Future-Proof Your Network: Upgrade to 10G with UniFi Fiber Gear 

Some ways to save money: - Use cheaper OM3 instead of OM4, you can still do 100 gigabit at 100 meters over OM3, more than enough for home use. OM4 is overkill. - Use copper or fiber SFP+ DACs instead of OM3/10GBASE-SR where applicable. Think of DACs as the SFP+ modules and the cable integrated into a single assembly. They're usually cheaper, especially for short runs like a switch to a device in the same room or same rack. - Look into cheaper switches from companies like MikroTik instead of Ubiquiti, you can save hundreds if you do that and right-size the switches. - Shop around for all this. Understand the price of SFP+ modules and OM3 cables from different vendors to make sure you're not overpaying. For example, Ubiquiti charges $38 for a pair of SFP+ modules, but you can get a pair of equivalent 10GTek on Amazon for $30, and I've seen them even cheaper elsewhere. Do pay attention to advertised compatibility though. Some caveats or other random notes to consider: - Don't rely on RJ45 SFP+ modules unless you can't avoid it. They run very hot (enough to burn you) because they draw more power than fiber modules, may overheat passively cooled switches if you put too many in one switch, and are limited to 30 meters at 10 gigabit (because they can't get enough power in SFP+ to go farther). - You can get coupling RJ45 keystone jacks too, you don't have to wire the ethernet cable to the keystone jack if you don't want to. I did some ethernet through a wall between rooms and just used a few thin pre-terminated one foot long cat6 cables between the keystones. - If you're installing LC connector fiber keystones in a wall, pay close attention to the boot length of the fiber cable you're putting inside the wall! Most walls and keystone jacks won't have enough space between the two sheets of drywall to fit a normal LC connector fiber cable (not without a nasty bend), so buy short-boot LC connector cables for this use case. - Any time you're putting cables in/through walls/ceilings/etc, make sure you get cables that are appropriately rated for this. Riser/CMR/OFNR for in-wall, plenum/CMP/OFNP for in floors/ceilings/ventilation/etc, with plenum/CMP/OFNP being the better rating (still good for in-wall). This is all about fire safety. You might think none of this matters, until there's a fire and the maybe the cables you ran through a ceiling shorted against something and started the fire, or maybe their insulation jacket was flammable and let the fire spread much faster through your house by bypassing fire breaks like walls and doors.

I bought a spool of 1,000 ft of OM4. For about $300 I bought the supplies (Jonard fiber stripper, cleaver, AFL LC FastConnect) to learn how terminate my own fiber. I don't work with twisted pair a ton but am comfortable putting on RJ-45 and punching down keystones. On my first attempt with putting fiber ends on I got a light/signal and was capable of connecting. I went through about three LC connectors before getting a couple tips that made it easier and cleaner (likely for better quality connections). Point being that for not that much money and a little bit of time and focus you too can terminate multi- or singlemode fiber. Both are the same technique and dimensions when you get down to the 125um cladding. The AFL FastConnect OM4 (Laser Optimized) LC connectors are about US$75 a six-pack and the OM4 fiber was about $300 for 1,000 ft. If you have any interest I'd be glad to give you the links to what I bought or the tips for terminating. A few hundred bucks and two hours time you'll be terminating like you're Lenny Lightwave! Even though premade is so much easier I wanted to nerd out and learn the skill. Have about 10 fiber runs in my house now including 25GbE to a couple computers.

Every DC I’ve worked in has layers of daisy chained switches. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with it. As long as you have sufficient bandwidth cross linking them and you lay out you clients to minimised chatter across those links. Putting your network storage on the switch with clients most likely to be doing large transfers to them keeps more of the data on the backplane and off the wire.

When I was taking a random networking class around 2006, the enterprise gear was all CLI and no unified management. And that's what it was like all around town I was told since those companies provided the Cisco gear we were working with in the lab at school. I'm actually surprised it's normal now to centrally manage everything in the enterprise. I've also heard it costs a bunch of get that functionality whereas UniFi is free.

While the Unifi Aggregation switch shows 10GbE as the negotiated speed, I have successfully connected 2.5GbE and 5 GbE devices to it using a 10GBase-T SFP+ to RJ-45 transceiver. They functioned perfectly at those speeds with no issues. The devices themselves properly reported 2.5Gb and 5Gb on their interfaces.

Hi, awesome video! A a little correction from my side: With some SFP Module you are capable of using 2.5gbE wit hthe USW-Aggregation. The Module will Negotiate 10gbE with the Module, but the Module will Negotiate 2.5 with the Network Device. The 10Gtek ASF-10G-T is one of those capable of doing that. here is a quote from the Unifi Forums: "The 10Gtek ASF-10G-T is autonegotiating the 10g connection on the SFP+ side and the 2.5G connection on the RJ45 side."

10G upgrade added to the ever growing self-hosted Kanban board titled "Cool shit to try". Thanks for the vid!

I didn't realize who I was going to watch when I clicked on this but the moment I heard your voice I knew exactly who you are. Edgerly waiting for the next episode of self hosted

10GBASE-T is amazing and annoying at the same time: It runs with really sophisticated line coding, right up against the shannon limit of the cable. That makes it power hungry, and very sensitive to non-perfect termination and connector contact. Combine that with mechanical compromises made in a cat6(a) connector in order to get the bandwidth in an 8P8C connector, and you get why I no longer use it where I have a patch panel in the path. Your network diagram looks like RSTP is next on the list of things to try - Then you could have unplugged the DAC cables without disturbing the video watchers. And finally, congratulations on now having error counters on all ports. Life is hard enough without them :-)

I just upgraded to 2.5gbe, it came on pc, it came on my router, a switch was very cheap and so was a dongle for my NAS. I am very happy with it. 10gbe can wait.

"Cognitive load of maintaining hardware" -- well said Sir, I am stealing this!

Great Video Alex. I love seeing other's network layouts and hardware. Love how you took the time to go through it all in detail.

I run 10gbe copper at home for ~18m, but my cable is the very expensive Nexans cat6a, then the cable is terminated with cat6 keystones and then using 1m cat6a patch cables to the devices for short runs use passive DACs, they use a whole lot less power, don't need SFP/+ modules and they have much lower latency than fiber

Thank you for your video. I appreciate you sharing what worked, what didn't and why. I am starting to setup a 10g network in my home and I will be using some Unifi products.

this is exactly what I am trying to do at home. I dont have as many devices currently, but future proofing is wise as well. great video

Skip the in between steps to go for the maximum throughput on standard Fiber optic networking. I think it supports 1 Terabit per second, per color, per cable. Certainly the way to go if you can afford that much speed.

Thanks for the demo and info, I appreciate you sharing the network layout. I have three Mikrotik CSS326-24G-2S+RM 24 port Gigabit Ethernet switch with two SFP+ ports that tie my garage, computer room, and living room. But looking at your setup, I guess I should put the Unifi Aggregation switch in the middle, making it a star, since I was just daily chaining them at this time with a 10GBase-T SFP+ to RJ-45 Transceiver

I watched your videos and feel your you are the right person to guide me with my bespoke setup all it’s are Unifi products

I'm a huge fan of the "Self Hosted" podcast and loved this video. Keep up the good work!

Cat 6a cable can easily go 10g for 100m. The thing is that most Cat 6a connections use normal rj45 jacks that are crimped with normal Cat 5e or Cat 6 crimpers. Although this will pass the 8 pair connectivity tester, they will fail miserably on the Fluke test! To get your Cat 6a connections to work properly you have to use a Cat 6a keystone jack and then connect that to a Cat 6a certified patch cable. Alternatively just get the Telegartner MFP8 field connectors (or something similar) and connect directly one end to the other. If you do that, your Cat 6A connection will easily go even 40G if for only 100 feet. If Cat 6A cable is not using properly terminated connections ... you will actually have less performance than Cat 5e connections as the Cat 6A cable has heavy shielding which can work against you by propagating interference.

i have started out with 1 gig to my mancave and when i went all out on unifi, i added 10gb fibre to my mancave, which is about 10-15m away from the house

Great video. I work in a technology role and I still feel like I walked away learning something!

Thanks for this video I am learning how to get 10g in my home networks .

Super helpful video with spot on the right amount of information, thank you so much for putting this together! Also the network diagram helped a lot!

Loved the video. Thank You. Gonna start using Fiber soon too.

1. AOC is a thing with direct attached fibers and with longer runs. 2. SM is easier choice for the future proofing much longer in the future and for a 300 meter limit. 3. Self made cables is a thing here as well and not that difficult to achieve. 4. Bloody critters are capable of cable damage thus put armored cables to the attic etc.

Great video, just ordered the cable tester using your link :D

Wow, I love your video. Very detailed and good to follow along with. Thanks.

This video is brilliant for any aspiring UniFi enthusiast!

I love the video, the way you explain and talk thru all the elements, the reasoning behind, the editing! Amazing :) At home we have everything on the basement but for that we needed to extend all the CAT6 cables that where terminated in the ground floor (aka female keystone to a new cable going to the main networking/servers rack) plus run some CAT6A additional ones. That was a lot of work haha. Some of the CAT6A connect to an USW Aggregation using RJ45 SFP+ transceivers but I'm still questioning if we should have ran OM4 like you did instead for the devices that are 10G and are not in the basement.

Loved the video. The pace, content, and video all worked well. I also liked your cadence and how you explained things. Finally, I saw the Easter egg!

Love the design of your network! I don't mean to be rude, but I felt really justified in my decision to go with SFP+ and Fiber when you were talking about the pain points of 10GbE over copper. 😅 Can't wait to see how your Homelab evolves over time! Subscribed!

Extremely useful video. The way that you explain things is calm and I really like it that way. Even someone with some experience in networking like me enjoyed these simple explanations which means that they are truly great!

Excellent video! I likened this to a well done lecture at university. I subscribed!!

So well summarised with so much individual information. Thank you very much for this great explanation.

I segmented my house into two halves as well, the top and bottom floors are linked with a single SFP+ fiber cable from UI. USW-24-pro poe up stairs and down.

Outstanding video. Thank you.

Thanks man! .. regards from Lima, Perú

Yep! Spotted the easter egg :). Tremendously informative video! Thanks.

Thank you for the very stimulating video. I currently use 2 TP-Link Stackable JetStream 24-port Gigabit T1700G-28TQ Smart Switches, each with 4 SFP+ ports. I installed 10GbE SPF+ cards in the servers (Proxmox, Truenas, Backup) and an Asus XG-C100C 10GbE RJ45 card in the clients. Firewall is an OPNsense - works! Can you also say why you don't use a Unifi firewal in addition to the Unifi switches instead of OPNsense?

Wow, MM, it's alive! in 14 years working in Telecom I've seen and used it once only :).

I am also dealing with a similar upstairs/downstairs situation. I lucked out. Snagged a Qnap Qhora-301W router for cheap (Amazon “used” but it was new). I’m already sucked into Qnap’s ecosystem, so I’m sticking with them. The router features two 10gbe ports! The router is on the main floor. I haven’t purchased the switches yet, but I’ll have one in the basement and another on the second floor. My setup doesn’t need fiber, just copper. When I buy a new house, I’ll probably switch to fiber. Maybe Qnap’s fiber switches will go down in price by then?

I wonder how long it will be where PON style fibre 10G-PON with just one strand will be a standard. It is very cheap to run with connector small enough to fit in the existing conduit. I could literally pull my cat5a out and pull the fibre in.

very helpful and well explained, thanks

Thank you.

Did you have issues with those fanless 8-port aggregation switches? In my network closet, it was frequently overheating with Mikrotik SFP+ connectors (I didn't use fiber at the time). I ended up switching to the more-expensive 32-port model (which has a built-in fan), and that fixed all my issues no matter the connector. I moved the 8-port model to another room where I'm only using 4 ports and haven't had heat issues since. Only 15 of those 32-ports are in used since SFP connectors don't have PoE, but it's already more than the 8 ports I had before, and I seem to be always finding more places to add Ethernet drops in my house. I've already moved 20 wireless IoT devices onto Ethernet, and will do that to more devices that support it. Ethernet EVERYWHERE!

Great video! Subscribed

I'm surprised you're good with 10Gb. It wasn't until I setup 25Gb that I finally moved all my files off my main rig and onto my NAS. Before, I only used my NAS as a backup because I was so unsatisfied with the transfer speeds. 25Gb is finally at NVMe speeds with PCIe gen 3. I'm actually running into limitations in my drives now rather than the cable. Also, upgrading everything to jumbo packets for that and my 5Gb Internet seems to have caused issues with some older devices. I left it this way, but I'm aware there are weird issues now for some IoT devices. It's never that simple :/.

Very nice presentation 👍

The switch in my home network is an Aruba S2500 POE+. It has 4 SFP+ 10G ports and 48 POE+ 1g ports. (I got it used on ebay for dirt cheap) I only have 4 wired devises on my network. They include my work station, my media server, my Blue Iris server, and unused 10g port saved for an unfinished build. Everything else is either a POE powered security camera or a wireless device. It all fits in my 25U rack. Even my workstation is in my rack. Its all nice and tidy, meets my needs and works. Once I learn how to fully use a layer 3 managed switch, I plan to use vlans to segment my network. The wireless stuff together, my security cameras together, and any future IOT stuff I may start messing about with will be together. I have a lot to still learn but its a fun hobby.

I’m running 10GbE on my network everywhere and I regularly exceed 2.5GbE. I love it, BUT I was stupid for not laying fiber instead. I could even have my server room with all my PC’s rack mounted and centralized anything I want and had better scalability. I had a team come in for like a week to run it, so I do t want to redo the whole thing,e job 2 years later. Kicking myself.

so i just bought a house, and while i dont expect internerspeeds in my rural area to get above teh 1gb speed i have now i did future proof abit, im using a UDM-PRO as my base, (thought about opnsense but it kept crashing and dropping same iwth pf sense couldnt get them to be stable), anyway i have 3 bedrooms on main floor with living room kitchen, 2 offices in basement and a living room, each room in the house has 1 dedicated cat6 and 1 poe dedicated cat 6, as well as a conduit for future runs, in my attic i just ran 4 pairs of om4 fibre as i plan on having a unifi poe switch there for cameras and 2 building to building bridges, 1 that goes to my garage and 1 that will go to a greenhouse im building in the back of my property, each will house a 24 port poe switch but probably just like 8poe 16 not poe, :D great video gave me alot to think about for future fibre runs in the house, i apologize for my spelling i see alot of red lines lol

Lovely video! I wonder if there is any way to stress test an internet connection to see problems like the one you described with the wrong terminations in the cable? Maybe just iperf3 running over night with 10Gig packets?

I changed my home network over to 10 gig all internal with fiber and DAC. And then I had plenty of ports on my SFP+ switches, And I was able to aggregate to connections to make a single link of 20Gbps. And then wherever and from my server rack to my wiring closet in the master closet I ran a ubiquiti multi-strand fiber line that has the six fibers, and so I was able to use two of them to send a 20 GB link to the Enterprise 2.5Gbps links to the ports around the house, and I had a old 1Gbps ubiquiti 105 w poe switch that I've had for a few years now and was able to use two more fibers to aggregate a 2gbps link to feed that switch which runs a handful of my ubiquiti cameras outside. Internally five of my rack mount servers have four 10 gig SFP+ ports, So each server has 40Gbps link. Where one server is running true Nas with the NetApp storage shelf with a little over 300 terabytes of space with 26 sas hard drives. And the rest are running ESXi and clustered v center. With all the VM storage hosted on the net app. So the connection between the servers and the NetApp and really anything within my network is incredibly fast If I'm transferring a file between server to server it's like a blink of an eye, if I transfer a massive file from my desktop to my server share it will actually upload that file to the server at 2.5Gbps speed as that's the slowest from my desktop to the server. I remember many years ago when I upgraded from 100 to 1000 and was wondering if it was worth the payoff and sure enough it definitely was, gig items became cheap very fast however the 10 gig stuff is still taking a while and still coming down in price

This was super interesting.

USW Enterprise 8 PoE is a nice compromise. I wish UI would introduce more 2.5Gb switches.

I’m stuck, so i have udm pro special edition. 10Gb networking and a Mellanox connectx-3 what can transceiver did you use to connect the server to the switch? Mellanox port are different from the regular sip+. Thanks in advance for your great content

Just found ur channel excellent video so useful thank you. Just subbed as see few vids I like look of. Can i ask where u get your cables and transceivers from please?

I'd like to connect my main switches with fiber but in a normal UK house its a real challenge to get cables from A-B without breaking them. The cat6 cables I ran went trough absolute trauma to get them into the walls, pulling through internal bends etc. Then if you did manage it, you need to terminate them yourself as you'd never get a pre-terminated SFP connector through the walls

Excuse me, Unifi ppoe switch is good a lot traffic devices cctv right? Sir

Good video sir !

thanks! Thinking about this subject, my main question is why not SFP28? (using direct links between data hungry clients and NAS, and SFP+ for switches)

My PFSense Box just died after 2 years, soooooooooo Deam Machine Time, I know your feeling.

10gig is going to be a big upgrade when we get wifi 7 ap's with 6ghz as well. thats my plan at least. I think unifi needs some switches that support 10gig poe++ though. they have only one currently for 4 or 6 ports (i forget which)

Great, what am I going to do with this 1000' spool of CAT6a now that you've convinced me to move to 10g fiber.

this was fun to watch in the background while doing other things. btw bill gates said 64K ;)

10g over copper is hit or miss. I ran cat 6 throughout my 2 story home to the basement. My desktop is connected at 10g to the switch in the basement and Ive had no problems at all. The ethernet runs even cross over all of the power cables coming out of my breaker panel (at 90 degrees).

Great tour Alex! After watching the secret management video, I wonder if you've done any network automation with Ansible? It's quite different than with Linux targets.

Why run 2 SFP+ connection back to the other switch, dont understand the need for 2 when one is enough. also this not cause some sort of loopbakc, do you change a setting on the swtiches to account for this?

@KTZ Systems Did you mean to say "cat5e" instead of "cat6a" when describing your cabling issues? I just ran full cat6a (~3000 feet of cat6a that is as thick as quad-shielded coax and is hard to work with when running through the installation holes when at scale of ten or more cables.) for my cameras, and drops for rooms. I did this work last year throughout my home and the cable you just showed in your reference is not cat6a at timestamp 10:47 . (Where is the shielding and the cable overall diameter looks more like regular cat6 or cat5e). I have 120ft runs from my basement to my attic and upper level devices and everything is solid. However, this is now irrelevant because you have already invested in fiber to your problem is now solved.).

How did you create the custom login banner for morpheus @5:00 in the video?

Great stuff.. have been pondering this upgrade for a while, but the whole "your transceivers might work, might not" thing was been holding me back.. I'm already in the unifi eco system with a USW48 with two sfp+ ports, so I may try and dip my toe in 10gig waters.. also read that the fiber cables are more fragile than copper.. what's your experience with that?

Why don't you use the cloudkey to host?

Oh awesome you have a RU-vid now :)

Hello I wish to go Fibre 10gb home upgrade from Ethernet network - all my gear is Unifi already ……I need help plan

I have a netgear xsm7224s 10 Gig switch, 1 Arubra s2500 poe with 4 10 g ports. and 1 Arubra s3500 poe also with 4 10 g ports. the only difference between the 2500 and 3500 is the 3500 has 2 power supplies. All my computers in my office are all 10g. and the run from my shed/office to the home has 2 10g lines witch are connected to the netgear switch the same with the switch in the office POE switch. All 3 switches are enterprise hardware. before I only had 1g but with 32 4k and 8k security cameras the 1g was starting to bog down now I don't even know the POE cameras are on the network. I have some of those 10g T transceivers, and I have bought different one and not of my switches support them. I believe its because they take more power than the fiber and the switches wont power them.

Nice video, love the detailed explanations! I'm not sure if it's just me or not, but it seems like the audio and video are just ever so slightly out of sync.

do something like caft computing 100g upgrade - worth it - you don't need the switch either #single mode #multimode

TP-Link have a 16 port semi-managed PoE switch for $199 (TL-SG1218MPE), with double the power budget (around 200W total)... Is the USW-24-POE really worth nearly double the price? TP-Link also have the ER8411 router for $350, which has two 10Gbps SFP+ ports and eight 1Gbps ports. I'm using it with 10Gbps internet and it works really well. I don't think Unifi have anything around the same price with the same performance.

Hi I wish to seek some help to upgrade my existing home Unifi networking system to 10g fibre ……if I can contact you somehow and discuss my existing setup I would be grateful. Once I know exactly what gear I need to buy from Unifi - and subsequently the step by step plan to implement the necessary changes I can confidently do this myself. BTW I am just an ordinary person not an expert but very much interested in improving my slow home network. I know it’s important for you to have details of my current setup in order for you to guide me? I am happy to pay for your help. I am not in the US - live in UK

Me hose happy with gigabit local speeds and 300mbits sppeds from ISP

Unifi US XG 6 PoE

we're so used to say ethernet cable for RJ45 that we forget DACs are also ethernet.. Fiber is also ethernet.. it's going to trigger some hehe

Screw it just got QSFP!

I don't understand why 10 gig wasn't the default for home networks 5 years ago. With single NVME drives capable of saturating 10 gig already, if I had the cash, I'd skip 10 gig and go straight to 25 or even 100 for my main machines anyway. 1 gig is sufficient for almost every other client in the house as gigabit internet is crazy expensive around me still. And frankly, even if we had multigig internet, most of the clients don't really need that much speed anyway.

I'm staring at switches debating if I want to buy into more TP-Link omada gear. I really like the idea of an all in one interface, but gosh their 10gb switch options are really not that impressive.

I love the podcast and this video, therefore take this as a friendly note. The wood you are using is not plywood. Plywood is made of wood scraps that are glued and compressed into a single board. Plywood is obviously of the Ply variety just based on how it looks. Keep up the great content!

Oh nice someone is consumed by Factorio! 😅😁😷

While there is nothing wrong with the network scheme, I had to laugh when he said he did it to save money (ie e cost of wire). Sure you saved $300 in wire costs, but spent $1000 in extra network switches.

I think you have way to much hardware for the number of devices tbh. but I know that. I also like to overkill it with stuff :D

Considering cooperating with us? QSFPTEK has 10 years of experience in the production and sales of optical modules. We sincerely hope that you can cooperate with us.🤔

why? Unifys latest cams are 100 megabit. You can use your oldest 100 Mbit hub

Future proof is not 10Gbe that is just sufficient in 2023 for any non wireless usage. If you want future proof get at.least 25Gbe you can find 2 hand bargain equipment. But If you want something decent 40Gbe is the way to go, big data center are dismissing that speed since 2 years and you can get an incredible set up for a decent price.

I think 10gbe is great but there’s very little benefit to it beyond connecting to a nas.

you can terminate your own fiber. the tools are just so expensive unless your are doing fiber for a living

Sure, I've got extra money to burn.😂

2 x 10 gig doesn't equals 20 gig. The speed is still 10 gig but you can send more traffic at the same time. It's like adding an extra lane to a motorway, the speed is still 70 MPH, it doesn't double to 140 MPH. However, you can get more cars down the motorway at the same time.

Hey, We are ONWOTE, a manufacturer of PoE and Wireless Security Camera Systems. Do you plan to install a security camera to protect the safety around you? Now, we are looking for partners to install and review our camera system, so any chance for us? ☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺

Ubiquiti better

You can in fact terminate fiber cables... smh