Home Ethernet System

[HPsauce]

David, see if you can identify where phone lines run, do any neighbours have any existing or defunct lines?

They may run overhead on poles but equally underground and there will be "manhole" covers over access points and junction boxes, typically with a BT or even GPO logo on them. Usually manholes are rectangular and big enough to get into and cables typically follow roads to avoid wayleave and access issues.
It's quite common to have a mixture with bulk underground cable feeding to the base of a pole which then has overhead wires fanning out to nearby properties.
And roadside cabinets can be quite misleading, often some distance away.

Probably the only way to be sure is to order a line and fibre broadband from BT and see what the response is. Though I think you said it's only normal "ADSL" that's available.

[sarg]

Originally Posted by MikkiJayne

2 miles of copper, straight in to the exchange, and more for people further down the same cable run. The most I ever saw on it was 6Mb/s hence the switch to 4G a few years ago. I work from home on Teams, stream TV and music, etc no problem at all.

BT / Openreach / Virgin / etc have no interest in trying to run a fibre along 2 miles of poles along a single track road on top of a windy hill, and they're not allowed to dig up the road to run ducting so we'll never see high speed from ground-based providers here. The same applies to most rural locations in Devon and Cornwall so our only options are wireless services of one sort or another.

For context, it's taken Elon Musk and SpaceX less time to develop a reusable rocket system from scratch and then design and deploy a network of high speed internet satellites than it has for Openreach to give a damn about the rural South West

I get all that

But I'll wager your copper connection still goes via a cabinet to your home, Openreach are not in the habit of direct cabling everyone to the exchange.

I also work from home and found the 5G GigaCube as useful as a chocolate fireguard.

I've just been through this whole process, within the last few days and weeks, I'm giving an up to date view of what I found.

As for the neighbour, Netflix in HD will run on pretty much anything, Netflix are very clever with their caching and buffering, I found the exact same thing.

I think mobile broadband is the future, but it ain't there yet

[ainarssems]

What I meant was it's just copper cable for ADSL, no fibre to the cabinet just copper going to the cabinet. It was not meant literally single cable from the exchange straight to the house.

As for 3/4/5G I guess there will be a big difference between just the modem with internal antenna sitting in the house and the one with external antenna on the roof or on external wall.

[David's8]

Originally Posted by sarg

I get all that

But I'll wager your copper connection still goes via a cabinet to your home, Openreach are not in the habit of direct cabling everyone to the exchange.

I also work from home and found the 5G GigaCube as useful as a chocolate fireguard.

I've just been through this whole process, within the last few days and weeks, I'm giving an up to date view of what I found.

As for the neighbour, Netflix in HD will run on pretty much anything, Netflix are very clever with their caching and buffering, I found the exact same thing.

I think mobile broadband is the future, but it ain't there yet

Thanks for your input/warnings sarg. Its good to hear the other side to the coin
My present house has direct copper to exchange as we are so close (<200M) and so we were initially by passed by the new cabinets. We were limited to standard broadband until this September when we got fast BB (60Mb).
The new house has overhead lines going up the lane from a point where it emerges from the ground so its hard to know which cabinet is feeding it. There's potentially 7 properties being fed by the copper line but its hard to tell as it goes underground at the last pole and then emerges at the side of my house. I think you are right in saying go for a line and try that first. At least I know the pros and cons now whereas before i was in the dark.

[Conan_the_Librarian]

I, as MJ has said, also use a 4G modem and an external aeriel on a mast attached to my bungalow's chimney. I use to get 6Mb over my phone line, I now average in the high 30s up, high teens down and mid 30s for latency.
Using a mixture of WiFi (4 APs, 2 in the house, one in workshop/garage and one further up the property), ethernet over power (to link the external WiFi APs to the house) and ethernet within the house to link the WiFi APs and high bandwidth users like the NAS, AV and other, non WiFi, stuff.
Because I live in a valley climbing up to the moors I only have line of sight with one tower. If I walk up the valley until I am above the height of my aeriel I have recorded speeds of 70Mb! However, as the geeks will know, the higher my aeriel, the longer the wire and the greater the loss over that length of wire and the greater the costs to overcome that loss with high gain aeriels and low loss cable. 30Mb is fine for streaming HD. We have an unlimited tarrif with 3 at £18 a month and have not watched any terrestrial/satellite TV since we started the tarrif, we stream everything now.

[pete-p]

Let me know if you go with EE I can to get you a 30% discount on a SIM only (20% off pay monthly handset) if you buy through EE website.

[HPsauce]

Originally Posted by sarg

Openreach are not in the habit of direct cabling everyone to the exchange.

It's digressing somewhat but there are indeed properties like that and they're a real problem for FTTC implementation.
In general they are close to the exchange, and I do actually know someone like that who can't get fibre as a result.
However most cable runs, including mine as noted above, will have at least one cabinet along the route. Openreach then usually build a powered fibre cabinet nearby and "loop in" to enable FTTC on individual lines as they are ordered.

[paulrstaylor]

Originally Posted by HPsauce

It's digressing somewhat but there are indeed properties like that and they're a real problem for FTTC implementation.
In general they are close to the exchange, and I do actually know someone like that who can't get fibre as a result.
However most cable runs, including mine as noted above, will have at least one cabinet along the route. Openreach then usually build a powered fibre cabinet nearby and "loop in" to enable FTTC on individual lines as they are ordered.

I have a line like this in one of our offices, I get 18mbs down and 2.5mbs up on Annex-M on a direct exchange line that is <150m, but no chance of FTTC as there is no cab. Also no FTTP yet, so I am now having to go to Virgin Media Business to get a speed hike, which is not really this biggest issue but not ideal either!

[sarg]

Virgin Media's cable broadband is fabulous, if you can get it.

Losing that is pretty much the only thing I miss about our old house

[tc4332]

I've been on Virgin Media for a long time and currently normally at 320Mb.


The problem with Corona is everybody and their dog is downloading multi mode games and movies, some even working, that slows everything down.
Some evenings I'm getting my normal 36 Mb upload but download can be as slow as 11Mb.
Complain to Virgin and they say no fault and magically I go up to my normal numbers. Then within days I seem to be throttled again. I think if you complain you are prioritised then when somebody else complains you are pushed down the line again.
Current excuse is that they are busy upgrading the system and to expect breaks in system for a few weeks.
I was promised a refund but am still waiting for that.