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I want to run internet from my main house to garage located few meters away. I plan to use fiber instead of cat5 to avoid reported problems of blowing out network switches.

I could have made a trench and placed fiber inside a conduit, however any shortest path from my house to garage (from attached garage where I plan to keep all my network equipment) is filled with concrete. I would need to break concrete to dig a trench.

Instead of digging the trench, could I pass fiber from under the roof of my house? The same way the electrical cable is passed right now.

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Yes, absolutely.

The fiber you'll want for this job is "Drop" fiber - it's made to resemble (and work with the hardware for) telephone "drop" wire - and it's relatively inexpensive while being quite robust.

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While we tend to knee-jerk away from aerial fiber because it's more exposed to damage, this is a perfectly viable solution.

However, for most home applications at this time, it's going to be much cheaper/easier and adequately effective (not really as fast as fiber, but probably faster than your internet feed unless you have gigabit fiber to your house) to use a 5 GHz "ac" "Point to Point" radio link between the buildings.

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  • I agree with the alternative suggestion to go wireless. I've bee reading up on the new wifi "mesh" networks, and they almost seem like the holy grail of home networking.
    – isherwood
    Jun 26, 2017 at 14:12
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    Honestly, as a network guy who does a lot of wireless, the holy grail is a lot of wires in the house and fibers between buildings. Among other things, they make the WiFi you do need to run for end-use devices that don't have a plug faster and more reliable. But a good mesh implementation can be a moderately blessed grail that will get the job done good enough, with much lower barrier$ to entry. Wires/fibers still beat the snot out of wireless for moving data efficiently, particularly with walls in the way. ;^)
    – Ecnerwal
    Jun 26, 2017 at 16:18

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