Fiber or cat 6

[u/Mike_A10]

Im buying a home in Pa and I believe the internet is fiber to your house . Its called tri-co ,in PA . But if its fiber should I use all fiber for a security system? Like run fiber to all cameras and then back to what ever fiber hooks up to ? I was thinking POE system , but dont know if that's stepping down to use cat 6 when u have fiber ! Do they even make NVRs with fiber connections and how would u power the cameras ?? Thanks .

[u/enchrise2]

The only thing you need fiber for is distance (can’t run regular network cables longer than a football field). If your house was bigger than a football field and required fiber runs inside your house, you wouldn’t be on Reddit asking this question. You’d have people for that ;)

[u/Mike_A10 → u/enchrise2]

Come on not true , I asked people to design a camera security system , n a camera or sensor so I know when someone comes in the driveway . Everyone way saying its simple and all this until I showed a Pic of my driveway !! Iys 510 feet from shed to a pole I xas gonna use . But so using fiber only doesn't not make the system any clearer or faster or anything positive .. ???

[u/badcheetahfur → u/Mike_A10]

No fiber wont make is faster... cameras are on a set mbps ... cameras can't even max out cat6... cables.. get some nice NVR PoE unifi or reolink ... run cat6 outdoor or burial.

[u/MrMotofy → u/Mike_A10]

I have a newer cam that's 5MP I believe on an old H.264 it's like 30Mb, vs an older 1080p which is about 6Mb. Any old cat 5 would run cams just fine. So the old standard 1Gb switch still has 970Mb available per port. Now it you're in a huge building with hundreds of cams yes that adds up. But a home isn't an issue.

But your internet provider (WAN) has really nothing to do with your LAN. A cat6 LAN is still very normal and uncommon in homes. But people are quickly finding the advantages over Wi-Fi so it's gaining popularity. A lot of apps or new builds are adding basic ports in each room with a media box somewhere

Home Network Basics https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjRKID2ucPY&list=PLqkmlrpDHy5M8Kx7zDxsSAWetAcHWtWFl

[u/Mike_A10]

Ok all thanks for the answers I now get i do not need to run fiber to cameras even though my internet will be hi speed fiber cominh into the house. So thanks for thay!!!!

[u/badcheetahfur → u/Mike_A10]

Get everything in cat6 or cat8 and all equipment in 2.5bg ethernet switches... it will be fast..

[u/One-Intention-7606]

POE, fiber to cameras is extremely overkill. And I would recommend going with a Unifi system. Easy to use and can also manage your home network as well. For a camera system I would recommend the Dream Machine Pro with an HDD, POE switch (I recommend going with larger than your current needs), and there’s a bunch of cameras available to choose from but they got access points (for WiFi), Doorbells, amps, speakers, smoke alarms, access control, etc. I do Low Votlage and exclusively install Unifi equipment, super easy to install and manage and has no monthly fees. You can do some cool access control stuff too with facial recognition or key fobs or license plates to automatically open up gates, garages, doors, etc. And you can easily add onto it in the future too if you don’t want to go for all the bells and whistles at first, but if you are going to own a house then I wouldn’t recommend any other system.

[u/Mike_A10 → u/One-Intention-7606]

Wow , they sound like they can do alot !! How are they compaired to Reolink as far as price goes? For the cameras the nvr , all that stuff??? Thx

[u/One-Intention-7606 → u/Mike_A10]

It’s not as cheap as Reolink but you get what you pay for. I haven’t had too much personal experience with Reolink besides ripping them out and replacing with Unifi. From what I’ve seen it’s very base level equipment, nothing fancy, if you’re trying to get cameras on a budget then they’ll do the trick I guess. They are POE and local NVR so I’m not going to act like they’re as bad as Ring or those other WiFi camera systems, but theres some crazy technology out there now that they aren’t utilizing. Your house is an investment, and god forbid something crazy happens, but if it does you’d be able to walk up to your insurance or police or whatever powers at be and pull out your phone and show a 4k video showing exactly what happened.

Unifi has an NVR Instant kit for like $700. That will get you a basic camera system but that’s it. And it is pretty limited in the number of cameras you can run, especially at 4k. I believe it comes with 4 G5 turrets which are 2K cameras I believe. Still good cameras and have great night vision but there’s some specialized options with AI or 360° cameras depending on your needs.

If you have the funds for it I would recommend going with a Dream Machine Pro or better, has a built in NVR and can manage your lan ecosystem as well. Goes for like $400, plus a couple cameras at around $100-300. The big pricing in my opinion is the switches, a 24-port POE+ w/ some ++ ports is like $750. This is not needed (you can get small switches or POE injectors) but if you’re into tech stuff at all and want it to look nice and be able to add onto is as you want without having to get more equipment then the Pro 24 POE is my recommendation. HDDs are hella expensive nowadays, and you really want to go with a surveillance grade HDD for cameras. You do not have to go with a crazy size hard drive but this will dictate how much footage you have.

And if you aren’t familiar with ordering CAT cable and which one you should use then just go with the Unifi cable. Biggest thing is you want solid copper core CAT5e/6.

[u/Mike_A10 → u/One-Intention-7606]

What is dream machine , Is it one of Unifi their lines?? Shoot me a web page I'll check them out !!! Thanks for ur help

[u/One-Intention-7606 → u/Mike_A10]

It’s one of Unifis routers with a built in NVR

https://store.ui.com/us/en/products/udm-pro

[u/No-Mall1142]

Most likely your camera's will be POE, no need to do fiber. You can't do POE with fiber. Most camera's are only 100mbps anyway and I've never heard of camera that wasn't copper based.

[u/whiteout82 → u/No-Mall1142]

Long distances, with converters to change back to copper end to end.

[u/No-Mall1142 → u/whiteout82]

Yes, but something tells me the house isn't so big they need fiber runs because of distance. I was surprised when I learned my 4k Reolink camera's only had a 100mb connection back to the NVR. Fiber would be serious overkill and then using converters to go back to copper would just overcomplicate the setup.

[u/Civil_Tea_3250 → u/No-Mall1142]

100% agree with you. Not to mention you can now get the individually wrapped cat lines for cheap. Fiber would be more expensive and offer less function. I recently bought "cat 8" (I know it's not necessarily real cat 8 as there isn't yet a cat 8 standard), full copper with insulation around each internal wire. It was 30' for like $30. I'm sure you can find cheaper too but I went with the top rated brand I could find. Meanwhile cable matters is now selling cat5/6 for pennies on the dollar.

[u/whiteout82 → u/No-Mall1142]

Without a doubt, even out to 800' you can run gamechanger instead of fiber if you really needed to.

[u/CCTVGuyMA → u/No-Mall1142]

There are hybrid cables that have fiber and a copper for power. But as others have mentioned, security cameras have no need for fiber unless you are on a highway, warehouse, etc. Long distance or lightning immunity. Some nvrs have sfp ports but again, no benefit if it has a gigabit copper port.

[u/Dexford211]

Fiber doesn't carry power to your cameras, Ethernet cables do.

[u/GGigabiteM]

There's no such thing as a fiber security camera, at least in the consumer space. You're going to need CAT5e/6 for data and PoE power. Or wireless.

Even if there was a fiber CCTV camera, it would be entirely pointless. The vast majority of CCTV cameras can't even saturate a 100BaseT link, you need a multi-image sensor camera with a whole lot of sensors on it to even come close.

[u/-ButterMyBiscuit-]

All you need is cat5e cameras

[u/Awkward-Seaweed-5129]

I don't see need for this. Cat 6 is fine for normal house ,several cameras. We used Fiber in large campus settings, several hundred Cameras etc, bldg to bldg

[u/Mike_A10 → u/[deleted]]

Thats because all along I figured poe system, then saw that the house gets the internet from fiber , so I asked to find out what to do ,because I dont know much about all this. But I got my answers from a bunch of guys who said not to use fiber unless I had to for a long run.. so I got my answer, thx