Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[jonathanh]

I am supposed to be upgraded due to the current network only supporting about 1mps with a following wind and guess what they are planning on FTTP.  So far we have fibre to the end of the drive so the next challenge is to get it to the house - 150 metres away from the road.  I think the options are

1. dig a duct in: will take me 2 days work and a bit of diesel and a lot of mess plus the risk hitting existing services or hand digging around them ( which I hate)

2. suspend the fibre from a pole - I don't like that because of the cost of the pole and it limits clearance for machines (I need to cover a field)

3. use one of these point to point internet thingies (Ligowave thingie...)  which is a couple of hundred quid and I have a convenient brick build meter cupboard to use near the road where the fibre arrives.

I'm thinking of going for option 3: cos I can fit pretty quickly and it saves a huge amount of disruption. 

Any thoughts from the experts here? 

thanks in advance

[pscocoa]

I thought the fibre went to the Openreach cabinet and then you use the exiting copper wires to get your service?

[aaronjb]

I thought the fibre went to the Openreach cabinet and then you use the exiting copper wires to get your service?

Not with FTTP - Fibre To The Premises - no. Fibre to your door and inside a Fibre->Ethernet converter.

Personally I'd suck it up and have the fibre run to my door, not the end of the driveway - do you want to be out there in your slippers and undies, rebooting the router when it (inevitably) crashes at 10pm on a rainy winter night?

[jonathanh]

I thought the fibre went to the Openreach cabinet and then you use the exiting copper wires to get your service?

Not with FTTP - Fibre To The Premises - no. Fibre to your door and inside a Fibre->Ethernet converter.

Personally I'd suck it up and have the fibre run to my door, not the end of the driveway - do you want to be out there in your slippers and undies, rebooting the router when it (inevitably) crashes at 10pm on a rainy winter night?

fair point on the reboot.  I must put that in the au pair's job description.  Its just a real pain digging 140 metres of red clay up... do it in the winter and it claggy, the summer is rock hard...

[aaronjb]

fair point on the reboot.  I must put that in the au pair's job description.  Its just a real pain digging 140 metres of red clay up... do it in the winter and it claggy, the summer is rock hard...

Get the Au Pair to do the digging too 

[STEMO]

fair point on the reboot.  I must put that in the au pair's job description.  Its just a real pain digging 140 metres of red clay up... do it in the winter and it claggy, the summer is rock hard...

Get the Au Pair to do the digging too 

....breaking off every hour to give you a blow job 

[Jimbob]

How does the current phone line get to the house, They will normally mirror that run, although I found they were happy to run the fibre to a different room then the phone cable.

Im my case Phone line was from pole to right side of house. The fibre comes to the same place on the top of the house initially but they routed the fibre to the left side room rather than the right like the phone cable

[Marks DTM Calib]

Is said point to point Ethernet thingy capable of operating over the expected temperature and environmental conditions associated with a dodgy brick cab by the road?

[jonathanh]

How does the current phone line get to the house, They will normally mirror that run, although I found they were happy to run the fibre to a different room then the phone cable.

Im my case Phone line was from pole to right side of house. The fibre comes to the same place on the top of the house initially but they routed the fibre to the left side room rather than the right like the phone cable

current phone cable is buried about 9 inches below the surface in a field - I'm not at all fond of that because I want it deeper and that's a lot of digging even with a 1.5 tonner

[jonathanh]

Is said point to point Ethernet thingy capable of operating over the expected temperature and environmental conditions associated with a dodgy brick cab by the road?

I've not studied the Ethernet thingie in detail about temp and environmental conditions.  The brick cab by the road is mine: contains single phase and three phase electricity supply (de-energized) is secure and dry now given I fixed it.  is there something I should be worried about?

[Jimbob]

How does the current phone line get to the house, They will normally mirror that run, although I found they were happy to run the fibre to a different room then the phone cable.

Im my case Phone line was from pole to right side of house. The fibre comes to the same place on the top of the house initially but they routed the fibre to the left side room rather than the right like the phone cable

current phone cable is buried about 9 inches below the surface in a field - I'm not at all fond of that because I want it deeper and that's a lot of digging even with a 1.5 tonner

Is it in a duct?  Fibre is usually blown along ducts so they may well be able to utilise that.

[jonathanh]

How does the current phone line get to the house, They will normally mirror that run, although I found they were happy to run the fibre to a different room then the phone cable.

Im my case Phone line was from pole to right side of house. The fibre comes to the same place on the top of the house initially but they routed the fibre to the left side room rather than the right like the phone cable

current phone cable is buried about 9 inches below the surface in a field - I'm not at all fond of that because I want it deeper and that's a lot of digging even with a 1.5 tonner

Is it in a duct?  Fibre is usually blown along ducts so they may well be able to utilise that.

sadly no - no duct used in 1964 when the chucked the cable straight in the ground

[Marks DTM Calib]

Is said point to point Ethernet thingy capable of operating over the expected temperature and environmental conditions associated with a dodgy brick cab by the road?

I've not studied the Ethernet thingie in detail about temp and environmental conditions.  The brick cab by the road is mine: contains single phase and three phase electricity supply (de-energized) is secure and dry now given I fixed it.  is there something I should be worried about?

Well standard products are rated to a very low IP rating and 0-70degC if your lucky.

Given the location you will need better IP and wider temperature range as a minimum

[jonathanh]

Is said point to point Ethernet thingy capable of operating over the expected temperature and environmental conditions associated with a dodgy brick cab by the road?

I've not studied the Ethernet thingie in detail about temp and environmental conditions.  The brick cab by the road is mine: contains single phase and three phase electricity supply (de-energized) is secure and dry now given I fixed it.  is there something I should be worried about?

Well standard products are rated to a very low IP rating and 0-70degC if your lucky.

Given the location you will need better IP and wider temperature range as a minimum

incredibly useful thanks - I had not studied the products in detail so yes not looked at temperature and IP rate.  i'll do a bit more digging on both but it sounds like, provided I can get suitable kit it is the way to go

[biggriffin]

We've got virgin, and that comes straight underground from the box on other side of the road, into a junction box then into the router.

[TheBoy]

What provider?  Openreach supported ISP, or the likes of CityFibre (aren't they now Vodashite?), Gigaclear or Virgin?

I think pretty much all will insist on terminating inside a dry dwelling, and all will do the job up to that point, to varying levels of effort.


I actually use a couple of point to point wifi links to make a virtual ethernet connection between 2 buildings about 150m apart.  The older one, a Buffalo 54g system with yagis must be 20yrs old, and is rock solid, never missed a beat except when it snows (that drops the link), but is constrained by the 54Mb (half duplex, remember) throughput.  At the same site, I have a Ubiquiti AC1200 setup, which is cheap and nasty.  Its desperately unreliable, drops frequently, and needs a 5min "listen" time to resync (to comply with radar laws, being a 5GHz device, plus its in a hostile radar area). TBH, most of the time I just reroute packets to the Buffalo stuff.

The Buffalo was around £1-1.2k back in about 2001ish.  The Ubiquiti was around £300.

I wouldn't have such a link for my incoming connection.

[dave the builder]

have you inquired about the cost of having a duct pulled in with mole ?

[zirk]

Have you thought about 4g?, works for me I using a 4g Unlimited Data Sim (Virgin Media via EE) in my Home Router set up, cost me £20 a month (Get Unl Calls and Txts as well) I get around 35 to 45 Mg Down and about 30 to 40 Mg up, the up speed is what works for me at that price because even Fibre cant not deliver around here for that price range

[jonathanh]

What provider?  Openreach supported ISP, or the likes of CityFibre (aren't they now Vodashite?), Gigaclear or Virgin?

I think pretty much all will insist on terminating inside a dry dwelling, and all will do the job up to that point, to varying levels of effort.


I actually use a couple of point to point wifi links to make a virtual ethernet connection between 2 buildings about 150m apart.  The older one, a Buffalo 54g system with yagis must be 20yrs old, and is rock solid, never missed a beat except when it snows (that drops the link), but is constrained by the 54Mb (half duplex, remember) throughput.  At the same site, I have a Ubiquiti AC1200 setup, which is cheap and nasty.  Its desperately unreliable, drops frequently, and needs a 5min "listen" time to resync (to comply with radar laws, being a 5GHz device, plus its in a hostile radar area). TBH, most of the time I just reroute packets to the Buffalo stuff.

The Buffalo was around £1-1.2k back in about 2001ish.  The Ubiquiti was around £300.

I wouldn't have such a link for my incoming connection.

I think openreach are doing the work,  but telent have been wandering around ( its the Coventry solihull Warwickshire upgrade partnership).  the box by the road is dry and secure so I'm not worried there but as the link is unreliable and I think going to make it impossible to voice over fibre at some point, the answer is going to be 2 days on a mini digger.  I'm not gonna pay some numpty from openreach to dig, I'll do it myself and they can throw the duct in!

[aaronjb]

have you inquired about the cost of having a duct pulled in with mole ?

Probably cheap .. up until it digs through something important*


*I know, they "go around" - except in our old house, where they didn't, and punched the new gas & water mains straight through the clay pipe for the poop, and resulted in (eventually!) a collapsed drain and a very soggy, turdy mess of a front lawn; not helped by the neighbours "upstream" flushing nappies, mind.

[jonathanh]

have you inquired about the cost of having a duct pulled in with mole ?

Probably cheap .. up until it digs through something important*


*I know, they "go around" - except in our old house, where they didn't, and punched the new gas & water mains straight through the clay pipe for the poop, and resulted in (eventually!) a collapsed drain and a very soggy, turdy mess of a front lawn; not helped by the neighbours "upstream" flushing nappies, mind.

thankfully if anyone is going to put anything in with a mole plough it will be me.  Trouble is I've got 3 cables and 3 buries pipes to negotiate and I hate hand digging - hate it...

[TheBoy]

Have you thought about 4g?, works for me I using a 4g Unlimited Data Sim (Virgin Media via EE) in my Home Router set up, cost me £20 a month (Get Unl Calls and Txts as well) I get around 35 to 45 Mg Down and about 30 to 40 Mg up, the up speed is what works for me at that price because even Fibre cant not deliver around here for that price range

Its an option, but mobile broadband isn't for everyone, even if you can get the speeds.  Latency and latency jitter are issues with mobile broadband, which can play havoc with things like gaming, and make VoIP sound as bad as, err, mobile

But for pure web/sync/email etc, definitely a viable option