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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

#241

Post by tialaramex »

user5994461 wrote: post #224
tialaramex wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's true that the cable says 5e on it but your device doesn't read the printed reading so it doesn't matter. That printed category tells you what was tested, not whether the cable works in practice. Which makes sense, but leads to the consequence I described.

Worthwhile to point out: The Cat5 cable required for gigabit Ethernet is merely twisted pairs with no insulation, which is pretty much a dumb basic cable (with 8 wires). That's why any cable can work in practice. I don't know how possible it is to find a really bad cable (untwisted) and it might work on a short length anyway. (Your 1980s office cabling must have been 8 wires if you were able to get gigabit later, so…

Sure, they will have been bundles of 4 pairs and I suppose we could say that is a matter of luck, it will have been installed from the outset in anticipation of networking - there's a period in the late 1980s when everybody is iterating on what will soon become 10baseT and the people in that building would have known all about it - but there's no reason back then to know 4 pairs will be an auspicious choice rather than 3 or 6.

So yes, those cables though they weren't Cat 5e because it didn't exist when they were manufactured, also were not basic phone cables, and I believe when the building was formally opened it had "ground breaking" 10Mbit Ethernet to every laboratory.

Re: Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires

#242

Post by eigen »

estimator7292 wrote: post #98
direwolf20 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gigabit Ethernet uses four pairs per direction. It uses the same four pairs in both directions at the same time.

1000Base-T uses two pairs per direction, actually. It's full duplex. Each port sees two TX and two RX pair. There are four pair of wires in the cable. If you use all of them for TX, you can't receive.

> 1000Base-T uses two pairs per direction, actually. It's full duplex. Each port sees two TX and two RX pair.

you may be thinking of 1000Base-TX (TIA‐854) which uses 2 pairs in each direction, similar to 100Base-TX (IEEE 802.3u). whereas 1000Base-T (IEEE 802.3ab) uses all 4 pairs in both directions.

basically, the -TX are dual simplex with a set of wires for each direction and -T are full-duplex with the same wires used in both directions at the same time.

Re: Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires

#244

Post by graemep »

jasonkester wrote: post #145
gnfargbl wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

most of the people technical enough to set this up are also going to be technical enough to pull new cables. "Technical" isn't the issue. 200 year old stone houses are the issue. If you can't punch through it with wifi (and thus have this issue), I expect you're not going to be able to poke a cable through either. For an example, to get from my house router to my office, you'd need to punch through a 3 foot cobble &…

With old houses you may also have restrictions on what you can do. BT send some to my friends' house every so often to upgrade to FTTP. They say they are going to drill through walls etc. until its pointed out the building is grade II* listed and there are rules and permissions needed at which point they go away.

Re: Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires

#245

Post by cjbarber »

jasonkester wrote: post #170
cjbarber wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)…

The direct line across would get run over by cars. Indirect routes would still have to cross pavement and look ugly. And then there are still those six feet of stone that needs drilling through to get the cable outside and back in.

> The direct line across would get run over by cars. Indirect routes would still have to cross pavement and look ugly.

Search for "cable protector ramps"

> And then there are still those six feet of stone that needs drilling through to get the cable outside and back in.

Thin cables designed to run under doors or windowsills are an option. Search for "flat ethernet cable"

It seems like you prefer your setup for good reasons, and these solutions above are both ugly, but I still wanted to note to others reading this that workarounds exist.

Re: Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires

#246

Post by ChocolateGod »

raddan wrote: post #175
wffurr wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Ahh! Don’t replace your coax with Cat5e/6! Coaxial cable has excellent noise rejection—better than Cat5e. Instead, get a MoCA adapter like this one [1]. You can get 2.5Gbps over coax! [1] https://a.co/d/e2FYGWj

It's worth remembering that UK coax is typically lower quality than that used in the US where these are designed to be used, due to UK coax only needing to transmit terrestrial TV compared to cable in the US.

Re: Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires

#247

Post by dlcarrier »

raddan wrote: post #175
wffurr wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Ahh! Don’t replace your coax with Cat5e/6! Coaxial cable has excellent noise rejection—better than Cat5e. Instead, get a MoCA adapter like this one [1]. You can get 2.5Gbps over coax! [1] https://a.co/d/e2FYGWj

Also, it has far more potential to improve over time. A coaxial cable can carry terabits worth of RF bandwidth.

Re: Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires

#248

Post by mikeweiss »

aucisson_masque wrote: post #236

You disconnect the phone cable from the socket, attach a 50m Ethernet cable to it and pull the phone cable from the other side of your house. I just got the fiber installed, took less than 10 minutes, excluding the replacement of phone port to Ethernet port.

Doesn't work if the cable is stapled in somewhere or under layers of paint

Re: Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires

#250

Post by stoobs »

jakub_g wrote: post #4

> 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.

Weird, I've never needed to do that - Royal Mail or whichever courier is handling it will either put a note for customs payment through the door (Royal Mail/Parcelforce), or send me an invoice via post or email (any of the other couriers).
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