Re: Sigh. Another powerline adapter fail

There is some flexibility. They will run it for some distance round the outside. The location is subject to discussion. The one thing they do not like doing is putting the entry point above the level where it can't be reached without a ladder.

Your contract will tell you where they are willing to install it, and explain that in order to do this they will need to drill a hole in the wall for the fibre to enter, and they mey need to drill a second hole to secure the ladder. It will also say that you must provide a double socket, not an extension bar, in order to power the ONT and Router.

If you don't provide this you may be liable to pay a fee...

Dave

Yup there are some "toy" PoE devices about, but something like the TP-Link TL-PoE10R Power over Ethernet PoE Splitter is the real deal. You can either have a PoE switch at the head end or one of the PoE injectors.

So you would go WAN port on router to PoE injector -> cat5 run to location of ONT and into splitter, ethernet out of splitter into ONT network socket, and power into ONT DC input jack.

Possibly, not tried doing it with a switch in the way between router and ONT.

Our fibre would be coming in from a telegraph pole, rather than underground. I presume the 'no ladder' restriction would not apply?

Sounds very bizarre ... my router will be 7--8 metres away from the ONT, in a separate part of the house.

They will use ladders on the initial installation, placing the external fibre joint box at low level, with the intention that any future troubleshooting visits don't require ladders.

The fibre from the pole will run to an external fibre junction box. It is this box which must be below ladder height. Normally its adjacent to the point where the fibre enters the house. The internal fibre runs from this to the router. This allows the internal fibre to replaced if damaged without needing a ladder, and the external fibre to be replaced without needing to enter the house.

They want to test it works next to the ONT with their cable which is short. You can proved a cable and put it elsewhere, but I have found creating a cable which runs at a gigabit not straight forward.

It might be my switches, but they seem to drop the link speed to 100M with little provocation.

Dave

No problem with City Fibre with taking power from an extension cable.

nib

Hmm, that might explain what I see next door. It looks ridiculous...

Ours is like this too (CityFibre). They ran the fibre to a window frame on the first floor and then down the outside of the wall to a hole they made at ground floor level. The rules about what they would/could do up a ladder were very strict. They wouldn't drill a hole up there, I would have had to do that if necessary.

So what's the issue? Run a cat5/cat6 UTP cable from the ONT to the router. In reality they (CityFibre) installers were quite relaxed about this side of things, as long as they coud see the ONT and router powered up and connected they were content.

I'm surprised, even my rather amateur DIY Cat5 cables worked ONT to router at gigabit. However, since ONT and router are both capable of faster I bought a ready made Cat6 cable for this and my router now tells me it's a 10Gb/s connection! I only have 1Gb/s from CityFibre so it's not necessary at the moment but they do offer upgrades to

Indeed, my point being that if you're doing proper PoE from a PoE switch, the switch gets interposed in your data, which in this case you may not want. It's an example where passive PoE makes more sense than using a switch.

I think so. I suspect they have transformers to couple the data signals, but there's no PoE negotiation or anything.

Theo

Gigabit needs all 4 pairs to be working. If one or two pairs are down, it'll drop down to 100M. Did you test cables you assembled yourself, or were these shop-bought?

Theo

No., What he said makes perfect sense. The ONT does not connect to a switch that could have POE - it goes to the Ethernet wan port of your router that almost certainly does not...

AIUI their responsibility ends with a 'live;' fibre optic cable. And the supply of an ONT.

Powering it is your problem...

yes.

In my case yes., They wanted a ground floor outside wall with power inside. Not where I wanted it at all.

But fortunately there was a location with cat 5 and power both, on the ground floor on an outside wall.

I then patched from my patch panel, to the router...

Well you don't have to use the 'supplied router' nor site it anywhere near the ONT

This is how they route fibre from a pole...

Hmm, interesting. I would be happy to provide them with a pre-drilled hole at a suitable height...

Do they 'plan and execute' in one visit, or could we agree this on one visit for when they return?

Sorry for all the not-very-powerline-related questions!

J^n

Yes, the 'lead technician' (there were three of them) said he couldn't drill a hole in the window frame but that if I drilled one he would happily use it. Thus we could have had the ONT upstairs if we'd really wanted but, in fact, I decided it made more sense downstairs.

They do it all in one go, or at least they did for ours. They actually spent a very long time trying to get it fully working after they had installed but in the end we had to wait for CityFibre and IDNet to sort things out between them to get it working. There was no problem with the ONT or anything, just an issue at the 'other end'.