 Oh, wait, wait, okay. I'm like Tom Cruise. Oh my God. I'm a short man with a big ego. I mean, I do my own stunts. This is copper networking cable. Copper's lame. This, this looks nothing like the network cable in your house. Why? Because it carries data using light. That's right, ladies and gentlemen, it's finally happening. I have been chasing the perfect networked video editing setup since before I even founded Linus Media Group. And the reason is simple. It is a massive pain in the scrotum to toss around external drives, use Google Drive or whatever it is that regular people do to share footage across multiple team members. And when it's done properly, oh, network storage also helps protect your valuable data in the event of a drive failure. Now this project has been a huge undertaking, but we learned a ton. And we're gonna be using the light from your monitor to network that info straight into your brain world interface. That's right. We're going 25 gigabit to every one of our editing workstations, 100 gigabit to our servers. And we are telling you guys all about it. Holy. Wait, really? Are we sponsored by SolidWorks? Wow, holy to that too. Are you feeling stuck on your current project or waiting for your prototype to come off the 3D printer? Don't waste that time. You should be learning from industry pros who make products using SolidWorks every single day. This year's 3D experience world is online and it's free to attend. Check it out at the link in the video description. So, let's get started. Let's get started. Let's get started. Let's get started. Let's get started. Let's get started. Let's get started. Let's get started. Let's get started. Let's get started. Let's get started. Let's get started. So, when you're installing and using fiber, it's important to understand why fiber is even necessary in the first place. In both copper and fiber optic cabling, information is transmitted by changes in energy at a given frequency. With copper ethernet, like RJ45 cables, the conversion of these changes in electrical energy to actual data on either end is handled by the device that you're plugging into. That's why the devices tend to be expensive and the cables tend to be cheap. In the case of fiber optics, the cables and devices can be relatively affordable, but the transceivers, which are used on both ends to convert the changes in light to data can be an absolute money pit. It's also worth noting here that your switch or network card can be fussy about the brand of transceiver you use. Kind of like printers that require pricey first-party ink. Fortunately, all of our gear got along nicely. Without getting into too much detail about the nerdiness that is cable signaling, the main advantage to fiber optic cabling is that it can carry a signal over a much greater distance and at a higher frequency. This is thanks to the very low signal power loss incurred by the glass inside the cabling itself. It also has much greater resistance to interference because the light inside of a fiber optic cable isn't really susceptible to electromagnetic interference from heavy machinery or electrical lines, et cetera. Now, it's not that copper cabling can't do high speeds. Even in our server room, we have copper cables that run 100 gigabit, but those cables are usually limited to about five meters. And if you move up to 400 gigabit ethernet, yes, that is a thing, the longest copper cables you'll see top out around three meters or 10 feet. That's nowhere near long enough for our editors to plug in. So we knew we needed fiber, but fiber is the kind of rabbit hole where there's lots of documentation out there, but all of it is designed for people who already know everything about it. Do we need single mode or multi-mode, LC or SC, simplex or duplex, OM3, OM4, OM5? Ah! So here we go. The two main types of fiber are multi-mode and single mode, and the main difference between them is the size of the core, which is the actual glass that transmits the optical signals. While single mode uses a very thin core, isolating the light to a single beam, multi-mode has a much larger core, allowing the light to reflect back and forth within it. This allows multi-mode fiber to send light along several different paths or modes at the same time. However, when it comes to longer distances, the multiple paths of light can cause distortion at the receiving end, making it less ideal for applications like that. In practice, multi-mode is usually reserved for up to about a hundred meters, which means that inexpensive LED or laser sources can be used to send light down the glass. Anything greater than that, let's say 10, 20, 40 kilometers, is typically single mode and requires much more expensive solid state lasers. This means that for our application, going from here to here, we could use single mode, but that would be really expensive and kind of stupid. Next up, we've got the type of connector or termination, LC, SC, FC, ST, et cetera. This one really comes down to your application or preference. The 25 gigabit transceivers that we're gonna be using from fs.com, by the way, thanks fs.com, use LC fiber connections. So naturally, that's the type of cabling that we went with. You can easily adapt it between connection types. So if you get the wrong cable, it's not a huge concern, but there is one big note here. Re-terminating fiber cables in the field can be very expensive and time consuming. So whenever you can, it's best to use prefabricated cables, like what we got from our friends over at Infinite Cables. Thanks bros. Then there is simplex versus duplex. Light can only be sent one direction at any given time. So in most cases, any fiber link is gonna have two cables, one for transmitting and one for receiving. This is called duplex fiber. However, you can also get simplex fiber and run bi-die or bi-directional transceivers, which make use of multiple modes of light, each to send and receive over one cable. These transceivers are much more expensive though, so they're not much use to us. But in the data center, bi-die can be used to increase density in fixed size conduits and patch panels and can also help with cable management. Then there's the category of cabling. For multimode, there's OM1 all the way through to OM5, with the primary difference being the bandwidth and distance capability of each generation. We went with OM3 because it's cheap-ish and has ample range for the relatively short runs to our editors. So okay, multimode duplex LC connector OM3 fiber. Say that three times fast. But enough of talking headliners, let's take a look at the actual deployment and maybe we'll even run and test a cable. Usually when you're working with this ultra thin stuff, it's to save space in your conduit so that you can run more cables. But we were mostly concerned with fitting the boot of the wire inside of our electrical boxes. You'd also usually run it in conduit or by cabling with some kind of shielding or a protective cover, but it's just gonna kind of hang out up in our drop ceiling. So we weren't worried about the cables getting damaged over time. And even if one did, we did run copper to every station just in case, and the server room happens to be just on the other side of this wall. So it's not like we'd have to go very far. So from each of these keystone jacks right here, ah, there we go. Each editor, oh, thank you, Jake, will have a small patch cable like this running to the 25 gigabit Nick in their system. Shout out to Mellanox for providing those by the way. We did a full video showing off their blazing fast speeds recently. And then each of these will be protected by, here we go, here we go. A small bit of split loom. While the fiber lines in the office were run professionally, there's one that we kind of forgot to do. The one that goes from the server room here around where the camera guys sit to over here, our ingest station. Some of our camera operators got a little diva-y about using the Mac minis. So we're back to PC. And what we discovered is that running 10 gig with two red megs plugged in actually saturates it. So Ed was like, hey, can we have a fiber connection? And we were like, hey, we got you covered. So the only thing here is we're working with the extra scraps from that install. So we might have to couple two cables together. Oh lordy. But it's actually fine. Fiber's really easy to couple. How should we start this, do you think? I guess we have to start on one end. Yeah, kinda. So we already have wire mold that runs across all the way down to here. But then it pops back into the wall right there for some reason. Oh, weird. So we can have it come out of here and then we'll just tape some split loom to it, I think. Yeah, okay. Split loom is like this corrugated plastic stuff that's split and it's a wire loom. So you put wires in it to sort of protect them or keep them organized. In the case of fiber, you don't want people to damage it. Is there a reason this computer goes backwards? That way we can access the IO port. Is this really weird? So you're gonna leave this backwards? Yep. I think if we have the split loom come up, we can tape it or LTT store cable tie into like right here and then just a little bit of fiber will come out. I absolutely hate everything about what I'm looking at right now. You gotta be gentle with this stuff, eh? Well, I know, but it's not easy. What are the odds this fiber cable still works by the time we're done? I give it at least 80%. 80%? Yeah. And you want that to go into the cable due to Adam and Jake there? Yeah. Oh my God, we have to move the shelf? How the hell are we gonna move the shelf? Three, two, one. Oh man. That should probably be enough. Hey, okay. All right, all right. Here, I'm gonna pass this up to you. Well, should I just like climb on the shelf, I guess? I don't know. How strong you think this Peli case is? Very. Oh wow, there's like a open wall socket here. Should probably tell Yvonne about that. I think this is a fire bell. Are you gonna take this at some point? What? Hello? I'm gonna tell Yvonne about this. Hi. Oh. Watermelon sugar. Okay. You're still good, you're still good. Are you gonna start putting it in there? I mean, I don't know, a little bit. I mean. Okay, that's about the right length, I think. I don't think the shelf's going anywhere, so I'm just gonna. Oh, okay. I'm on the shelf now. Yeah, good, I guess. Are you good? Are you all the way to the top? It's not quite, it's a little more. Eh, eh, eh, eh. I think that's good enough for now. Okay. Where's the, oh geez. Oh gosh. Some people use ladders. I think you should just climb up here to do this whole part. All right, I'm just gonna throw this over there. Oh wait, we were supposed to do two. Two, why two? Because there's two ingestations going here. All right. All right, get on back down there. Well, why do I have to get down there? Because you're the little one. I wanna tape this one up here. Hold on. You wanna just pass me the roll of tape? Nope. Hey, can you pass me the roll of tape? Can I, can you wait a second? Zoomers, man. They're so impatient. Damn boomers. They're so slow. Your mom's a boomer. I don't even think she is. Oh, I dropped the tape. Are you there? You wanna open up the thing? Yeah, you wanna pass me the thing? Well, you gotta open up the thing first, don't we? Well, give me the thing first. How about fine, here's your thing. Oh, oh, yeah, yeah. I can't believe we're running fiber straight to the backs of the ingest stations. This is kind of crazy. What were you thinking instead? I just thought they'd run ethernet. Where's my fiber in my office? Okay, now climb up here and do your thing. Sometimes I wonder who's actually in charge here. Okay, it's not gonna fall, right? Can you hold it? I'm holding it right now. I'm holding it braced against this one, you're fine. Plus this one is like in the way, so it's like- Fine. Oh God. Okay. All right, I'm gonna get down now. You have fun up here. See you later. Maybe we should have tested these cables before we put them in there. That probably wouldn't have been a terrible idea. I need some tape or you're just closing it. Oh yeah. Just gotta not pinch it too hard. There we go. Man, I'm like the pinch off king. That's what you told me. Because I'm pinching off the thing here. I'm Linus Tech Tips. Hi, I'm coming to you from the top of this shelf. We got some great news up here. The lights are warm, but they're not hot, you know? It's too hot up here with my LTT store stealth hoodie. You know why he wears the tuque? So he doesn't have to do his hair. Oh. Oh. Exposed. Hashtag Linus. I think I need like a flathead or something. You have keys on you? Yes. Oh, you do have a knife. Now that's a knife. What is this thing called? It's a ladybug. I don't wanna break the knife. Yeah, why don't we use, let's use the flathead. Very graceful, Linus. Well, no, that was my keys. That wasn't me. Yet. Oh God. Where is it? There it is. Okay. There we go. Not so bad. So how far are we gonna make it here? We might make it like pretty much to there. Most of the way. Which is good actually, cause then if the coupler, I'd rather the coupler not be in the wire mold. Yeah, okay. Wait, how did I end up on top of the ladder? Oh no, help me Jake. I'm stuck on top of the shelf. You're gonna have to get the ladder and climb the ladder. He can't resist the damsel in distress. The damsel, oh boy. Damn incel. You know for a fact I'm not celibate. You've met my children. Oh yeah, that sounded worse than it was. Yeah, that sounded really weird. Yeah, no, no, not like that. You ready? Yeah, give me that. Oh God. That wasn't very graceful. Okay, hold on. We can do more graceful than that. Wait, wait, oh, okay. Not graceful, but it works. If it works, I twerks, you know? Can I climb it this time? Oh, you wanna go up here? Yeah. If I come down, I'm not going back up. You got long arms, right? Yeah, I don't know if I'd describe myself as a long armed boy. Hey, you better watch that sprinkler, all right? Yeah, yeah, I'll try not to punch it too hard. This is very unpleasant. Isn't it, doesn't it suck? Oh my God. Fortunately my t-shirt is also LTT store. It's not exertion sweat, it's like stress sweat. Like the really stinky sweat. I'm like Tom Cruise. Oh my God. I'm a short man with a big ego. I mean, I do my own stunts. There's one more grievance we didn't talk about previously in the video, and that's that you can't get the end of these cables dirty. If there's any speck of dust or, you know, like sweat or whatever. Grease. Grease stuck on the end of the ferrule that's at the end of the fiber cable, it can actually block your signaling and result in a connection that doesn't work. Fortunately, our friends over at Fluke sent us over to one of their Surtr fibers. This is like a $20,000 fiber tester. Thanks Fluke. Thanks Fluke. One of the coolest features with this thing is their fiber inspector. It's essentially like a little camera that you can stick on to the end of fiber cables and look directly at them to see if they're dirty. And it'll even do like a test to tell you for sure that that cable's clean. To some standard, I guess. And you can even put it up your butt. I mean, technically that's a feature of pretty much anything. Yeah, but you try hard enough. I mean, you wouldn't really see anything. It's very zoomed in. We got our test set up as fiber inspector. That's what we want here. I just test the thing on the thing. So yeah, did you pop the dust cap up? Yeah. Stick it all the way on. And then that ring there is to focus. Keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going. Stop. And so now that it's in focus, click analyze, and we can see that there's only one tiny defect, but that's within the specification and it's okay. It's cool though. They even show you the zone. So like right in the middle there, you can see the white, little white speck there. That's actually the light that's coming through the fiber from the other end. If you were to take like a light pen and shine it up there, you'd have a big, big white spot. The actual like glass part is just this inner ring there. And these are all just extra parts that are around it to protect it, like part of the ferrule. It's really, really zoomed in. For reference, the part that we're looking at in the middle is only 62.5 microns. That's tiny. I guess I shouldn't look into this, eh? Ah, it's not that strong. Is it a laser? Not really. Oh, okay. It's a light. How we doing? Well, that one's kind of dirty. So we're going to clean this one. Dirty, dirty lad. Now you might think- I'll just give it a- Yeah, and clean it off with your shirt. Try cleaning it with your shirt or maybe your toque. It's probably got some nice Linus juice on there. Ugh. Ha ha ha ha ha. Now, fortunately we have a little cleaning pen. That's probably good. Okay. The more you do it, the more like staticky it gets. It's probably just going to be dirty. Ooh. All right. From what I was told, usually you do once, and if it's not enough, then you do a couple more. Wow. And- Look at that. That's pretty clean. So there's still some specs outside of the middle part, but it shouldn't really matter. Yeah. It still passes. We're good to go. Does this thing cycle like a cleaning thing inside it? Yeah, there's like a little anti-static like cleaning towel thing in there. Oh. A little piece of fancy string. That's sick. Okay. And then we're going to plug this boy in. Ho ho. Ho ho ho. Oh. No, no, we got it. We got it. We got it. Come on, baby. Yeah. Okay. You can do it. Oh yeah. She's good. Got it. Woo. Nice. Not bad. It's clean. How are we going to poke these through? Yeah. I wish we had put it through the other way. Oh no. I've put- Oh no. Yeah. I'm going to oil all of this. That's a pretty tight hole. Oh, the top one's a little looser. Hold, hold, hold, hold, hold. Hold the door. Yeah, you're good. Hold door. Try, I don't want things to get too kinky here, you know? Okay. All right. Okay, so the last thing we're going to do to verify our link is still working is a loss test. That's basically going to make sure that we don't have too much signal loss for how long our cable is. And it can also certify it for the specific application we're going to run. It's not only going to tell us that two 15 meter cables that are coupled together have this specific amount of loss and that's within the budget, that's good. It's also going to certify it, say, for a hundred gigabit. So we'll say, yes, we want this cable to be able to do a hundred gig. And it'll tell us if, according to how much coupling we have, that it's an appropriate amount of loss. Wait, we're going to need two split looms there. You know that, right? Why? Because we have two different computers. Oh, that makes sense. Dummy. All right, so we're going to do a hundred gig and we have one connection in the middle, right? We have one coupler. And then we have the two air gaps at each end, which is like where our reference cables will connect. Man, an accidental snip on the fiber at this point would be not a good time. Please no. There's like a better way to do this, but we're not doing it the better way. It's not going to fall off now. What? It's not going to fall out? Yeah, it probably will. It will not. How's it going to fall out? It's all over the place. Okay, just taking my tape off does not count as just having it fall out. Well, it was fucked up now that I, you told me to do it. Well, yeah, but you're like, ehh, ehh, ehh. Like you can move it around. You should have just wrapped it all the way around. It's fine. It's like extra effort to specifically make little small pieces. Yeah, but it saved tape. And we are within the spec for a hundred gig, even though we're only doing 25, so. Oh, cool. All right, how about this one? Our loss is a little higher than I was expecting, but our limit is 1.9 dB. Our loss is only like 0.4. I'm guessing it might be like a little dirty on this end because we didn't clean this end first, but it's well within our margin. So we're good. Success. Nice. Well, that was a lot of learning, but don't you guys worry because next time on LTT, hopefully about a week or so from now, we are finally going to get all of our editors down here in the renovated editing den and plugged into our fiber with our brand new server that we're calling new new Wannock server. Wannock 3. New new Wannock. Wannock 3. And we're going to use that to test the performance of the setup to see if all of this work was even worth it at all, LMAO. You know what's definitely worth it though? Creating a beautiful website with Squarespace. They're all in one platform makes it easy for you to get up and running quickly. They've got award-winning templates that you can use as a starting point for a wide range of projects. And if you ever need additional help, Squarespace also offers webinars, a full series of help guides, where you can even contact their customer support 24 seven via live chat and email. If you already have a third party domain, you don't have to give it up, just transfer it over to Squarespace. Plus you get e-commerce features to help you sell merch or services online and easily manage your inventory and orders. So don't wait, go to squarespace.com forward slash LTT to get 10% off your first purchase. If you guys enjoyed this video, go watch the 100 gig switch video. It's sick and shows you just what kind of crazy performance we're expecting out of this setup.