Making some progress with the cabling
Back in August last year, I wrote a bit about rewiring my home network. Well… I haven't really achieved what I set out to do in that post, but today I did make one large improvement. Back when Tom and I moved in (6+ years ago), I temporarily tacked a piece of CAT5 cable to the wall, running from the modem downstairs, all the way up the stairs, through my bedroom and into the loft. It's stayed that way ever since, until today! The cable had been trodden on and chewed by our robot vacuum in several places. It was in such bad condition that it wouldn't sync to anything higher than 100meg, despite being gig capable.
Today I managed to route a 10 metre OM3 fibre cable, pre-terminated with LC connectors, from the lounge, through the ceiling into Tom's bedroom, and through the ceiling again into the loft. Downstairs it is going into a media converter to connect to the modem. In the loft, it connects to an SFP port on my switch in a separate VLAN for PPPoE traffic. I would have just used a piece of copper cable, but I don't have any… and this is more fun.
Hopefully within the next couple of months CityFibre will get installed on our street so we can upgrade from our 40meg internet connection.
Also, while we are talking about computers, I treated myself to a new keyboard. Meet the Happy Hacking Keyboard! It's short enough that I can comfortable keep my house on the right of it :-)
<2022-03-20 Sun 19:20> I decided to go to Screwfix today to pick up some CAT6 cable and network socket. I now have two 1Gig links from the loft to the lounge, in parallel to the OM3 fibre I pulled yesterday. This means I have a fallback option in case one link fails, and also means I have a hard link to my desk downstairs. Very nice. :-)
First socket I tested seemed to work fine, but the second was intermittent. Handy to have a switch which can diagnose these things for you… :)
(switchbert.nat.rhwyd.co.uk) #cablestatus 0/20
Cable Status................................... Normal
Cable Length................................... 8m - 36m
Pair State Length
------ ------------ --------------
A Normal 26m (+/-10)
B Open 11m (+/-10)
C Normal 18m (+/-10)
D Open 16m (+/-10)
(switchbert.nat.rhwyd.co.uk) #cablestatus 0/20
Cable Status................................... Normal
Cable Length................................... 8m - 30m
Pair State Length
------ ------------ --------------
A Normal 20m (+/-10)
B Normal 18m (+/-10)
C Normal 18m (+/-10)
D Normal 18m (+/-10)
Helped me quickly identify that the fault was at the socket and not near the switch.
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Comments and feedback are welcome by email (aaron@nospam-aaronsplace.co.uk).