Can't fish Ethernet? Use "invisible" fiber instead

A damaged Cat6 run between floors had fallen back to 100 Mbps, despite the household’s 2.5-Gbps-capable switch and access point. Replacing it by fishing new cable risked damaging walls and existing wiring, while wireless mesh was unattractive: thick walls had limited mesh performance in previous homes, and consumer systems would not support the desired VLAN segmentation. The solution was to route “invisible” fiber - thin retrofit cable designed to be discreet in apartments - between floors, avoiding construction work and the risk of disturbing a wall-mounted $1,500 television.

The installation used a 20-meter fiber loop secured with its included removable adhesive rather than permanent glue. Two media converters and bidirectional SC SFP+ transceivers connect the fiber to an existing MikroTik CRS304-4XG-IN switch; keeping that switch avoids replacing it with an SFP+ model, and copper SFP+ modules can run hot. Although the cable and equipment could support more, the reported connection delivers about 300 Mbps, a substantial improvement over the faulty Ethernet and enough to make the setup useful. The experience demonstrates that fiber can solve an in-home wiring problem even without fiber-to-the-home service, sparing the cost of a contractor and potential damage to walls.