> Basically, you need to follow the tracking regularly until the package is tagged as lost or failed delivery, which is the cue to pay import fees. > It’s the normal procedure to buy things from Europe since Brexit 2020. It’s actually quite shocking that Royal Mail still hasn’t updated their tracking system to be able to give a status “waiting on import fees to be paid online”. They had 6 years! Wow.
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.
Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires
161–170 of 288 posts
Re: Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires
#162Ah, 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…
You can do ethernet cables outdoors from your router in your house to your router in your office. Either thin cables that go under doors, or outdoor rated ones, both can work fine.
This same approach can work inside a house as an alternative to mesh networking or running cables through walls. The cables don't have to be invisible (underground or in walls) when you have tough constraints, unless you want them to be.
Re: Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "Paid the fee online, 20% VAT + a few pounds of handling fees ... It’s the normal procedure to buy things from Europe since Brexit 2020." Why don't Amazon and other online retailers just charge you the UK VAT when you order and ship it "VAT paid", so it doesn't get held up at the border? That's how it works in New Zealand. You pay New Zealand's GST when you place an order, not after it arrives. Any online retailer…
It would be far better if we could get a government in who would use Brexit freedoms to scrap VAT and all the other sales and import taxes. They are an administrative nightmare and both unnecessary and ineffective. Stick to simpler taxes. The problem is that we have one side who loves all things EU and the other that loves all things neoliberal - both of which are obsessed with sales taxes for some reason
Import taxes are pretty complicated but unilaterally removing them would mean we would have nothing to negotiate tariff free access to foreign markets.
Re: Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires
#164I'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
https://www.aliexpress.com/w/wholesale-lc-apc-invisible-cabl...
Depending on the media converter pair you're using, you probably want UPC instead of APC. I also found that the cheapest generic bidi media converters tend to be SC, so I want with a 30m pre-terminated SC/UPC cable. Total cost (cable plus media converters) was about £30.
Alternatively, you can order a custom 30+m white 0.9mm cable from FS: https://www.fs.com/uk/products/12285.html Lead time is fairly long.
Re: Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires
#165I 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…
Everyone comes home from a day out and you have several phones struggling to sync the 4K videos you shot meanwhile someone is streaming TV, open up my laptop to check the photos and now it wants to download updates...
I was able to option in Ethernet jacks where I lounge about in the living room, bedroom... - I have USB-C power bricks with built-in hubs so I stuck in cheap 2.5 GbE adapters there. Plug in to charge as normal and I automatically get 2 Gbps to the internet with no interference from anyone else, even works on iPhones with no setup.
Re: Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires
#166- Open your telephone socket, if the actual cable has 5 pairs, it's probably a cat5e cable. It can do 1gbps with a RJ45 connection, just replace the plug and connect tou your device to check, yo ucan get a cheap ethernet cable tester too. If it has just 3 pairs, it can probably do 100mbs automatically with most ethernet capable devices. - If you just need to connect 2 devices, you may probably just use existing cables to do it. More than 2 devices would not work. - If it doesn't work, all those cables probably go to a box, find it and check if they are connected, if not yo ucan just crimp the ends together.
Other alternatives: - As others mentioned, MoCA devices are also able to deliver 1gbps, and there is a higher chance that you may find them in most rooms, and they are almost always connected, so it shoudl be plug&play. - Powerline adapters novadays not too bad as well. I was able to use them in a 30 eyar old home, 3 floors up to provide 500mbs.
Re: Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires
#167Ah, 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…
Another solution: run ethernet cables outdoors on the ground. You can do ethernet cables outdoors from your router in your house to your router in your office. Either thin cables that go under doors, or outdoor rated ones, both can work fine. This same approach can work inside a house as an alternative to mesh networking or running cables through walls. The cables don't have to be invisible (underground or in walls)…
Re: Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires
#168I'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
No need for fiber for 1.6 gigabit, Cat5e can do 10GbE over short distances, 2.5GbE over longer distances.
Re: Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires
#169Earlier 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.
Bloody poor people deciding for themselves what they want. Shouldn't get a vote unless you have a degree and property. If only they'd had the sense to listen to their betters.
Re: Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires
#170Ah, 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…
Another solution: run ethernet cables outdoors on the ground. You can do ethernet cables outdoors from your router in your house to your router in your office. Either thin cables that go under doors, or outdoor rated ones, both can work fine. This same approach can work inside a house as an alternative to mesh networking or running cables through walls. The cables don't have to be invisible (underground or in walls)…
And then there are still those six feet of stone that needs drilling through to get the cable outside and back in.