Cabling nightmare

RT123

RT123

RT123

Associate
Joined
6 Apr 2024
Posts
215
Location
London, UK
Hi,

I have a physical disability so can't do anything too physical (installing Ethernet cables is far beyond me!) and having an Openreach ONT installed after Virgin Media failed miserably to fix my awful connection. Currently using WiFi for gaming, but have realised this is far from ideal (although testing through Ethernet from a device that it could be used on is no better on VM, I'm sure EE FTTP will be better though). Have been quoted £594 for the router relocation by an AV person (presumbly because the person thought the fibre cable needed moving - is that what optical means?) and a Cat6 Ethernet cable - this is ridiculous.

Is there anyone who can give me a rough idea of how much this should cost? I definitely can't afford that much!

Quote for additional context
 
WJA96 said:
Welcome to London. Firstly, Openreach will relocate your ONT for you for roughly £120.

The CAT6 cable really depends how they’re going to run it. Drilling 2 holes in the walls will be 1 hour labour (because those ladders don’t unload and load themselves) and then up to £50 in materials if they run it in nice black or white external grade ducting. Maybe 30 minutes to measure cut and fit the ducting.

If he’s just tacking it to the skirting board I’d say a competent fitter could do it in 30 minutes. So somewhere between £150+VAT and £250+VAT but it really depends on what the installer’s hourly rate is.

If they are moving a fibre then that’s a VERY specialist job and I could see them charging £600 easily. But as you say, not required in this case.
Click to expand...
Much appreciated - thank you very much for the rough idea!
 
Unfortunately the living room is definitely more than 10m away they allow (right down the hallway). Fingers crossed some tea/coffee will help with that part, but idk.
 
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Appreciate that - but I'm thinking it might even be more than 30m as the current Virgin router is currently placed in quite an awkward place (it's around 15m just to the entrance/doorway of the room it's in).

The quote was also for a Cat6 to the bedroom, but tbh, I don't know how much of that price was based on the ONT.
 
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Fortunately the OR subcontractor who came was actually quite flexible - the position of the ONT is fine, just need the Ethernet cable run to the bedroom

Agreed - prices in London are quite expensive (I’d be so happy to pay only £25 an hour for labour)

Surprisingly, the original quote was from an aerial installer. I’ve got a quote of £180 from a data/communications specialist which seems to be reasonable, especially as the connection is still very problematic. So I might go with that.
 
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I will certainly enquire about the Wireless Access Point - the WiFi upstairs has always been pretty weak
 
Ouch - been quoted £1300 including Ubiquiti APs and replacement routers

So a question I have: could I get a cheap router (for example, I can get a FritzBox for £40) to act as an AP and connect it to the one Ethernet cable/port I will definitely be having installed (sorry I’m a bit of a noob when it comes to networking)
 
Jpaul - first quote I got was £180 to go from the EE router to the bedroom, just trying to fix the WiFi as well is where it got terrible (wouldn't guess there would be too many holes in the wall either). I haven’t tried a Powerline, but believe it wouldn’t run much better than WiFi) and also the quality of Powerline is dependent on a lot of factors (eg, the age of your house for one)

I would appreciate some kind of mesh system perhaps (agree 100% that top-notch WiFi isn't needed, but need the Eth to the room for my PC and trying to get better coverage for WiFi too), but not really sure how to go about this
 
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Final question

Is paying a tradesperson in cash "dodgy" - tax evasion, I presume?

(Sorry, I don't usually hire tradespeople - I have home emergency insurance)
 
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WJA96 said:
It’s not necessarily dodgy - I’m sure everyone fully declares all their income to HMRC. Make sure you get an invoice BEFORE you give the them the cash. That way you OWN them because if you don’t look after you you can just ring up HMRC and tip them the
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Thanks - there was a roughly 20% discount (which made me quite suspicious)
 
WJA96 said:
Are they VAT registered? I actually want to charge VAT because I can recover it and it makes my margins bigger so it does sound a touch unorthodox shall we say?
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I just checked and they are VAT registered (so it certainly does seem "odd")
 
I don’t currently have an invoice for the cash-in- hand job, but I strongly suspect it’s without VAT (£180 vs 150)
 
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Having a lot of difficulty with getting a somewhat reasonable price (a lot of the tradesman in my area who could actually be bothered to respond are actually wanting £450 for a simple cable run and one had a very reasonable rate but the wait time was 4-5 weeks)

A lot of the ones I have asked aren’t responding at all (is this because they can’t be bothered with such a “cheap” job)

It’s quite simple really - all I’m asking for is a cable/port run externally to my from the living room directly below to a bedroom - it’s not a super complex route at all (and I can deal with the poor WiFi up there some other way - but the complex thing is the downstairs router needs a lot of Eth ports, so a mesh may not be an option)

How do I go about finding a handyman (I can get the patch cable etc if I know where to get external Cat6 and faceplates from, just need a drill and a ladder) or at least a reasonable priced tradesman?
 
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jpaul said:
I had my SKY install today and had to accept liability/risk for the drill-hole the installer made through wall just to the right of above pictured door frame, in case there was a heating pipe,
so I can understand reluctance companies might have, for cable installs.

(my new patent) I'm not sure why they don't put a piece of conductive tape on the plastic heating pipes

[only issue I have now is that apparently may take 3 days for telephone number porting to sky digital voice]
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I get that with Sky and OR/their subs (because they're not really "professionals" a such)

number porting is always such an annoying process
 
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So finally had the 1 cable run done last week (£180 but so worth it!)

Problem is I have an ASUS motherboard (Prime B550M to be more specific) with built in networking and am still experiencing some issues connection wise (though latency is improved, though still not as good as the wired Xbox SeriesX downstairs!) - does the WiFi card also have an impact on the Ethernet in anyway? Really don’t want to have to get a replacement networking card (as it would be awkward, though not impossible to do)

Reason why I ask is I had one PC that I had to return (for other reasons) but that one was fine from a WiFi perspective.

Trying to figure out a solution for the poor WiFi still - due to the cost, I couldn’t get an AP done (was wondering if would be possible to use the cable to connect a router or something that could do that and also connect my PC at the same time). Wouldn’t be against it were it not for the ridiculous quotes I was getting to have one or two installed.
 
t2na said:
Have you tried your Xbox upstairs on the new line? Or another device?

It'd be worth checking that first before considering either a network card for the PC or replacing the motherboard.
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That’s a good idea - I’ll try connecting the Xbox first
 
So tested with the Xbox and that is fine.

So I tried a pathping to a few DNS's and Google, and it doesn't actually look like the pings are reaching.

Tracing route to dns.google [8.8.8.8]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
0 RachaelsPC.lan [192.168.1.98]
1 192.168.1.254
2 172.16.11.76
3 * * *
Computing statistics for 50 seconds...
Source to Here This Node/Link
Hop RTT Lost/Sent = Pct Lost/Sent = Pct Address
0 RachaelsPC.lan [192.168.1.98]
0/ 100 = 0% |
1 0ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% 192.168.1.254
100/ 100 =100% |
2 --- 100/ 100 =100% 0/ 100 = 0% 172.16.11.76

Trace complete.

Tracing route to google.com [2a00:1450:4009:81d::200e]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
0 RachaelsPC.lan [2a00:23c7:2ba2:4d00:d9a1:14f:4b8f:4c78]
1 2a00:23c7:2ba2:4d00::1
2 2a00:2302::1100:203:3ee
3 * * *
Computing statistics for 50 seconds...
Source to Here This Node/Link
Hop RTT Lost/Sent = Pct Lost/Sent = Pct Address
0 RachaelsPC.lan [2a00:23c7:2ba2:4d00:d9a1:14f:4b8f:4c78]
0/ 100 = 0% |
1 1ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% 2a00:23c7:2ba2:4d00::1
100/ 100 =100% |
2 --- 100/ 100 =100% 0/ 100 = 0% 2a00:2302::1100:203:3ee

Tracing route to one.one.one.one [1.1.1.1]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
0 RachaelsPC.lan [192.168.1.98]
1 192.168.1.254
2 172.16.11.76
3 * * *
Computing statistics for 50 seconds...
Source to Here This Node/Link
Hop RTT Lost/Sent = Pct Lost/Sent = Pct Address
0 RachaelsPC.lan [192.168.1.98]
0/ 100 = 0% |
1 0ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% 192.168.1.254
100/ 100 =100% |
2 --- 100/ 100 =100% 0/ 100 = 0% 172.16.11.76
 
Could this in fact be a router fault? I've noticed random logs like these (Eth1 is the problematic port, but it wasn't actually 'in use')

29/05/2024, 00:35:55Network interface eth1 down
29/05/2024, 00:35:58Network interface eth1 up
29/05/2024, 00:36:09Network interface eth1 down
29/05/2024, 00:36:13Network interface eth1 up
29/05/2024, 00:37:07Network interface eth1 down
29/05/2024, 00:37:10Network interface eth1 up
 
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