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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

#181

Post by jama211 »

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…

And some cat5 cables will take gigabit speeds even though they’re not rated for it if they’re high quality enough too.

Re: Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires

#182

Post by stefan_ »

manbart wrote: post #152
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…

Gigabit Ethernet require 4 twisted pairs i.e. 8 individual cables. 100Mb Ethernet requires 2 pairs i.e. 4 individual cables. At least in standard configuration

There is a standard for Gbit over a single pair: Single Pair Ethernet (SPE). But it's more of a rare automotive thing, so I'm also confused how the grandparent made this work.

Re: Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires

#183

Post by VLM »

jasonkester wrote: post #149

Ah, mate. I sure wish you'd figured this out and told me about it 10 years ago. I fought with this exact same issue for years. I live in an old stone farmhouse with my office in a stone garage across a nice poured concrete driveway. There's wires from A to B under all that, but nobody except an unknown electrician from the 80s could tell you even where they come out at either end. Powerline kinda worked, with crap do…

"across a nice poured concrete driveway"

I've worked with DB people and running lines under driveways for telco and cableco is BIG business and they will not find your request to bury fiber or cat5 to be even remotely unusual.

The bad news about directional boring is they usually want "like a kilobuck" just to show up. Its a lot of heavy equipment and a lot of dudes to operate it all.

The good news is if they're already down the road they'll come by and bore for like $20/foot because its a small job (usually they only charge $10/foot for long runs)

Permitting depends a lot on where you live, some places treat it as a cash cow and they will brutally milk you, others don't require a permit at all. The equipment takes up a fair amount of space on each side, probably more than you'd expect. Scheduling is like dealing with an arborist. "OMG I need this partially collapsed tree removed immediately its an emergency I have homeowners insurance please arrive in the next hour" well thats multiple kilobucks "Meh please remove this tree sometime and I don't care when" well thats like $250, probably less if cash.

I've seen people spend thousands of dollars on DB or crazy laser/wireless comm gear to avoid spending hundreds of dollars on a stone mason. Try not to pay someone to DB under a stone wall, its usually cheaper to hire a stone mason twice and he will leave the wall in better condition than before you started. All masonry is temporary unless its maintained. Similar logic might apply to driveways, most concrete cracks so if you're hiring a guy to fix the crack you may want to bury a conduit before he fixes it. Replacing an entire driveway is expensive, replacing a sidewalk sized path is surprisingly cheap. If you want sidewalk poured (like for a walkway in your garden or around a swimming pool) its about $50/foot and a driveway would have to be thicker and better prepped, but the section could be narrower than a sidewalk. The point being don't accept a DB bid over $50/ft because its cheaper to replace the concrete at $50/ft.

Re: Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires

#184

Post by nick49488171 »

jorvi wrote: post #133
ninkendo wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The only problem with this is that for some god-afwful reason, anything built before the 2010s (?) placed electrical and phone sockets at hip level instead of ankle level. So you're staring at ugly sockets all day. So sadly you still have to punch holes. Then again, it isn't that much of a bother if all you have to do is punch a lower hole, relocate the socket and then plaster both holes up and repaint. Especially if…

You can always put a blank plate over the old one and save yourself a mess of plastering.

Re: Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires

#185

Post by socksy »

Nextgrid wrote: post #31
user5994461 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most of the people technical enough to set this up are also going to be technical enough to pull new cables. It's really not that simple when you realize that the average UK flat has 3+ sockets and the average house has 5+ sockets (speaking from my own experience). Some daisy chained and some direct. Besides, a lot of people are renting and cannot touch their wire.

> a lot of people are renting and cannot touch their wire. Nobody's going to complain about a backwards-compatible upgrade (you can put phone sockets back when you leave - nobody has to know there's cat 5/6 behind it).

Yeah but if you fuck it up it's a much bigger deal

Re: Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires

#186

Post by Nextgrid »

bloomingeek wrote: post #104

Here in the states, when we moved into our house that was built in the late 60's, every room had a phone jack. The exterior of the house had cabling strung onto the back and one side with lines installed, through the brick, into the separate rooms. There was also a line or two in the attic. Sometime in the early 90's, after I fired Southwestern Bell, I striped away all the wiring. Two of out kids had new homes built,…

> I noticed that there was a phone jack in the water heater room

I wonder if it was "future-proofing" for some kind of modem-based automation/monitoring system.

Re: Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires

#188

Post by jrmg »

jama211 wrote: post #181
ninkendo wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

And some cat5 cables will take gigabit speeds even though they’re not rated for it if they’re high quality enough too.

Cat5 is rated for Gigabit over spans of up to 100 meters.

The 1000Base-T spec predates Cat5e.

Re: Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires

#189

Post by iknowstuff »

blibble wrote: post #125
LightBug1 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

> 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. 100% agreed there's no market or competition at any level (even RAIL had somewhat competitive bidding for franchises) they're just Henry VIII style granted monopolies, with the results are the same as they were 800 years ago (well, other than the civil war bit) > And that one…

This is wrong.

A large chunk of the “classic” UK sell-offs were 1980s to early 1990s: BT (1984), British Gas (1986), British Airways (1987), and by 1991 regional electricity and water companies had been privatised.

A lot of EU single-market liberalisation in network industries ramped up later (late 1980s/1990s, and beyond). For example, telecoms EU “competition” directives begin in 1988/1990 and are amended through the 1990s. Meanwhile, the UK government had already announced plans to sell major chunks of BT by 1982, and BT’s privatization was implemented through UK legislation. England/Wales water privatization was created by Water Act 1989.

Re: Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires

#190

Post by j45 »

I thought it was reasonably common knowledge if you had a phone jack with 4 wires, you could route data over those 4 pins in an ethernet plug too.

Came in handy in an older house that used to have an intercom system, we just borrowed the deactivated intercom wires (they were 4 or 6 copper wires).

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