Upgrading our FREE internet to 25 gigabit! - Running Fiber to our Merch Office

The Problem

Context: The “Creator Warehouse” team (merch team) is in a separate building from the main studio.
Current Setup: They were using a Ubiquiti AirFiber XG wireless dish setup.
Issues:
- The dishes were mounted too low, causing signal interference from buildings, limiting speeds to ~1/6th of the theoretical max.
- While relatively stable, the proper solution for a permanent business connection is a hardwired line.
Goal: Connect the two buildings using a physical cable without paying for a second commercial internet subscription.

The Solution: Bi-Directional Fiber

Infrastructure Discovery: They found an existing conduit running between the main electrical room and the Creator Warehouse building.
The Constraint: The main fiber cable entering the complex belongs to the ISP. It has 12 strands, but Linus Media Group only pays for/uses 2 of them (one for send, one for receive).
The “Hack”: Instead of running a brand new cable through the potentially full conduit or using the ISP’s dark fiber (which they don’t own), they decided to free up one of their own existing fiber strands.
- Bi-Directional Transceivers: By using special SFP28 transceivers, they can transmit and receive data on a single strand of fiber using two different wavelengths (1270nm and 1330nm).
- Result: This frees up the second strand of their existing duplex pair to be used as a dedicated line to the other building.

The Installation Process

The “Outage”: To install the new transceivers, they had to briefly disconnect the main studio’s internet. They switched to a backup connection, but it disrupted some remote workflows.
Transceiver Swap:
- They replaced the standard duplex transceivers with the new bi-directional ones.
- Crucial Detail: Bi-directional transceivers must be paired oppositely (e.g., Side A transmits on 1270nm/receives on 1330nm, Side B must transmit on 1330nm/receive on 1270nm).
Running the New Cable:
- They had to pull a new fiber cable through a conduit found under a sink in the Creator Warehouse building.
- The Struggle: The pull was difficult because they didn’t use lubricant initially, and the cable got tangled. They eventually succeeded by using hand soap as a makeshift lubricant.

Final Setup & Testing

Hardware: They installed a Ubiquiti UniFi Enterprise XG 24 switch in the Creator Warehouse to handle the 25-gigabit connection.
Troubleshooting: The 25-gig link initially didn’t work until they adjusted the “Forward Error Correction” (FEC) settings on the Dell switch to “CL74” mode.
Speed Test:
- Internet: Achieving near 10Gbps (limited by the speed test server/ISP connection).
- Local Transfer (NAS): Transfer speeds were around 800 MB/s (megabytes per second), limited by the SMB protocol and single-core CPU performance, not the fiber link itself .

Conclusion

The upgrade provided a massive speed increase (roughly 7-8x faster than the wireless bridge) and immune to weather interference.
They decided to keep the old wireless dishes as a backup connection

I was a commercial and industrial electrician my company got a contract for a data center.The contract company never Having even heard of fiber optic cable I got the responsibility of running it for a 300 computer wing of the building only because I had heard of fiber optics. Everything was done by a tech telling me how to over the phone. Just a joy to work on!!! Awesome vid

FYI if you break your pull string or dont have one, you can tie part of a plastic bag to the end of twin and a shop vac on the other end. As long as the conduit is empty it will pull it through very nicely. You obviously need very light twine, then can use that to pull bigger string if needed. The vacuum is also useful to ensure you have the right conduit.

As a network engineer and having delt with dark lines from ISPs, it’s quote likely that LMG already had permission to use any of that 12 strand fiber since it was installed for their use. While moving to bidi is cool and does work that part might have not been needed and they could have just pulled the pair and connected it without a problem.

This is part of what my current job does. We have set up similar wireless receivers that could reach 25 miles with similar speeds; however, this was done on a building about 12 stories high and mounted on its flag pole. Multi-channel fiber is always the best path. Some job sites have underground tunnels connecting multiple buildings to add more connections in the future. I cannot wait for an intelligent switch that uses all fiber connectors and manages each input.

Jumping on the “As a train” I am a technician in the US for a telecom company. I’ve learned so much from you guys over the years. On the customer end we rarely get to see how the service is actually utilized. In my experience we usually connect our equipment and we screen share via Zoom to whoever manages the IT for companies they verify the subscribed service. Later they come and do whatever they intend to do . (And we usually take the fall for them not being able to utilize their new services until they have a visit from their crew.) I often times just connect them if it’s something not too involved and in the scope of my knowledge of how it needs to be connected and so forth.