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

Re: Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires

#251

Post by prmoustache » Sun, Jan 25, 2026, 1:13 AM UTC

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 &…

The holes are already made if there are phone cables going in every room. The idea is to reroute ethernet cables through the same holes and guides and replace the sockets.

It is the same when fiber is installed in an old house, you usually reuse tv antenna/phones entries/guides and exit holes.

Re: Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires

#252

Post by prmoustache » Sun, Jan 25, 2026, 1:14 AM UTC

socksy wrote: post #185

Nextgrid wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

You can ask a pro to do it if you aren't confident enough. It is not an expensive task.

Re: Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires

#253

Post by Halan » Sun, Jan 25, 2026, 1:32 AM UTC

Reading the blog post and comments here from fellow UK inhabitants I am shocked to see how phone lines are considered common when I always ever lived in places with only one of them for the entire place (3+ bedroom houses on two floors).

Re: Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires

#254

Post by maltalex » Sun, Jan 25, 2026, 1:39 AM UTC

Tangentially, the fact that we're still using gigabit connections in our homes and especially offices in 2026 is weird. Gigabit Ethernet is over two decades old, but it's still the most common standard. Both 2.5 and 10 Gbps are effectively niche technologies.

I get it; it's "good enough" in most cases, like USB 2.0. But it still sucks we haven't moved past it.

Re: Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires

#255

Post by laurencerowe » Sun, Jan 25, 2026, 2:08 AM UTC

neilwilson wrote: post #221

laurencerowe wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VAT is not really all that complicated and accounts for around 15% of the UK tax take. Moving that to income tax would mean a substantial redistribution from working people to pensioners and incentivise moving more production abroad. Import taxes are pretty complicated but unilaterally removing them would mean we would have nothing to negotiate tariff free access to foreign markets.

Vat is stupidly complex. Try doing an international conference for example. Not to mention the impact on imports as the OP discovered. Quite why people think tax stays in one place is beyond me - all costs are passed on and tax is no different. Putting the tax on employer NiCS for example would result in roughly the same business collection and payment, but with a significant reduction in administration and the tax g…

A single country's tax policies don't exist in a vacuum. Let's take as an example a new car that costs £36,000 including 20% VAT. If the UK removed VAT and put the cost on employer NICS then British built cars would still cost roughly £36,000 but foreign built cars would now cost £30,000 and what little of the British car industry is left after Brexit quickly ceases to exist as the multinational companies that run them shift production elsewhere to remain price competitive.

Trump's broad based tariffs are dumb because much of what is being tariffed is not really manufactured in the US anyway. But used in a more targeted manner they can help ensure a level playing field for your country's products in the countries you have trade agreements with. Otherwise what incentive is there for another country to negotiate a trade agreement that gives equal access to says cars manufactured in either country?

Re: Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires

#256

Post by realaaa » Sun, Jan 25, 2026, 2:37 AM UTC

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 think they also lay extra fiber strings for that reason as well, most cost is doing this, some extra wires will always be helpful !

Re: Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires

#257

Post by spawnbsd » Sun, Jan 25, 2026, 3:04 AM UTC

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…

You're right, G.hn will have the same issue as DSL here; all of the tiny bridge taps from the extra jacks will create small dips in the bitloading.

That being said, with 200MHz of spectrum to play with, the impact on rates should be negligible. With the 200MHz G.hn phone line profile (48KHz tone spacing), we get about ~1.5Gbps, so you can take some lumps and still get ~1Gbps throughput.

One big advantage though, G.hn is natively p2mp and each jack could have it's own G.hn endpoint.

Re: Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires

#258

Post by wffurr » Sun, Jan 25, 2026, 3:55 AM UTC

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

I'm not replacing it; I am asking cat 5 to the same jack by replacing the one port faceplate with a two port one.

MoCA us interesting but that's a lot of equipment at each end compared to just a cable.

Re: Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires

#259

Post by c0balt » Sun, Jan 25, 2026, 4:10 AM UTC

jasonkester wrote: post #234

VLM wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 alre…

Probably should have mentioned that it's not a driveway in the US sense, where it's a strip of pavement with dirt on either side. More like a courtyard that butts up against the main house and guesthouse. There's no digging under it from the side. Incidentally, what does "DB" mean in the above?

It probably means "Direct Buried" or "Direct Burial,, see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct-buried_cable

Re: Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires

#260

Post by indolering » Sun, Jan 25, 2026, 4:26 AM UTC

cjbarber wrote: post #245

jasonkester wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 r…

Yeah, routing is still a major PITA.

It's just that almost anything is better than wifi in concrete/stone houses. I can see point-to-point outside with an unobstructed view being reliable enough. But point-to-point through 3ft of concrete is [HN is a neglected Xennial hobby and doesn't support emojis]!

Certainly worth reconsidering wired when that P2P hardware goes EOL.