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Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires

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Re: Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires

#21

Post by tonyedgecombe »

bflesch wrote: post #13
hdgvhicv wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another Brexit bonus It’s no coincidence those that championed Brexit are those that wanted a weaker Europe and weaker U.K. That’s why the majority of tax payers were against it, the majority of educated people voted against it, the majority of working people voted against it, the majority of people alive today who voted voted against it Yet we still got it.

It's never to late to rejoin, we've all learned a lot about foreign propaganda in the last decade.

We need a whole generation to die off before that becomes likely.

In the mean time we should move closer when the opportunity rises.

Re: Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires

#22

Post by sudhirb »

user5994461 wrote: post #14
Quarrel wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He claims: > One peculiar thing from the UK: Internet providers don’t truly offer gigabit internet. Which might well be true where he is (ie he's limited to the equivalent of shared HFC or xDSL), but certainly isn't true everywhere. I've had gigabit fibre (full duplex) in London since 2016, and the building had it before I arrived. It also has incredibly low latency to the major data centres of London, and not a lot…

Full quote. The problem is the price. > One peculiar thing from the UK: Internet providers don’t truly offer gigabit internet. They have a range of deals like 30 Mbps – 75 Mbps – 150 Mbps – 300 Mbps – 500 Mbps – 900 Mbps, each one costing a few more pounds per month than the last. Gigabit is so much more expensive (obviously it's gone down a lot). In London 2016, I had ADSL broadband at 16 Mbps for £12/month. That bu…

I have 150Mb/s FTTP for £37/month - upgrading to gigabit would be £75/month, for example!

Re: Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires

#23

Post by regularfry »

Quarrel wrote: post #11
Roritharr wrote: post #2

Wild to me that this developer has no access to a device with gigabit ethernet. Time really does fly.

He claims: > One peculiar thing from the UK: Internet providers don’t truly offer gigabit internet. Which might well be true where he is (ie he's limited to the equivalent of shared HFC or xDSL), but certainly isn't true everywhere. I've had gigabit fibre (full duplex) in London since 2016, and the building had it before I arrived. It also has incredibly low latency to the major data centres of London, and not a lot…

Fibre rollout in London was (is?) really, really patchy. If your building had it you were lucky. If you hadn't had it already you may well have found it impossible to get at retail.

Re: Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires

#24

Post by JonChesterfield »

gnfargbl wrote: post #8
retired wrote: post #5

I had a similar issue but instead I opted to replace all the wiring with CAT5E. I used the old phone wiring as a pull-wire to get the CAT5E through the walls very, very slowly. CAT5E was used as I needed all the flexibility I could get and 1Gbit was enough at the time. The RJ11 panels on the wall were replaced with RJ45, crimped everything. Took a full day of carefully pulling wires but in the end I got gigabit all o…

You're the reason why the author's assertion that there is a huge untapped market for this in the UK is probably wrong; most of the people technical enough to set this up are also going to be technical enough to pull new cables. There might be some market for a simple point-to-point device sold by the likes of Argos, zero config and including all the right cables already, aimed at people who can't or won't upgrade th…

Pulling cables through walls is really easy for some construction styles and really difficult for others.

Can involve taking up floorboards and drilling horizontally through beams, plumber style. Or cutting slots in masonry with angle grinders. Sometimes there are existing wires you can tie to and pull through, sometimes the existing wires were stapled to the walls.

On the bright side everything about the ethernet wires and connections is trivial. Like demo to a friend in 20 minutes and let them walk off with the toolbox and they'll be fine wiring their house, if the construction style is amenable.

Re: Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires

#25

Post by yetihehe »

bflesch wrote: post #13
hdgvhicv wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another Brexit bonus It’s no coincidence those that championed Brexit are those that wanted a weaker Europe and weaker U.K. That’s why the majority of tax payers were against it, the majority of educated people voted against it, the majority of working people voted against it, the majority of people alive today who voted voted against it Yet we still got it.

It's never to late to rejoin, we've all learned a lot about foreign propaganda in the last decade.

Someone at Davos commented "It took you 7 years to negotiate your way out, it will take you 7 years to regret and then 7 years to negotiate back in".

Re: Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires

#26

Post by JonChesterfield »

jedilance wrote: post #18
retired wrote: post #5

I had a similar issue but instead I opted to replace all the wiring with CAT5E. I used the old phone wiring as a pull-wire to get the CAT5E through the walls very, very slowly. CAT5E was used as I needed all the flexibility I could get and 1Gbit was enough at the time. The RJ11 panels on the wall were replaced with RJ45, crimped everything. Took a full day of carefully pulling wires but in the end I got gigabit all o…

I am curious if you have some tricks for attaching pull-wire and CAT cable. Also, did you use any lubricant for the CAT? I tried the same approach to replace COAX cable with CAT but the tie just broke off like 10cm before the socket exit [1], and CAT is stuck there now. [1]: https://i.imgur.com/myW6IIq.jpeg

Relatively successful was slotting the cat5 jacket, cutting off two or three of the pairs, twisting/tying the remaining pair to the old wire, then sliding the jacket back over the join before wrapping in a conservative amount of electrical tape. You want the join to be similar width to the cable and preferably flexible.

I have a suspicion that pulling fishing line first is the right play if you can manage to connect it to the old wire. Flexible, very high tensile strength, small.

Re: Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires

#27

Post by forinti »

pzmarzly wrote: post #10

The apartment block I live in in Ireland has converted phone sockets into Ethernet using similar converters, except (a) it was in 2004, so 10Mbit base, (b) they ordered whole socket replacements, eliminating the need for separate box outside the walls, (c) the goal was to buy 1 business high speed line, and split it across all apartments, which became obsolete when ADSL, DOCSIS, and later FTTH became affordable optio…

This wouldn't be legal in my country unless all the apartments had one owner, because the telcos have a monopoly on communications.

The law says one person can't stretch a cable over to his neighbour, because they would need a licence for that (although if you did do that, who would know?).

Re: Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires

#28

Post by Havoc »

I've been eying the phone sockets too wondering what I can do with them. Think i'll end up running fiber though because internet is 1.6 so gigabit would be a bottleneck.

As a side note - it's quite difficult to find white fiber cables. They're all bright colour so that nobody cuts them accidentally but I don't want a pink line running along the walls haha

Re: Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires

#29

Post by user5994461 »

Fiveplus wrote: post #3

This is a fantastic result, but I am dying to know how the G.hn chipset creates the bit-loading map on a topology with that many bridge taps. In VDSL2 deployment, any unused extension socket in the house acts as an open-circuited stub, creating signal reflections that notch out specific frequencies (albeit usually killing performance). If the author is hitting 940 Mbps on a daisy-chain, either the echo cancellation o…

A view from the the debugging tools since you asked https://thehftguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/screenshot_...

I don't think there is anything too fancy compared to a DSLAM. It's just that DSLAM are low-frequency long-range by design.

Numbers for nerds, on top of my head:

* ADSL1 is 1Mhz 8Mbps (2 kilometer)

* ADSL2 is 2Mhz 20Mbps (1 kilometer)

* VSDL1 is 15Mhz 150Mbps (less than 1 kilometer)

* Gigabit Ethernet is 100Mhz over four pairs (100 meters). It either works or it doesn't.

* The G.hn device here is up to 200 MHz. It automatically detects what can be done on the medium.

Re: Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires

#30

Post by Nextgrid »

Havoc wrote: post #28

I've been eying the phone sockets too wondering what I can do with them. Think i'll end up running fiber though because internet is 1.6 so gigabit would be a bottleneck. As a side note - it's quite difficult to find white fiber cables. They're all bright colour so that nobody cuts them accidentally but I don't want a pink line running along the walls haha

Here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Elfcam®-Fibre-Optic-Multimode-Duple...

It is flat and thin enough you can stick it on top of skirting boards/etc with tiny dabs of hot glue.

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