OT: Landline or not?

[Andrew]

There is no shortage of raw materials to make glass though and it requires pretty much the same amount of energy to make it from scratch as re-melting contaminated old stuff.

[Theo]

You have to pay someone to host the mail. Many purveyors of domains also offer mail hosting.

Theo

[The Natural Philosopher]

Or you can host it yourself, as I do, on a rented private server.

Mind you yesterday I discovered that the NHS wifi wouldn't let me access it. Had to use my mobile connection instead :-)

Very 'walled garden' is the NHS wifi.

[Rod Speed]

Whoever you get to host your domain.

It does let you change your ISP without any effect on your emails.

[alan_m]

A few years back there used too be 3 glass recycling bins in a local car park. One for clear glass, one for brown and one for green. People religiously sorted the glass into the colours and placed it in the correct bin.

Then along came the lorry to empty the bins. Each was lifted in turn, and the bottom of the bin opened to drop the glass into the dump truck. Result mixed coloured glass scrap. :)

The recycling bins have now gone. The local council's waste management company now collects (unbroken) glass from the doorstep in the mixed material recycling sacks. We can put glass, plastic, metal (tins) and paper/card in the same sack.

[alan_m]

My mobile phone can connect to my router via wifi to make and receive calls via VOIP

The routers that Zen supply can also be used as an answerphone and a DECT base station for up to 6 DECT handsets.

and 10 IP phones.

[John Rumm]

Where does the limit of 10 IP Phones come from?

(IP phones will work on any router)

[David Wade]

Well if they use SIP, and the router uses NAT, its possible they won't work.......

... so the FritzBox! acts as a SIP proxy or relay. Your IP phones connect to the FritzBox! not directly to ZEN which by-passes any issues with NAT, allows ZEN to keep its passwords secret and also lets the router manage call baring, answer phone, extensions, common phone book etc....

... so if the Fritzbox! is limited to 10 IP phones thats where the limit comes from....

I have also had issues with voipfone. If connect with a VOIP app direct to voipfone, my FritzBox does no ring its phones so i now connect it to the Fritzbox...

Dave

[John Rumm]

Sounds plausible...

I note that cloudy PBX services like 3CX recommend using a Session Border Controller box if you have more than 10 IP phones. That basically combines all SIP, RTP, and VoIP packets to appear as traffic from one device which tends to be much more firewall / NAT friendly.

(Raspberry Pi 3/4 seems to be a common choice in some of my client's offices running 20+ phones)

[The Natural Philosopher]

Of all the recycled things, glass is about the most dim witted. Smashed up and dumped in the sea it turns into sand very quickly

[Jeff Layman]

Passive? Something powers the leds at each end of the fibre, although OR might only be responsible for the fibre itself; I'm not sure.

There is an interesting "Battery backup" article here:

According to that, about 15W would be required to power an ONT, router, and DECT phone (although I wonder if some of the power for the phone could be avoided by having a router with a wireless connection directly with the DECT phone, so allowing the latter's handset batteries to be used as usual when speaking. The base station would only need to be a charging unit when the phone was on it, and not be required for a phone call). The article continues that a 36Ah battery would power that group for about 24 hours, which isn't bad.

Of course, the problem to be addressed is power connection consistency - my router requires 12V, but do they all (Teltonika seem to be 9V)? ONTs would appear to be 12V. My DECT phone base requires 5.5V. And, of course, the connectors are all different. Wouldn't it be nice if they all used, for example, a coaxial connection with centre +ve? It would be even nicer if they could all run from USB power (looks like the DECT phone base could with the right connector). A powerbank could be plugged in when the mains fails, or a "Powerbank UPS" be in-line for permanent emergency use.

Perhaps it's something the EU could get into for standardisation? Even the mighty Apple had to come into line with the EU's USB-C edict.

[John Walliker]

Not always very quickly. I once saw an octopus living inside a glass jar. John

[The Natural Philosopher]

No, what 'passive' means is that between te regional concentration hubs and your premises there are no repeaters. The LEDs are in the modem (ONT) and in the exchange, and there are multiple passive splittters between you and there, and that all works for up to around 25 miles from memory.

I think that the ONT and the regional concentrator and all points between are in theory Openreach property and responsibility.

At the regional concentrator they will then split it all out to go over probably ORE backhaul, rented to the ISPS, to arrive at the ISPS termination equipment in a dark office somewhere.

Broadband wouldn't be much use to me without electricity to supply my computers.

When the power goes out here, my mobile can be used as a wifi hotpoint for my laptop, at a pinch.

The mobile is easily charged by the car.

[Bob Eager]

Indeed. Although not for the man in the street, we have ten IP phones at home (plus a couple of softphones). All into an Asterisk box, with a single static IP address to the ITSP's server.

[Jeff Layman]

We're probably just arguing semantics here, but to me network includes the "black boxes" at both ends as well as the fibres (or wires) in between. As you put it below yourself, "Broadband wouldn't be much use to me without electricity to supply my computers", so the computers are, of course, part of the network.

I keep a powerbank connected to the car USB. I've never needed it of course...

[Andy Burns]

The right ballpark

My smallest UPS takes a pair of NP18-12 batteries (so about the same energy as mentioned) together the batteries are roughly the size of a 5 litre plastic bottle (as used for screenwash etc) and weigh about 2 stones, need replacing every few years, at a cost of about £100.

I'm not sure the average household wants all that hassle for a phone?

Yes it could be smaller/lighter with Lithium instead of Lead-acid, but more expensive.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Yes, it is semantics. Openreach use 'passive to distinguish from say multimode fibre which needs a repeater every so often and active splitters . What they mean is the whole rural network is passive up to the termination box in the customers premises...or the termoinatin boxes in the regional concentrators.

This is, in fact, whilst not the best performance wise, an utterly pragmatic and cost effective way to build a fibre network. It will be immune from lightning strikes, EMP attack, and as its mostly buried, weather. It will survive power cuts except at the customer premises.

The joints at junction boxes/splitters are glued, not crimped so no degradation via corrosion.

And it is likely that better modulation techniques will end up getting even more bandwidth down the fibres.

[Bob Henson]

If it is recycled at all. A neighbour who worked for a waste company told us all the colours of glass were smashed together and sold for hard core for roads.

[Andy Burns]

The current (20+ year old) GPON standard gets 2.5Gbp there is a newer (still 10+ year old) X-GPON standard that gets 10Gbs and an even newer (2-3 year old) NG-GPON standard that is 40Gbs

Upgrades should be seamless because multiple standards can be in use on the same fibre with different pairs of wavelengths up/down the same fibre, so upgrade the headend kit, then only send out newer ONTs to customers individually as you sell them faster speeds.

The 40Gbs is a bit more complex than that, as there are tuneable LEDs/lasers/filters involved, so your connection can be "moved" to a different wavelength to balance out the customers between different bits of kit at the exchange end.

[Theo]

A UPS is completely unsuitable for this kind of role, since they're designed for running high power PCs for a short time to allow safe shutdown, not holding up a small router for hours.

The going rate for power tool batteries is about 25p/Wh (Aldi) to 50p/Wh (Makita). A widget which took 18/20V power tool battery/ies and ran the internet for the appropriate number of hours wouldn't be hard to make, the main problem is that every brand of tool battery has a different fitting (I suppose you could ship with a collection of plastic adapters?), and whether there's any issues with being a non-official charger.

That box might have fixed outputs (eg USB-C) and you might need some plug-in adapters to connect to devices having barrel jacks and other voltages (passive in the case of 5/9/12/15/20V USB-C voltages, active for others).

Another problem is that barrel jacks aren't standardised and the consumer could plug in a 5V device using a 20V adapter and blow it up. If the routers/etc also had USB-C inputs it would make that easier.

If your router load is say 10W and you have an 18V/5Ah battery (£25 from Aldi) in there, you get runtime of about 9.5 hours. If that runs out, have multiple batteries on hand you can swap.

Theo