Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires • Hacker News Board

Re: Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires

#111

Post by abanana » Sat, Jan 24, 2026, 2:03 PM UTC

alimbada wrote: post #58

> It’s not uncommon to have a one bed flat with 2 phone sockets in the living room and 2 phone sockets in the bedroom and a master socket in the technical room. It’s ridiculous. This sounds a bit farfetched to me. I'm 40+ and lived in the UK all my life. Growing up we only had 1 phone socket in the house for the first few years until my dad got an extension put in upstairs. I've lived in multiple cities since then an…

Yes, the author's assertion here is nonsense. A case of someone with a very small window of experience being certain that what he's seen couldn't possibly be an outlier - must instead be normal for everyone.

The article also has a constant theme of putting people down because of something he doesn't understand. The Helldivers 2 developers are "idiots" because he doesn't understand the reasons for asset duplication in games. Simple daisy-chaining of slave sockets off the master is "incomprehensible", "pointless", "arbitrary" and "a mess"; the person who did the wiring is an "idiot". It all comes across as unfortunately quite arrogant.

Re: Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires

#112

Post by mprovost » Sat, Jan 24, 2026, 2:07 PM UTC

lonesword wrote: post #79

iamcalledrob wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Symnetric gigabit connections can be hard to come by in London. If you're served by a niche fibre provider (e.g. Hyperoptic, Community Fibre) then you're golden. There's Virgin (think Comcast) with paltry upload speeds due to the cable tech. Understandable though not ideal. Then there's the OpenReach full fibre network with paltry upload speeds due to... ??? there appears to no good reason, other than not wanting to…

Hyperoptic is niche? I thought they were available all over London.

Even if they are available on your street, each building and individual flat has to be connected. For blocks of flats that's not always straightforward.

Re: Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires

#113

Post by bloomingeek » Sat, Jan 24, 2026, 2:08 PM UTC

Excellent article! I think another take away is that we should all take a class on electrical wiring safety. Wiring is fun and very interesting, but can be very dangerous. Classes and the literature that comes with it are invaluable. However, Youtube and the literature will only take you so far, safety wise. (I'm not affiliated with any tech school, I learned by being in the trades under the guidance of trained electricians, with test stands and real life testing.)

Re: Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires

#114

Post by LightBug1 » Sat, Jan 24, 2026, 2:13 PM UTC

blibble wrote: post #99

hdgvhicv wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn’t need Brexit for that - it’s been going on for decades.

with most of the privatisations triggered by EU law!

I wouldn't strictly put all of them at the feet of the EU. While what you say is true, the Conservatives were frothing to privatise whatever they could. Labour just went along with the process (and I'm no Labour supporter either).

The one I won't forgive was our water. I believe we're the only developed country to have privatised our water, with disastrous consequences.

And that one can be squarely laid at the feet of Margaret 'Fucking" Thatcher (real name).

Re: Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires

#115

Post by TheOtherHobbes » Sat, Jan 24, 2026, 2:13 PM UTC

cjs_ac wrote: post #57

> 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. This makes the UK simultaneously one of the cheapest and one of the most expensive countries to get Internet. Andrews and Arnold[0] offer gigabit, but I'm not surprised the aut…

I used to live in the UK and thought double-digit broadband was pretty good, actually.

Now I live in a slightly remote corner of Europe and I had 6Gbps fiber installed yesterday, for €15/month. (Nominally 10Gbps, measures as 6, which is... pretty good, actually.)

Re: Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires

#116

Post by the_mitsuhiko » Sat, Jan 24, 2026, 2:17 PM UTC

wtcactus wrote: post #107

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #91

I think I told this story plenty of times now, but Wifi got so good, that even though we have network cables everywhere, basically nothing is hardwired in our household any more other than the TV and a few sonos speakers that were close enough to the outlets. We have about ~100 devices connected to our home network according to my router and other than 6 devices, they are all on Wifi. I would never have expected that…

Right, but where do you live? I live in a 100m^2 apartment and the signal in the main bedroom is quite bad. In most European countries, houses are built out of brick and concrete. The signal doesn’t easily reach the all house. In my parents house, built out of granite, it’s even worse.

> Right, but where do you live?

A 200 sqm apartment in Vienna, mixture of think walls and drywall. The signal goes everywhere with three well placed mesh things.

Re: Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires

#117

Post by wffurr » Sat, Jan 24, 2026, 2:18 PM UTC

ninkendo wrote: post #96

tialaramex wrote: post #78

Worth knowing in this context: Telephones only want a twisted pair. Ethernet, popular with businesses for decades, also wants a twisted pair. Now, that pair must meet much stricter criteria to be suitable, such as Category 5 (for 100Mbit) or Category 5e (1000Mbit ie Gigabit) - but it really is just twisted pair cable, merely a tighter specification than your phone. Suppose you are a sparky (electrician) and you have…

I had the same thing in the house I bought, it was a nice surprise… there were 6 different phone jacks around the house in great locations for Ethernet (WiFi access points or just for a computer), and they all led down to the furnace room where they attached to a punch-down panel (basically they were all spliced into each other.) To my surprise they were all cat5 cables. With the house being built in 2003 this was su…

Alas my 2009 condo conversion was wired with coax to every room instead. I've been using the coax drops to pull Ethernet cables.

Re: Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires

#118

Post by the_mitsuhiko » Sat, Jan 24, 2026, 2:18 PM UTC

arwineap wrote: post #92

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #91

I think I told this story plenty of times now, but Wifi got so good, that even though we have network cables everywhere, basically nothing is hardwired in our household any more other than the TV and a few sonos speakers that were close enough to the outlets. We have about ~100 devices connected to our home network according to my router and other than 6 devices, they are all on Wifi. I would never have expected that…

Surely your access points are hard wired?

I have three, only one is hard wired (the source). That's because I only have gigabit ethernet at the moment and the wireless backhaul is faster than the cable.

Re: Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires

#119

Post by jonpurdy » Sat, Jan 24, 2026, 2:23 PM UTC

ninkendo wrote: post #96

tialaramex wrote: post #78

Worth knowing in this context: Telephones only want a twisted pair. Ethernet, popular with businesses for decades, also wants a twisted pair. Now, that pair must meet much stricter criteria to be suitable, such as Category 5 (for 100Mbit) or Category 5e (1000Mbit ie Gigabit) - but it really is just twisted pair cable, merely a tighter specification than your phone. Suppose you are a sparky (electrician) and you have…

I had the same thing in the house I bought, it was a nice surprise… there were 6 different phone jacks around the house in great locations for Ethernet (WiFi access points or just for a computer), and they all led down to the furnace room where they attached to a punch-down panel (basically they were all spliced into each other.) To my surprise they were all cat5 cables. With the house being built in 2003 this was su…

Same; this was the nicest unexpected surprise about buying this place.

Condo built in 2006 with cat5 . Two bedrooms + living room all wired with rj11 phone jacks. Just snipped those off, wired up rj45, and attached the other ends in my utility closet to a patch panel with rj45 as well.

I don't know if it's just cat5 or 5e, but it saturates a 2.5Gbe link and in-wall cable length is about 15-25 meters.

Re: Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires

#120

Post by lomase » Sat, Jan 24, 2026, 2:25 PM UTC

bjackman wrote: post #37

Wait, but you get 63MB/s down from steam? My internet is pretty good, I can easily saturate my (rather dated) WiFi at about 30MB/s. But Steam downloads are extremely slow for me (can't remember the numbers but much less). I always assumed Valve themselves were just stingy with bandwidth. Something else funny going on?

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