Summary. - what's the best way to easily terminate multimode fiber at home using some of the new quick connectors, I guess?
I'm putting in 10Gb ethernet for my lab machines and private cloud server. I was going to go with 2.5Gb but 10Gb was less expensive. The cards with SFPs can be had for $39 per end and the fiber is cheap.
I'm trying to figure out if it is worth it to buy a fiber termination kit, a cheap one for like $70, versus just buying more cables. On day one, a deer chewed through an expensive 50m cable (from early IBM days) I had hanging out a window while testing. Then I ran over a 10m cable with my chair, that one still works but I'll probably not use it. I also had a rodent bite one, that still works.
I know the early connecters required epoxy, polishing, etc. It looks like the new connectors, and that's the reason for my question is I don't know which ones, don't need all that epoxy and polishing, you just strip, cleave, insert and off you go. But I can't find the LC connectors I see in the videos. The ones I find are more expensive than the pre-made cables. For instance, I can get 10m om3 multimode LC/LC duplex cables for less than $10 per. 30m aren't much more. I'm using cisco SR SFP+ that cost less than $8 per. The LC quick connectors seem pretty pricey, even the cheap one is a couple bucks, then you need the cable, which in my case I might have, but the kit is $70. Also dangerous as I had a piece hit my face under my eye and goggles and I have a very small piece of glass in my hand from the one the deer chewed. So adding it all up, I can buy a half dozen spare cables but if the rodents get to it under the house continuously, then I'd rather make my own, maybe.
I looked at using cat7 and lesser cables and the copper SFPs are like $45 per end so the fiber is definitely much less from an initial investment. The Mikrotik switch I bought is unbelievably functional for less than $140 shipped, it has routing and switching OS built in.
what are others doing?
Jerry