn't get a proper installation. As you have found, an actual fiber cable inside the house is NOT a regular residential connection.

 
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Saberus

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From the manual:

The type of the optical connector connected to the OPTICAL
port is SC/APC.

From the specs it looks to be a single fiber (Orange outer is multimode, I believe) But using a single fiber should only allow simplex which would be useless. Unless they're running two-color to give half/full duplex, but that seems too goofy to be real, and the glass would be expensive to be clear to two wavelengths. I really wonder if this cable secretly has two fibers. I'd ask for a head on shot, but we're playing with lasers here, and it might go well for retinas or cameras.

Here's a copy of the manual I found:

http://setuprouter.com/router/huawei/hg8245/manual-165.pdf
 
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little_me

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I'm quite sure that the fiber in question is single, reason for that is that multimode doesn't really have the necessary range/max speed for ISP's to like it.
Some single mode cables have two cables in one and two connectors in both ends (as the ebay link shows) in which case you need only the first connector on both ends.
 
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pecbear

pecbear

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Thank you all for the quick and helpfull replies, but it seems like a normal installation, most of my neighbors and friends have the same ISP, and their LAN is connected the same way from the outside wall plate into the house, meaning they all have a Fiber cable inside their home and the same router model. I added some new pictures into the original post to provide more examples of what is happening, one of them is from outside showing the connection from the underground source to the house, the other is the wall plate inside the house, which does nothing but hide the hole on the wall, and the back of my router. Still need help into which cable to get, can we find a conclusion from the above information? thanks in advance!
 
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little_me

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and as I've said, it is most certainly single mode using only single optical cable. Also as noted, if you do buy cable with two, it doesn't matter, you just use one of the two, which one doesn't matter

As for the connector inside the wall plate, it is just female-female connector, not in use. In theory they could have plugged the cable coming from outside to that connector and then use 2nd cable from there to inside house, making removal/changing of said inside house cable a lot easier if necessary.
 
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bill001g

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That is strange that they run fiber directly into where you can play with it.

Be extremely careful when you handle fiber. If you were to do something simple like wind that cable around your finger a couple times you would likely break the glass inside the cable.

The cable you link is LC-SC it has different connectors on each end the blue end is smaller...the blue color is not significant the size of the connector is. You want SC-SC. The harder part is you want what is called a APC connector which is not as common.

So what you want is single mode SC-SC APC. Normal fiber installs use 2 fiber one for transmit and one for receive. Cable companies use a method to transmit and receive on a single fiber to reduce the number of fibers they need to run to a house. If all you can find is a dual connection cable it will be fine just use one and ignore the other.

Pretty much you should be able to replace that cable with a longer version of it.

....as I mention protect the fiber even a very small pinch or bend will break it and they are rather expensive. This is why I have seen most ISP convert this to ethernet where it enters the house to avoid idiots breaking it.
 
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lcardenas

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This is a great connection, is actually the same connection that we have in europe with movistar in FTTH. The kind of connector that you are using is SC/APC in a simplex PVC Cable. if you want to install in another room i would recommend to buy to incredible cheap stuff... The first one is a fiber optics coupler SC-SC Singlemode Simplex APC and a fiber optics patch cord APC Simplex Singlemode. Beyondtech does a great job selling this online, i link you the site: - with that solution you can extend your connection without losing any quality in the connection.
 
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