FTTP on Demand

[sjt01]

@upnortheast the fibre ONT box that Openreach install does have its own little rechargeable backup supply, using 4 x AA size NiMh batteries. It’s good enough for around 3.5 hours without mains supply.

If you need more operation time without mains, I’d suggest you connect power to your fibre ONT box (and main network router etc) using a small uninterruptible power supply (UPS).

This means that you will still have broadband in the event of an extended power failure. You can get small APC/Schneider UPS units from Amazon for about £65 or so. With the backup inside the ONT you should have a total of around 12+ hours of operation in the event of a power fail.

Having a little UPS there is possibly more important if you decide to do away with the copper service (for voice) and run your telephone using a Voice over IP (VoIP) service over your fibre broadband.

Otherwise if you have decent mobile service then that’s probably a good enough backup.

Our VOIP service comes through to our mobiles (WiFi or 3G/4G) as well as the fixed receivers, so this sort of thing should obivate the need for backup there. If we were to implement UPSs we would have to fit them to our various switches (especially the POE ones driving the phones) as well. The VOIP takes voicemail and creates an email attachment with the sound file, which is very neat.

 

[upnortheast]

@upnortheast the fibre ONT box that Openreach install does have its own little rechargeable backup supply, using 4 x AA size NiMh batteries. It’s good enough for around 3.5 hours without mains supply.

If you need more operation time without mains, I’d suggest you connect power to your fibre ONT box (and main network router etc) using a small uninterruptible power supply (UPS).

This means that you will still have broadband in the event of an extended power failure. You can get small APC/Schneider UPS units from Amazon for about £65 or so. With the backup inside the ONT you should have a total of around 12+ hours of operation in the event of a power fail.

Having a little UPS there is possibly more important if you decide to do away with the copper service (for voice) and run your telephone using a Voice over IP (VoIP) service over your fibre broadband.

Otherwise if you have decent mobile service then that’s probably a good enough backup.

Thanks for that.
With having the milking robots & bottling plant we do have a big genny that powers the site if needed. So we are usually without power for no more than 10 minutes, as long as the genny battery hasn`t gone flat. - We aim to give it a run every couple of weeks, but sometimes it gets forgotten.
Openreach bloke here today. Came from the pole to a box on the house & left a big coil of wire ready to go inside

 

[Pheasant Surprise]

Thanks for that.
With having the milking robots & bottling plant we do have a big genny that powers the site if needed. So we are usually without power for no more than 10 minutes, as long as the genny battery hasn`t gone flat. - We aim to give it a run every couple of weeks, but sometimes it gets forgotten.
Openreach bloke here today. Came from the pole to a box on the house & left a big coil of wire ready to go inside

Sounds good. Who did you sign up with?

 

[Pheasant Surprise]

Our VOIP service comes through to our mobiles (WiFi or 3G/4G) as well as the fixed receivers, so this sort of thing should obivate the need for backup there. If we were to implement UPSs we would have to fit them to our various switches (especially the POE ones driving the phones) as well. The VOIP takes voicemail and creates an email attachment with the sound file, which is very neat.

I’ve got one of these little APC units In the bottom of the (very messy) wall cabinet that has a pair of Netgear gigabit PoE switches. It’s been pretty good last the 5 years or so and only failed about 2 weeks ago when the gel cell battery inside died. I should’ve changed it out at 3 years apparently....

The white plug-pack goes to the Openreach ONT fibre termination box. Those switches by rights should be on a little 19” rack-mount shelf, but it’s one of these jobs that never gets done....

The yellow fibres are gigabit links to other Netgear switches in the sheds and elsewhere for PoE cameras and phones.

Router is upstairs with 4G backup, sitting on top of hot water cylinder on its box packing foam “legs”.

The external antenna for main 4G (now backup) is up on the chimney, the black coaxes in second photo run up to it. Theres also a second 4G radio radio in the router (with the paddle shaped antennas) for a specific Vodafone fixed IP / private network.

The WiFi antennas are the round ones.

Works pretty well (barring battery failure).

There’s a backup set here that runs through a mains fail changeover, but by the time the switch has detected a sustained mains fail and started the genie and waited for it to become ready, the changeover takes around 45 seconds, so most stuff with a processor/memory inside doesn’t take too kindly to getting a random on / off, so that’s why I’ve put all the network stuff on little UPSs.

 

[Steevo]

I’ve got one of these little APC units In the bottom of the (very messy) wall cabinet that has a pair of Netgear gigabit PoE switches. It’s been pretty good last the 5 years or so and only failed about 2 weeks ago when the gel cell battery inside died. I should’ve changed it out at 3 years apparently....

View attachment 818288
The white plug-pack goes to the Openreach ONT fibre termination box. Those switches by rights should be on a little 19” rack-mount shelf, but it’s one of these jobs that never gets done....

The yellow fibres are gigabit links to other Netgear switches in the sheds and elsewhere for PoE cameras and phones.

View attachment 818286

Router is upstairs with 4G backup, sitting on top of hot water cylinder on its box packing foam “legs”.

The external antenna for main 4G (now backup) is up on the chimney, the black coaxes in second photo run up to it. Theres also a second 4G radio radio in the router (with the paddle shaped antennas) for a specific Vodafone fixed IP / private network.

The WiFi antennas are the round ones.

View attachment 818284

View attachment 818294

Works pretty well (barring battery failure).

There’s a backup set here that runs through a mains fail changeover, but by the time the switch has detected a sustained mains fail and started the genie and waited for it to become ready, the changeover takes around 45 seconds, so most stuff with a processor/memory inside doesn’t take too kindly to getting a random on / off, so that’s why I’ve put all the network stuff on little UPSs.

View attachment 818300

All you need is enough food and water to last you and it almost looks like you’ve a James Bond style nuclear bunker ready to exact your plan of taking over the world..!

Can we see the rocket launchpad please?

 

[Pheasant Surprise]

All you need is enough food and water to last you and it almost looks like you’ve a James Bond style nuclear bunker ready to exact your plan of taking over the world..!

Can we see the rocket launchpad please?

Tomorrow ok. I've got to finish the pour tonight while the weather is good!

 

[Pheasant Surprise]

Thanks for that.
With having the milking robots & bottling plant we do have a big genny that powers the site if needed. So we are usually without power for no more than 10 minutes, as long as the genny battery hasn`t gone flat. - We aim to give it a run every couple of weeks, but sometimes it gets forgotten.
Openreach bloke here today. Came from the pole to a box on the house & left a big coil of wire ready to go inside

Some more details here of the ONT unit they will install internally:

https://www.openreach.com/content/d...lopers/guides-and-handbooks/ONT Factsheet.pdf

 

[upnortheast]

Live today. Bit of an improvement on BT`s previous efforts !
Installer thought speed should go on from there over the next few days

 

[Pheasant Surprise]

Live today. Bit of an improvement on BT`s previous efforts !
Installer thought speed should go on from there over the next few days
View attachment 819238

Bet that’s a lot of an improvement over the previous effort! Enjoy.

 

[upnortheast]

@Pheasant Surprise Your advice would be appreciated. FTTP installed yesterday & speed in the 90s, promised.min 150
I think we have devices on the network which are 10 /' 100 which are limiting the speed to 100
Current set up is - in house from bt hub,- 90 metres cat 5e cable to bungalow.- to engenysis 1221N .then to enge 202 150 metres wifi to enge 202 ext then to TPlink Archer D20 in office.
Any solutions without breaking the bank ?

 

[Pheasant Surprise]

First thing I would do before complaining is check with a laptop etc directly attached using Ethernet cable directly to the ONT, with nothing else in between. This will give you the ‘truest’ indication of your broadband speed. Good to check this at different times of the day and compare, as you might struggle to get full speed at peak times like early evening.

Hopefully the wired network adapter on your laptop will support more than 100Mb/s otherwise it will be capped at that (and will probably pass a bit less in actual fact). Once you’re running over 100 Mb/s broadband, you really want to make sure all the other bits of your network will run several multiples higher - ideally 1000Mb/s (gigabit) which is pretty standard fair on networking gear these days and shouldn’t come with any premium.

Otherwise yes as said if you only have 10/100 links in your network these will definitely act as a bottleneck and you won’t get any faster speed.

Another thing to look at is your router, as quite a few won’t support these sorts of speeds across their internet facing interfaces, even when the port speeds are much higher - this is generally a limitation of the router / its memory/cpu etc and ability to “process” the data packets going to/from the internet.

 

[Steevo]

Are you on wired or wireless connection?

 

[upnortheast]

Are you on wired or wireless connection?

` puter wired to New BT smart hub 2 which is wired to the ONT box

 

[upnortheast]

Update Well it seems connecting direct we get 260 ish.
3 pcs have 10/100 network cards. Couple of access points also 10/100.
Have about 12m cat 5e cable from the ONT box to the bt smart hub2 & speed drops over that Thought cat 5e cable was 10/100/1000 but maybe change that to cat 6,
So a bit of work to do to get full benefit.

 

[Pheasant Surprise]

Update Well it seems connecting direct we get 260 ish.
3 pcs have 10/100 network cards. Couple of access points also 10/100.
Have about 12m cat 5e cable from the ONT box to the bt smart hub2 & speed drops over that Thought cat 5e cable was 10/100/1000 but maybe change that to cat 6,
So a bit of work to do to get full benefit.

Cat5e will be good for 1000 but you need network cards and switch/router ports likewise to have 1000 capability. As said not that hard or expensive, just be aware of what you’re getting. Should get you a much improved speed upgrade.

 

[upnortheast]

Any recommendations for a couple of access points wired / wifi ? with 1000 capacity. Policy up to now has been to use old routers with the DHCP switched off. but the ones I have are 10/100

 

[Pheasant Surprise]

For network switches, I like Netgear myself and use quite a few of these, as they are 10/100/1000 and have Power over Ethernet (PoE) on all ports too. Also they have two ‘spare’ ports called GBIC SFP ports you can plug more copper or fibre interfaces into. Oh any they’re very good value too at under £100

Netgear GS110Tp

https://www.ebuyer.com/662014-netgear-prosafe-8x10-100-1000-sm-gb-switch-poe-gs110tp-200eus-gs110tp-200eus

 

[Pheasant Surprise]

You could still continue to use the old routers/etc (with DHCP etc all switched off) on the “edge” of the network for WiFi access. Of course you’re still limited then by the 100Mb/s wire speed of these devices to the rest of the network.

In future for any internal WiFi access I’d suggest you look into a mesh system - several access points that are managed and act as one “system”. The WiFi signal will generally be far stronger, more stable and you can “roam” better between access points without fear of dropouts etc as they properly manage device “handover” as you move from point to point.

 

[Steevo]

You could still continue to use the old routers/etc (with DHCP etc all switched off) on the “edge” of the network for WiFi access. Of course you’re still limited then by the 100Mb/s wire speed of these devices to the rest of the network.

In future for any internal WiFi access I’d suggest you look into a mesh system - several access points that are managed and act as one “system”. The WiFi signal will generally be far stronger, more stable and you can “roam” better between access points without fear of dropouts etc as they properly manage device “handover” as you move from point to point.

I can see why you're having troubles....! Once router just wouldn't hack it.

More WiFI in the East Wing Jeeves!

 

[Pheasant Surprise]

I can see why you're having troubles....! Once router just wouldn't hack it.

More WiFI in the East Wing Jeeves!

View attachment 820140

West Wing!