FTTP tomorrow, where to put the ONT

[DHR]

Typical busy week, only just thinking about the installation and ONT location now

The existing phone point, and therefore most equipment, router, firewall, nas, various iot things and an 8 port switch all tidily tucked away in a cabinet, smack bang in the middle of the house in the hallway Everything in there has wired connectivity.

Looking at it now, I can't see that they'll be able to run the ONT to where it's at, without taking cable along a skirt, over a door etc and I really don't want that, it'll look terrible and there is way more chance of the cable getting damaged with shoes and stuff being thrown around by the front door

I know in theory I could run a cat5/6 cable between the ONT and the router, but again, structurally I don't think I can do that with the building layout.

What have other people done to sort out similar situations? House is about 15-20 year old so can't see this being an uncommon problem

 

[Caged]

How does the phone cable get there?

 

[DHR]

How does the phone cable get there?

That's what's bugging me, it's a total mystery. I believe that cable runs up toward the ceiling, not convinced it goes into the loft though.

There is a door frame to the right, then the wall along to the door from there has a bell box on it for the door bell. Just have a horrible feeling it's all been put in by the builders before it's been plastered etc.

 

[Bluecube]

That sounds identical to my situation. Openreach wanted to put the entry point for FTTP in my lounge because that’s the wall where the phone cables apparently enter the house. No idea how the phone cable actually gets to the middle of the hall where it currently is and the engineer wasn’t interested in finding out. Told them that I wanted the ONT to be where the phone was and he offered to bring the cable round the front of the house, through the top of the front door and take it round the coving to middle of the hall. I was going to go with that option.

Not had it installed yet but that’s a whole other story.

 

[DHR]

Think I have a work around that would be tidy, just whether they'd be willing to do it or not which I'll hopefully find out soon

 

[Bluecube]

What’s your work around?

 

[DHR]

It's difficult to explain without drawing a diagram, but we have a dining room / front lounge to the right of the hallway where the phone socket currently is, this is on an external wall, so I'm hoping he's going to be able to go around that side of the house, through the wall and mount the stuff on that wall, only leaves a 3-4m cat5 cable needing to be run from there to the hub in the hallway cabinet that way.

Going to where the socket is in the center of the hallway is too complicated as it joins onto a utility room with tiling and washing machines etc in the direct path from the phone socket to the outside world.

 

[Bluecube]

Apart from the utility room, your hall sounds identical to mine! When I was chatting to the engineer fella, he said it would be a thin optical cable that would be fed into the house and around the top of the ceiling. I’ve not seen the actual cable so can’t verify that but my thinking is that it would easier to conceal/ ignore than a fatter Cat5 cable unless, of course, you can fit that behind the skirting boards.

 

[robj20]

Engineer that fitted mine let me fit the internal cable, so I ran it from the understairs cupboard under the suspended floor through an air brick to where the outdoor splice point was going, took me 10 minutes.

 

[DHR]

All done, up and running, i'll take some pictures later if i get chance @Bluecube - not a good idea putting cable behind skirt though as if you need to repair it at any point, its more of a job.

I fortunately had a spare bit of tidy trunking that's empty across the small run of wall the ethernet will have to go by.

Disappointment part one (and it's my own fault!) Ended up getting the black wifi discs, which apparently need the smart hub 2 (SH2) to work, not necessarily a problem but you can't configure DHCP on the SH2 to point to pihole. I'll have to have a try to see if I can get the discs working with the hub without it providing DHCP. PITA though!

 

[Caged]

You can turn DHCP off on the hub and have your PiHole do DHCP and DNS. Possible that you might have to pair the discs up with the Smart Hub with DHCP enabled and then turn it off later.

 

[Bluecube]

Engineer that fitted mine let me fit the internal cable, so I ran it from the understairs cupboard under the suspended floor through an air brick to where the outdoor splice point was going, took me 10 minutes.

I’m hijacking this thread (sorry!) but can I ask how you managed to feed the cable through? My floor is chipboard with a couple feet of foundations so theoretically I could do something similar but how to get the cable from outside to the middle of the hall?

 

[robj20]

I’m hijacking this thread (sorry!) but can I ask how you managed to feed the cable through? My floor is chipboard with a couple feet of foundations so theoretically I could do something similar but how to get the cable from outside to the middle of the hall?

Drilled a hole through the floor board fed the cable through, then climbed through the hatch and crawled along to the front of the house with the cable and fed it through an air brick.
My crawl space is about 4ft high you can easily kneel up.

 

[DHR]

You can turn DHCP off on the hub and have your PiHole do DHCP and DNS. Possible that you might have to pair the discs up with the Smart Hub with DHCP enabled and then turn it off later.

Yeah I did think that but heard a couple of reports re the discs not working after which I thought was weird, they should just pick up a lease from anywhere. The discs aren't even here yet thanks to another postal delay so i'll have to wait and see.

 

[Cyber-Mav]

Put it where the sun dont shine.







No uv degradation then.