Detached Garage Internet/Fiber Help

[mellowdave]

This is an observation, not disputing anything anyone has said or observed themselves, but I live in central Texas. We get a lot of lightning, and I have never once lost a piece of equipment to it—of any kind—not a piece of network equipment, not a TV or audio equipment, nothing. We've been in this house for twenty years, and had some HUMDINGER electrical storms. Before this, we were in Houston, with similar levels of thunderstorm events, though I would imagine we were somewhat protected by the tree coverage we had around us.

I have two dedicated ground stakes, one right near the point of entry for the power and cable and another over near my water POE. That one is tied to the AC units, which have external breaker boxes on the side of the house there, as well as the compressor/condenser.

Again, I'm not saying that what y'all have seen isn't valid, just that my luck (supported by primary efforts to mitigate the impact) has been different.

All that being said, were I in the OPs shoes, I'd probably do fiber for the connection as well. The only part of this whole thread that really bothers me is this line -

"Download speeds with this setup are usually 60-100 mbps. This speed is plenty to handle the streaming, wifi cameras and internet access for our family."

There is no way that is fast enough to stream for the "family" unless you are the Swiss Family Robinson or Little House on the Prarie. I have three kids at home, plus my wife and me. We have gigabit cable (and we see 900Mbps throughput), and it's not fast enough sometimes.

 

[dcg9381]

This is an observation, not disputing anything anyone has said or observed themselves, but I live in central Texas. We get a lot of lightning, and I have never once lost a piece of equipment to it—of any kind—not a piece of network equipment, not a TV or audio equipment, nothing. We've been in this house for twenty years, and had some HUMDINGER electrical storms. Before this, we were in Houston, with similar levels of thunderstorm events, though I would imagine we were somewhat protected by the tree coverage we had around us.

We're in the same area and agree on the frequency of lightning.
I've had things taken out twice due to strikes probably 200-300' away.
The difference might be that I probably have a 1/2 mile of CAT5/6 total.

We've lost a gate opener and several CAT5 directly wired devices. You can actually see the scorch marks when you pull cable out of the wall plate. Not the end of the world to fix, you cut a termination off and/or replace a wall plate... But the devices were dead.

When I built the current shop, I used shielded cat 6. So far so good, but fiber would definitely be a better idea.

Like you, not disputing that others have no problems...

 

[AntonLargiader]

There is no way that is fast enough to stream for the "family" unless you are the Swiss Family Robinson or Little House on the Prarie. I have three kids at home, plus my wife and me. We have gigabit cable (and we see 900Mbps throughput), and it's not fast enough sometimes.

From everything I can read, movie streaming is typically 1~3 GB/hour which is considerably less than the OP's 60-100 Mb/s and WAY less than 900 Mb/sec. If you are getting 900 Mb/s and having streaming difficulties, I don't think the problem is with the throughput.

 

[Yookdew]

This is an observation, not disputing anything anyone has said or observed themselves, but I live in central Texas. We get a lot of lightning, and I have never once lost a piece of equipment to it—of any kind—not a piece of network equipment, not a TV or audio equipment, nothing. We've been in this house for twenty years, and had some HUMDINGER electrical storms. Before this, we were in Houston, with similar levels of thunderstorm events, though I would imagine we were somewhat protected by the tree coverage we had around us.

I have two dedicated ground stakes, one right near the point of entry for the power and cable and another over near my water POE. That one is tied to the AC units, which have external breaker boxes on the side of the house there, as well as the compressor/condenser.

Again, I'm not saying that what y'all have seen isn't valid, just that my luck (supported by primary efforts to mitigate the impact) has been different.

All that being said, were I in the OPs shoes, I'd probably do fiber for the connection as well. The only part of this whole thread that really bothers me is this line -

"Download speeds with this setup are usually 60-100 mbps. This speed is plenty to handle the streaming, wifi cameras and internet access for our family."

There is no way that is fast enough to stream for the "family" unless you are the Swiss Family Robinson or Little House on the Prarie. I have three kids at home, plus my wife and me. We have gigabit cable (and we see 900Mbps throughput), and it's not fast enough sometimes.

Our kids are grown and live on their own so it is only me and my wife. Once the grandkids get older we may need more bandwidth but for now, this works fine for us.

 

[mellowdave]

From everything I can read, movie streaming is typically 1~3 GB/hour which is considerably less than the OP's 60-100 Mb/s and WAY less than 900 Mb/sec. If you are getting 900 Mb/s and having streaming difficulties, I don't think the problem is with the throughput.

If you have a bustling, connected home that doesn't begin to cover the amount of data you will be flowing in and out.

Perhaps you genuinely only have one device drawing data through your point of presence at a time, but realistically, that is probably not the case. I have 5 users here, all of whom have gaming systems, and connected devices to include laptops, ipads, phones, and 4K panels. Given it is unlikely that any one person is streaming a 4K movie at the same time they are gaming a big bandwidth title, it is not unheard of. The rule of thumb is 50mbps per 4K data stream, and high bandwidth gaming is similar. In my usage scenario, that is POTENTIALLY times 5 at any given time. Plus video streaming for school classes, and my work is remote most of the time, and I also have video streaming requirements. My kid definitely stream music and game at the same time, as well as moving big files back and forth between systems (two are design students.) With all five of us it is highly likely we are very close to saturating our pipe at peak times.

Throw in your IoT devices. Again, there are a lot of curmudgeons on this forum, so maybe you have ZERO connected devices on your home network, and for that, I applaud you (seriously). Most of us have them, and they all take their bite out of the bandwidth. I have 113 connected devices on my home network at the exact time I am typing this. Not to hijack this thread, that was never my intent (I was actually just posting to make a bit of a joke), but all of mine are on a VLAN, blah, blah, etc. etc. in order to minimize the hit to my main network.

Even with all this, I don't have "streaming" difficulties; as I said, "sometimes it isn't enough." Yours and everyone's ISP, no matter who you use, has some sort of QoS policy that prioritizes the visible side of your available data, and that, right now at least, is primarily streaming. When one of my kids needs bandwidth for school, or I do for work, we often find our connection prioritized to streaming, and it can actually feel slow to transfer files, thus I find myself wanting a second connection dedicated to data usage. I have been contemplating adding a second connection for this reason.

 

[reader2580]

What do you have connected to the Internet to have 113 devices connected to the Internet In your house? I believe I have ten devices that could be Internet connected in my house. Some are rarely used tablets. Granted, I live alone.

 

[kj_mustang]

Try living with 25 mbs at best when you live 10 miles from a city that has fiber to the homes. I can stream non-4k to two tvs still though.

 

[shade]

What do you have connected to the Internet to have 113 devices connected to the Internet In your house? I believe I have ten devices that could be Internet connected in my house. Some are rarely used tablets. Granted, I live alone.

I have over 300 devices.
Smart home - switches,lights, outlets
Servers, access points and the list goes on and on.
I'm in Network Security so I'm out of the ordinary

 

[teknikfrog]

Try living with 25 mbs at best when you live 10 miles from a city that has fiber to the homes. I can stream non-4k to two tvs still though.

Same. I have 25mbits and streaming is never a problem.