Howdy,

I'm fairly new to this community, the wiki really helped me out with taking electricity out to my shed and that works really well with that. I'm pretty well versed in the technical knowledge of electronics, mains electrics, low-voltage, networking and all round interested in DIY, just don't have so much practical experience with other DIY tasks. Anyhow.. TL;DR at the end if people want it. ;-)

I am re-doing my home-network, right now it was just a bunch of cables running behind the wardrobes and really messy, all ending up in a little ex-fireplace/chimney place. I decided to try and tidy it by sticking them on euro data modules and putting some rather expensive D Line trunking but I regretted that.. it looks fairly messy and it would have made sense if I wired it from the attic which is just a storage space. Boring story I know.. here's a pictu https://imgur.com/tkXA7nv

I have everything ready to do my home network properly but I can't seem to figure out how to get some Cat5e down the walls from the attic, if I was around when the house was decorated I'd probably have a better idea but I was 1 years old, which dates it at roughly 1998 which is fairly modern by house standards.

I tried this about 4 years ago, gave up and never tried again. I pulled out the flooring under the area I know the wall I want to drop cable down is. I attempted to drill with a wood drill bit but then tried with another bit that was thinner but just as long. Today, I tried drilling more than one hole which was probably not a great idea but couldn't get very far.

After looking at it, I think I hit plaster. I don't really know how walls are constructed, I know that this isn't a hollow wall but surely it isn't fully plastered up within although it does seem like that to me?

http://imgur.com/a/sWCNb - a few images of it

TL;DR I need to get a low-voltage wire down a wall through the attic, I don't know much about wall construction, and can't get a hole from above. The only thing I want to avoid is cutting up plaster and re-plastering (other residents won't approve ;-)).

Any ideas, advice, help?

Regards.

In message ,
Humza writes
Howdy,

I'm fairly new to this community, the wiki really helped me out with
taking electricity out to my shed and that works really well with that.
I'm pretty well versed in the technical knowledge of electronics, mains
electrics, low-voltage, networking and all round interested in DIY,
just don't have so much practical experience with other DIY tasks.
Anyhow.. TL;DR at the end if people want it. ;-)


snip

I tried this about 4 years ago, gave up and never tried again. I pulled
out the flooring under the area I know the wall I want to drop cable
down is. I attempted to drill with a wood drill bit but then tried with
another bit that was thinner but just as long. Today, I tried drilling
more than one hole which was probably not a great idea but couldn't get
very far.

After looking at it, I think I hit plaster. I don't really know how
walls are constructed, I know that this isn't a hollow wall but surely
it isn't fully plastered up within although it does seem like that to
me?

http://imgur.com/a/sWCNb - a few images of it

TL;DR I need to get a low-voltage wire down a wall through the attic, I
don't know much about wall construction, and can't get a hole from
above. The only thing I want to avoid is cutting up plaster and
re-plastering (other residents won't approve ;-)).

How old is the house, as that can give ideas about how it's constructed.

The ceiling in the top of the first attic picture appears to lath (thin
strips of wood) and plaster over the top - you can see it squeezed
through the gaps. This would suggest pre about 1960 - ish.

Anyway, you say the wall isn't hollow, in which case you have no
realistic chance of running a cable down inside the wall.

A solid internal wall will normally be built of brick or some kind of
concrete block and be solid all the way through. The timber you have
drilled through (called a plate) is put on top of the wall to rest/fix
the joists to. What seems to be plaster underneath is probably mortar.

Hollow walls are normally a wood frame with lath and plaster or plaste
board. But there are normally horizontal pieces called noggins so you
can't just drop a cable down the middle.

Where is the place you want to bring down the cable in relation to the
network equipment location?

The only realistic option is to bring it through the ceiling and then
chase out the wall and bury the cables - it wouldn't need much for a bit
of network cable or to surface run some minitrunking down the wall and
paint it. Done in corner or behind a cupboard or something like that it
isn't that obvious. When the room is redecorated you can bury it.

Another thought.

By the looks of it you have laminate flooring. The should have a gap
round the edge - hidden underneath that quarter round beading . You
might be able to lift the beading and run cable in the little gap.
Replacing the beading afterwards. Don't know if that would help with an
alterntive run?
--
Chris French

On Fri, 15 Jan 2016 14:37:09 -0800 (PST), Humza wrote:

I have everything ready to do my home network properly but I can't seem
to figure out how to get some Cat5e down the walls from the attic,

Modern house internal soil stack? Boxed in but with plenty of space
around the soil pipe inside. Gets the vertical parts sorted but
horizontal to where you want the ends is a bit harder...

A good place to come down inside almost all rooms is the corner
behind the door. 15 mm or so trunking painted(*) or wall papered over
will blend in very well. Choose corners above each other and you may
be able to get down into all rooms from just a few places in the
loft.

(*) Emulsion won't take nicely, not sure what you'd need to put on
first to provide a key for emulsion.

--
Cheers
Dave.

On 16 January 2016 02:40:42 GMT+00:00, Dave Liquorice wrote:
A good place to come down inside almost all rooms is the corner
behind the door. 15 mm or so trunking painted(*) or wall papered over
will blend in very well. Choose corners above each other and you may
be able to get down into all rooms from just a few places in the
loft.

Thanks Dave, I didn't make it too clear in the first message; I already have a plan of where I want and what I want to do, I'm just struggling to execute it. So:

- I need to get a few cables from the attic down through an internal wall, near the corner of a room (directly below attic).

- It isn't a thin plasterboard wall, I'm not sure what's in the wall or how it's constructed but there is a lot of plaster.

- I've located the wall from above and attempted to drill but I can't get through, see images in first message.

I've probably missed something because I'm sure it's possible to drop a cable through an existing wall without having to rip it up or cut into it.

Regards.

On 16/01/2016 04:21, Humza wrote:
On 16 January 2016 02:40:42 GMT+00:00, Dave Liquorice wrote:
A good place to come down inside almost all rooms is the corner
behind the door. 15 mm or so trunking painted(*) or wall papered over
will blend in very well. Choose corners above each other and you may
be able to get down into all rooms from just a few places in the
loft.

Thanks Dave, I didn't make it too clear in the first message; I already have a plan of where I want and what I want to do, I'm just struggling to execute it. So:

- I need to get a few cables from the attic down through an internal wall, near the corner of a room (directly below attic).

- It isn't a thin plasterboard wall, I'm not sure what's in the wall or how it's constructed but there is a lot of plaster.


I think you said the house was built in 1998? If so, it will likely be
plasterboard or a solid material like breeze block or brick

- I've located the wall from above and attempted to drill but I can't get through, see images in first message.


It's possibly you're hitting timber frame (the wooden wall frame):

http://wiki.diyfaq.org.uk/index.php/Stud_wall

I've probably missed something because I'm sure it's possible to drop a cable through an existing wall without having to rip it up or cut into it.


IME, at best, it's going to be difficult to thread a cable down through
a wall. If you're going to try you want to be clear there's no obstacle
(such as nogging), and if it's an older house, lath and plaster rubble.
Better to:

* Chase into the wall - lot of mess, but IMO the best option, especially
if you future proof with trunking. If I was starting from scratch it's
what I'd do, and take the hit with plastering/decorating costs.

* Surface mount - as somebody said upthread, the may get away with a
reasonably neat solution in the corner behind a door. Drill up from the
room into the attic after checking what you're drilling through. Apart
from looking a bit tacky, making the opening is likely to cause more of
a mess than you would think ;-)

* Follow existing services/gaps - but be sure you're clear of other
wiring. In one wall I followed the mains wiring, which is not the best
plan for a number of reasons. I used cat6 and have had no problems (yet).

--
Cheers, Rob

You say the wall you are trying to come down is not hollow, tapping it should establish if it is or not, if it sounds hollow it is if not it is solid. Are you sure the top of the wall you can see in the attic is wood and not brick, if wood then it should not be a problem to drill through and would suggest the wall is a studded wall, ie. a timber framework with plasterboard lining either side and will sound hollow when tapped. A studded wall might allow you to get cables down part of it but you usually find horizontal cross-members called noggins will prevent you dropping your cables the full height. To get past these may require a few access holes in the plasterboard which will have to be patched up afterwards.

Useful places to drop cables from the attic are as Dave mentioned, pipe boxes or airing cupboards. If your walls are solid then you have to decide what you are prepared to put up with. If you are happy to conceal it in trunking then a corner behind a door is fairly unobtrusive. If you want to completely conceal the cable/s then you will have to chase out channels in the plaster and patch up afterwards. To minimise how much channeling you have to do door frames are useful. Architrave, the wood moulding around the frame, is usually just nailed on and prising off a vertical length will allow you to chip out some plaster for several Cat5e cables to be set in and concealed once the architrave is re-nailed back in place. That leaves a short section of wall above the doorframe to the ceiling that can be channeled out and patched up or again a short length of trunking can be fairly unobtrusive. One other advantage of using door frames is that in two storey houses room doors are often directly above or below each other so if you need to go down two storeys this can really minimise the amount of visible cabling or channeling needed to be done.

Richard

In message ,
Tricky Dicky writes
You say the wall you are trying to come down is not hollow, tapping it
should establish if it is or not, if it sounds hollow it is if not it
is solid.

Unless it is a drylined brick or block wall. This can sound like a stud
wall - OP this has plasterboard normally stuck to a brick or block wall.

Are you sure the top of the wall you can see in the attic is wood and
not brick, if wood then it should not be a problem to drill through and
would suggest the wall is a studded wall, ie. a timber framework with
plasterboard lining either side and will sound hollow when tapped.

I interpreted the photos as drilling through wood and then hitting
plaster/mortar.

Also the wall contains an old fireplace where the network gear is, it
would be unusual to have a fireplace in a stud wall.

--
Chris French

In message , Chris French
writes
In message ,
Humza writes
snip

TL;DR I need to get a low-voltage wire down a wall through the attic,
I don't know much about wall construction, and can't get a hole from
above. The only thing I want to avoid is cutting up plaster and
re-plastering (other residents won't approve ;-)).

snip

Another thought.

By the looks of it you have laminate flooring. The should have a gap
round the edge - hidden underneath that quarter round beading . You
might be able to lift the beading and run cable in the little gap.
Replacing the beading afterwards. Don't know if that would help with an
alterntive run?

Another possibility for horizontal runs is to prise off the skirting
board and put it behind there. But that will leave at least a little
bit of damage (paint, were the fixings are etc.) and may lead to the
skirting breaking
--
Chris French

On Saturday, 16 January 2016 04:21:22 UTC, Humza wrote:
On 16 January 2016 02:40:42 GMT+00:00, Dave Liquorice wrote:
A good place to come down inside almost all rooms is the corner
behind the door. 15 mm or so trunking painted(*) or wall papered over
will blend in very well. Choose corners above each other and you may
be able to get down into all rooms from just a few places in the
loft.

Thanks Dave, I didn't make it too clear in the first message; I already have a plan of where I want and what I want to do, I'm just struggling to execute it. So:

- I need to get a few cables from the attic down through an internal wall, near the corner of a room (directly below attic).

- It isn't a thin plasterboard wall, I'm not sure what's in the wall or how it's constructed but there is a lot of plaster.

- I've located the wall from above and attempted to drill but I can't get through, see images in first message.

I've probably missed something because I'm sure it's possible to drop a cable through an existing wall without having to rip it up or cut into it.

Regards.

An internal wall that's not plasterboard will be a single leaf of solid masonry, almost certainly breeze blocks in 98. So there's no way to get inside it, it's solid. Hence the alternatives folk have suggested.

It's not particularly hard to bust a channel in breeze/plaster, but your filling skills need to be upto it afterwards.

If you decide to put trunking in a channel, fit your wire outside the trunking. That way you can in future get more total wire in a given trunking space, and it's one less task when rewiring, no need to pull out the old stuff.. Cat5 has various other uses beside networking, and always will.

There are various other ways to make life easier, but it looks like you don't want to change the route.


NT

On 16/01/2016 04:21, Humza wrote:

- It isn't a thin plasterboard wall, I'm not sure what's in the wall
or how it's constructed but there is a lot of plaster.

It could be a wall made from light weight blocks with a timber header
plate on the top. Drilling into the top of that would seem very much
like drilling through timber and into plaster.

If that is the case you will need to chase the wall and make good after.

See:

http://wiki.diyfaq.org.uk/index.php/...n#Wall_chasing


I've probably missed something because I'm sure it's possible to drop
a cable through an existing wall without having to rip it up or cut
into it.

Only if its a stud wall. Could you see any fixings down through the
timber in the attic that would suggest the timber plate is nailed to the
top of studs?

FYI, Stud wall construction:

http://wiki.diyfaq.org.uk/index.php/Stud_wall


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On Saturday, January 16, 2016 at 6:30:16 AM UTC, Chris French wrote:
How old is the house, as that can give ideas about how it's constructed.

The ceiling in the top of the first attic picture appears to lath (thin
strips of wood) and plaster over the top - you can see it squeezed
through the gaps. This would suggest pre about 1960 - ish.

I'd say just about 1950s, with my limited knowledge. It was renovated in 1998 but most things stayed as they were including the old cabling which looks to be old lead sheath cable for lighting which was placed in some sort of odd thin metal conduit that's all rusted. There was some old grey twin and earth (didn't check if there was earth) cable from the old installation which I presume was for sockets, looked even smaller than 2.5mm which the builders never bothered ripping out in some places.

I presume the walls remained the same. I can only see one hollow wall in the house which I presume was added as an extra room in 1998.

A side view of a similar wall from a light switch: https://i.imgur.com/VbMcgXU.jpg - it looks like wood in the picture but it's some sort of mortar/plaster/something mixture which I suspect is filled in through the whole wall and with trunking inside for other room's light switches.

Anyway, you say the wall isn't hollow, in which case you have no
realistic chance of running a cable down inside the wall.

Dang, I thought it was the case but I was still hopeful that I missed something obvious.

A solid internal wall will normally be built of brick or some kind of
concrete block and be solid all the way through. The timber you have
drilled through (called a plate) is put on top of the wall to rest/fix
the joists to. What seems to be plaster underneath is probably mortar.

Hollow walls are normally a wood frame with lath and plaster or plaste
board. But there are normally horizontal pieces called noggins so you
can't just drop a cable down the middle.

Where is the place you want to bring down the cable in relation to the
network equipment location?

Network equipment will be somewhere in the attic, that's not a problem. For it to actually work, I need a link to the modem which is stuck in a room, and I also want to get wires back down to a printer and workstation in that same room. Right now powerline ethernet is used for those, but it's pants.

The only realistic option is to bring it through the ceiling and then
chase out the wall and bury the cables - it wouldn't need much for a bit
of network cable or to surface run some minitrunking down the wall and
paint it. Done in corner or behind a cupboard or something like that it
isn't that obvious. When the room is redecorated you can bury it.

Another thought.

By the looks of it you have laminate flooring. The should have a gap
round the edge - hidden underneath that quarter round beading . You
might be able to lift the beading and run cable in the little gap.
Replacing the beading afterwards. Don't know if that would help with an
alterntive run?

Possible, but in that case, it's probably easier with the D Line trunking that I paid so much for, just wanted to avoid it. ;p


On Saturday, January 16, 2016 at 6:58:45 AM UTC, RJH wrote:
* Chase into the wall - lot of mess, but IMO the best option, especially
if you future proof with trunking. If I was starting from scratch it's
what I'd do, and take the hit with plastering/decorating costs.

Yeah, too much effort for what it's worth, easier to bear the sight of external trunking than having to move all the furniture and chase into the wall.. If the finish isn't perfect, other residents won't be too happy. ;-)

* Surface mount - as somebody said upthread, the may get away with a
reasonably neat solution in the corner behind a door. Drill up from the
room into the attic after checking what you're drilling through. Apart
from looking a bit tacky, making the opening is likely to cause more of
a mess than you would think ;-)

Right now I have a single Cat5e from the modem to my room where the network equipment currently is on with cable clips, it looks terrible and I want 3 Cat5e's to that room really.

* Follow existing services/gaps - but be sure you're clear of other
wiring. In one wall I followed the mains wiring, which is not the best
plan for a number of reasons. I used cat6 and have had no problems (yet).

Literally nothing goes down from the attic to the rooms apart from bundle of lighting cables going down to the lights and switches. I could take a look at the light switches, from what I saw they used what can be lightly termed as trunking to the light switches but I probably won't be able to fit another cable through there. Pic: https://i.imgur.com/qeSoqny.jpg


On Saturday, January 16, 2016 at 8:20:07 AM UTC, Chris French wrote:
I interpreted the photos as drilling through wood and then hitting
plaster/mortar.

That's what it looks like to me.

Also the wall contains an old fireplace where the network gear is, it
would be unusual to have a fireplace in a stud wall.

That fireplace wall is an external wall, the one I was attempting was an internal.

On Saturday, January 16, 2016 at 12:00:26 PM UTC, wrote:
There are various other ways to make life easier, but it looks like you don't want to change the route.

If it were just up to me, I'd rip out the wall and start again or at least chase the wall and re-plaster but I'm just more worried about disruption to others in the house. They don't particularly approve of my work. ;-)

On Saturday, January 16, 2016 at 1:10:14 PM UTC, John Rumm wrote:
Only if its a stud wall. Could you see any fixings down through the
timber in the attic that would suggest the timber plate is nailed to the
top of studs?

I couldn't see much, it doesn't appear to be a stud wall from what I have seen.

On Sat, 16 Jan 2016 06:54:50 -0800 (PST), Humza wrote:

A solid internal wall will normally be built of brick or some
kind of
concrete block and be solid all the way through.

Blocks might be hollow, square "figure of eight" things, sides about
an inch thick. PITA when sinking a box for a socket as you end up
with a hole with no or very little back.


I could take a look at the light switches, from what I saw they used
what can be lightly termed as trunking to the light switches but I
probably won't be able to fit another cable through there.

Not allowed either, the insulation on Cat5 is not mains rated. That
aside running network stuff in very close proximaty to mains isn't a
good idea from the interfernce POV.

--
Cheers
Dave.

On Saturday, 16 January 2016 15:01:23 UTC, Humza wrote:
On Saturday, January 16, 2016 at 12:00:26 PM UTC, tabbypurr wrote:

There are various other ways to make life easier, but it looks like you don't want to change the route.

If it were just up to me, I'd rip out the wall and start again or at least chase the wall and re-plaster but I'm just more worried about disruption to others in the house. They don't particularly approve of my work. ;-)

There are various other options not yet mentioned, eg.
1. Lift floorboards & run cable there.
2. Run wire down an internal wall corner & plaster over it so that the corner's no longer square.

There are various others if you want to get creative too, eg
3. Repurpose a TV coax for network & use a tv sender instead.
4. Run cable in a skirting board groove (superglue it) and woodfill over it to make a new profile.
5. If determined enough you could hide 8 core twisted pair in plain sight, but it doesn't look like you want to get into the issues that come with nonstandard feeds, creative routing etc.


NT

On Sat, 16 Jan 2016 06:58:45 +0000, RJH wrote:

* Surface mount - as somebody said upthread, the may get away with a
reasonably neat solution in the corner behind a door.

And if that isn't the "right" corner of the room it's not big deal to
cable staple an single cable along the top of the skirting. As this
is a modern house I guess it only has champered or 1/4 round
skirting. Ogee is great for hiding cables in the two moulded grooves
and along the top.

Another thought is to cut the bottom 25 mm off the skirting and put
25 mm trunking in the space, hopefully there will be enough deepth.
Choose the trunking on depth rather than width. B-)

--
Cheers
Dave.

En el artículo ,
Humza escribió:

- I've located the wall from above and attempted to drill but I can't get
through, see images in first message.

Poke a long screwdriver (gently! - wires, pipes above) up through the
ceiling into the loft, then go up with a torch and look for it. You know
exactly where to drill then.

--
(\_/)
(='.'=) Bunny says: Windows 10? Nein danke!
(")_(")

In message ,
Humza writes
On Saturday, January 16, 2016 at 6:30:16 AM UTC, Chris French wrote:
How old is the house, as that can give ideas about how it's constructed.

The ceiling in the top of the first attic picture appears to lath (thin
strips of wood) and plaster over the top - you can see it squeezed
through the gaps. This would suggest pre about 1960 - ish.

I'd say just about 1950s, with my limited knowledge. It was renovated
in 1998 but most things stayed as they were including the old cabling
which looks to be old lead sheath cable for lighting which was placed
in some sort of odd thin metal conduit that's all rusted. There was
some old grey twin and earth (didn't check if there was earth) cable
from the old installation which I presume was for sockets, looked even
smaller than 2.5mm which the builders never bothered ripping out in
some places.


Off the point, but who owns the house?

If there is still old lead sheathed cable in use , then it really should
be checked (well in reality, rewired). The inner insulation on the lead
cables was IIRC normally rubber. This perishes, and can just crumble
away in fittings. We almost had afire in our old house because of old
perished rubber insulation.

snip

By the looks of it you have laminate flooring. The should have a gap
round the edge - hidden underneath that quarter round beading . You
might be able to lift the beading and run cable in the little gap.
Replacing the beading afterwards. Don't know if that would help with an
alterntive run?

Possible, but in that case, it's probably easier with the D Line
trunking that I paid so much for, just wanted to avoid it. ;p

If there is just one or two cables, it might be neater just to staple
the cable nearly to the top of the skirting and paint over it. Painting
the trunking anyway will make it less obvious.



snip

Right now I have a single Cat5e from the modem to my room where the
network equipment currently is on with cable clips, it looks terrible
and I want 3 Cat5e's to that room really.

Do you really need 3 cables though for the network? A network switch
and the end means just one cable (though if you are putting in trunking
or chasing, it's that much more work if any really to put in more.
--
Chris French

On 15/01/16 22:37, Humza wrote:
Howdy,

I'm fairly new to this community, the wiki really helped me out with
taking electricity out to my shed and that works really well with
that. I'm pretty well versed in the technical knowledge of
electronics, mains electrics, low-voltage, networking and all round
interested in DIY, just don't have so much practical experience with
other DIY tasks. Anyhow.. TL;DR at the end if people want it. ;-)

I am re-doing my home-network, right now it was just a bunch of
cables running behind the wardrobes and really messy, all ending up
in a little ex-fireplace/chimney place. I decided to try and tidy it
by sticking them on euro data modules and putting some rather
expensive D Line trunking but I regretted that.. it looks fairly
messy and it would have made sense if I wired it from the attic which
is just a storage space. Boring story I know.. here's a pictu
https://imgur.com/tkXA7nv

I have everything ready to do my home network properly but I can't
seem to figure out how to get some Cat5e down the walls from the
attic, if I was around when the house was decorated I'd probably have
a better idea but I was 1 years old, which dates it at roughly 1998
which is fairly modern by house standards.

I tried this about 4 years ago, gave up and never tried again. I
pulled out the flooring under the area I know the wall I want to drop
cable down is. I attempted to drill with a wood drill bit but then
tried with another bit that was thinner but just as long. Today, I
tried drilling more than one hole which was probably not a great idea
but couldn't get very far.

After looking at it, I think I hit plaster. I don't really know how
walls are constructed, I know that this isn't a hollow wall but
surely it isn't fully plastered up within although it does seem like
that to me?

http://imgur.com/a/sWCNb - a few images of it

TL;DR I need to get a low-voltage wire down a wall through the attic,
I don't know much about wall construction, and can't get a hole from
above. The only thing I want to avoid is cutting up plaster and
re-plastering (other residents won't approve ;-)).

Any ideas, advice, help?

Regards.

I assume that wifi or powerline won't do what you need the cabling for.

--

Jeff

On 15/01/16 22:37, Humza wrote:
Howdy,

I'm fairly new to this community, the wiki really helped me out with
taking electricity out to my shed and that works really well with
that. I'm pretty well versed in the technical knowledge of
electronics, mains electrics, low-voltage, networking and all round
interested in DIY, just don't have so much practical experience with
other DIY tasks. Anyhow.. TL;DR at the end if people want it. ;-)

I am re-doing my home-network, right now it was just a bunch of
cables running behind the wardrobes and really messy, all ending up
in a little ex-fireplace/chimney place.

I've got some cables encased in corrugated conduit shoved down a defunct
blocked off chimney. There's some holes carefully [1] drilled near the
top of that which exit [2] into the atic.

[1] carefully, meaning well - I haven't toppled the top of the 1930's
stack going at it with my hunking SDS ...

[2] no place for smoke, so if its a chimney that could be in the future
made usable, er, no.

--
Adrian C

On Sunday, January 17, 2016 at 2:08:06 AM UTC, Mike Tomlinson wrote:
Poke a long screwdriver (gently! - wires, pipes above) up through the
ceiling into the loft, then go up with a torch and look for it. You know
exactly where to drill then.

No such thing as gentle with me, it's either going to do nothing or bust the whole ceiling down. ;-)

On Sunday, January 17, 2016 at 9:45:55 AM UTC, Jeff Layman wrote:
I assume that wifi or powerline won't do what you need the cabling for.

As a networking guy (my business is dealing with servers, data centers and the like) anything less than gigabit is unacceptable for me. ;p

All of my storage is in the shed, inside the house all of the workstations are quiet SSD based with low storage. I do use wireless (if you're serious about it I really recommend the Unifi AC Lite, it isn't a router or anything, it just shoots out wireless) of course for mobile phones and the like and power line for the TV (although it's not hard to get a cable there, just not worth the effort for something that's never going to max out powerline)..

On Sunday, January 17, 2016 at 9:00:23 AM UTC, Chris French wrote:
Off the point, but who owns the house?

If there is still old lead sheathed cable in use , then it really should
be checked (well in reality, rewired). The inner insulation on the lead
cables was IIRC normally rubber. This perishes, and can just crumble
away in fittings. We almost had afire in our old house because of old
perished rubber insulation.

Well, I've made my way onto the deeds of the house but my father bought it. Those cables are not in use, if they were and I knew I'd have done it already, our builders just didn't care enough to rip it out of the walls fully, they are stuck hanging in the attics out of the wall, I've tested it and no voltage and it doesn't make its way to the consumer unit so all is good. ;-)

Do you really need 3 cables though for the network? A network switch
and the end means just one cable (though if you are putting in trunking
or chasing, it's that much more work if any really to put in more.

I'd prefer if one of the computers was on a different VLAN, it's a guest PC really and only my beefy switch upstairs can do that, not the cheapy £10 ones.

On Sunday, January 17, 2016 at 10:59:09 AM UTC, Adrian Caspersz wrote:
I've got some cables encased in corrugated conduit shoved down a defunct
blocked off chimney. There's some holes carefully [1] drilled near the
top of that which exit [2] into the atic.

[1] carefully, meaning well - I haven't toppled the top of the 1930's
stack going at it with my hunking SDS ...

[2] no place for smoke, so if its a chimney that could be in the future
made usable, er, no.

That's how I plan to get the cables down to my room, my room has all the current endpoints for all the computers right now as it is, so they'll be shoved up the chimney and terminated in the attic with a patch panel and then connected to a beefy switch. I'll also have to run a separate conduit to bring power upstairs to the attic, there is already power but the electrician though it was a good idea to run a 13A plug socket off the 6A upstairs lighting circuit. I don't see the logic in that but hey.

--

I think I can safely conclude that the best solution is to be creative with routing the cable externally on the wall. The best option would have been chasing the wall and putting trunking but alas I doubt others in the house would be happy with that.

I'll settle for mini-trunking (or that expensive D line stuff I have) most of the way. One minor thing I'll have to work out if I want it to look good is to drill hole in the door frame flush against the wall. I could get a flexible drill or drill at an angle, but any other creative solutions?

Picture explaining what I mean: https://i.imgur.com/1e4ty3V.jpg

I pretty much have the rest of the house sorted, I will make sure to add some extra cat5e to the master telephone socket from the attic, because next thing is to move our telephone line over to VoIP, as part of my company we do VoIP we have some SIP trunks from BT wholesale, so I can save £16.99 a month for line rental with Virgin Media by just using a SIP trunk and get cheaper rates. Virgin Media actually use VoIP anyway to get you the phone line since everything is digital with the coax, somewhere along the line from the exchange to the green cabinet they convert a SIP trunk to analogue to install into your home.

On 17/01/16 14:10, Humza wrote:

sorry, huge snip

I could get a flexible drill or drill at an angle, but any other
creative solutions?

Picture explaining what I mean: https://i.imgur.com/1e4ty3V.jpg

I'd use a very long drill bit so you can place the bulk of the drill
some way back and still come in fairly tight to the wall. I have a 1m
drill bit for that kind of job.

FWIW, I don't much like the look of trunking, and if it were me; I'd
route a channel in the skirting (or the wall) the depth of the cable
then make good with filler.

--
Adrian C

On Sunday, January 17, 2016 at 2:28:11 PM UTC, Adrian Caspersz wrote:
I'd use a very long drill bit so you can place the bulk of the drill
some way back and still come in fairly tight to the wall. I have a 1m
drill bit for that kind of job.

Makes sense, I'll give that a go. I've got some long bits in the shed somewhere.

FWIW, I don't much like the look of trunking, and if it were me; I'd
route a channel in the skirting (or the wall) the depth of the cable
then make good with filler.

It is a temporary measure, next time we redecorate the room I'll go all the way and chase then replaster the wall, but for the time being it's the best looking with the least amount of effort. D Line trunking isn't too bad looking, the price isn't worth it, though. I wouldn't buy it again.

On Sun, 17 Jan 2016 06:10:05 -0800 (PST), Humza wrote:

Well, I've made my way onto the deeds of the house but my father bought
it.

If you haven't already make sure you have done this properly, there
are some hefty tax implications, mainly Capital Gains Tax. HMRC have
the transfer of property (or other assets) very much sown up so they
get a cut and the rules are anything but simple and changee all the
time as HMRC plays "whack a mole" with any loop holes people find.

If only your father was on the deeds when you got added to them, you
technically had a Capital Gain of 50% of the value of the house at
that time. You should have paid CGT on that, I think. CGT is normally
only applicable at selling of an asset and only on the selling price
less cost price. But if you didn't buy your share it then becomes a
"gift" and several new cans of worms are opened.

so they'll be shoved up the chimney and terminated in the attic with a
patch panel and then connected to a beefy switch.

Bear in mind that lofts get very hot in the summer. I wouldn't be
surprise to see 50 C ambinet...

One minor thing I'll have to work out if I want it to look good is to
drill hole in the door frame flush against the wall. I could get a
flexible drill or drill at an angle, but any other creative solutions?

Your target is further back than the face of the wall, get a drill
long enough to reach the target point and drill horizontally but at
an angle to the right hand wall.

I also see you have torous skirting that goove at the tip of the
arrow "trunking" can hide a cable quite well but held with cable
staples not hammer in clips. Example:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0091CECNE

I pretty much have the rest of the house sorted, I will make sure to add some extra cat5e to the master telephone socket from the attic, because next thing is to move our telephone line over to VoIP, as part of my company we do VoIP we have some SIP trunks from BT wholesale, so I can save £16.99 a month for line rental with Virgin Media by just using a SIP trunk and get cheaper rates. Virgin Media actually use VoIP anyway to get you the phone line since everything is digital with the coax, somewhere along the line from the exchange to the green cabinet they convert a SIP trunk to analogue to install into your home.

--
Cheers
Dave.

Best Universal Grit Grime and Effluent Remover wrong button half
way through post...

On Sun, 17 Jan 2016 06:10:05 -0800 (PST), Humza wrote:


because next thing is to move our telephone line over to VoIP, as part
of my company we do VoIP we have some SIP trunks from BT wholesale, so I
can save £16.99 a month for line rental with Virgin Media by just using
a SIP trunk and get cheaper rates.

BT will do you a POTS line for £16.19/month. This will work when
there is a local or wide area power outage.

How long will the Virgin Media cabinet run after the power fails?
How long will your kit run after the local power fails?
Don't bank on your mobile still working either.

TBH to be decently resilient it would be better to spend another
£4.00/month for Total Care on the BT POTS line so when the line fails
BT fix in within 24 hrs of the fault being reported. Faults can be
logged 24/7 and repairs are made daytime, *every* day of the year.

--
Cheers
Dave.

In message ,
Humza writes
On Sunday, January 17, 2016 at 2:28:11 PM UTC, Adrian Caspersz wrote:
I'd use a very long drill bit so you can place the bulk of the drill
some way back and still come in fairly tight to the wall. I have a 1m
drill bit for that kind of job.

Makes sense, I'll give that a go. I've got some long bits in the shed
somewhere.


Depending on the clearance with the other doors frame It might be
easiest to come from the left. Again with a long drill bit so you can
keep the drill in the doorway. Watch out for a long drill bit wandering.

A 'door frame'[ is actually a door lining about an inch or so thick
around the opening, the architrave covering the joint with the wall. So
you might be drilling through brick once through the architrave. Though
in that location it might also just be a lump of timber.
--
Chris French

On Sunday, January 17, 2016 at 4:28:07 PM UTC, Dave Liquorice wrote:
BT will do you a POTS line for £16.19/month. This will work when
there is a local or wide area power outage.

How long will the Virgin Media cabinet run after the power fails?
How long will your kit run after the local power fails?
Don't bank on your mobile still working either.

TBH to be decently resilient it would be better to spend another
£4.00/month for Total Care on the BT POTS line so when the line fails
BT fix in within 24 hrs of the fault being reported. Faults can be
logged 24/7 and repairs are made daytime, *every* day of the year.

What use case scenario are you thinking of here? If it's it won't be a disaster if the home phone goes out, your average joe has a "power bank" for their phone too. It's quite unlikely power will be out long enough to drain a phone and power bank. If it does, tough. ;p

If it's a business then you should have backup power, no if's, no buts and all of the network installations I've done at small businesses I've also included failover 3G internet, a very small amount of data is on those SIM's but it will work for emergencies. All of their buildings had generators and UPS's, if your building doesn't then invest in small UPS's. For businesses that use our SIP trunk service they also have access to their extensions via their mobiles even if power is out.

As far as I know those Virgin Media cabinets have very small batteries, so I'd say maximum half an hour to an hour of usage.

Personally, I was talking about the landline at home, which isn't urgent. If it's down, tough. However the chances of a setup like mine being down compared with Virgin Media (who don't give two craps about something being down in my local area, because there are few customers) is much higher, and same with BT. The likeliness of a VoIP setup being down even close to 24 hours is quite low, compared with a POTS unless is a local fault in the SIP trunk endpoint.

The SIP trunk that my company provides is from BT starts at BT's Reading data centre which will almost certainly have backup power and technicians standby if there's any issue, software, hardware or electrical. The SIP trunk then makes its way through lots of redundant fibre to a data center we are tenants of, which has two separate feeds from the national grid, UPS with a large bank of batteries, and a diesel generator that can run the building on full load for over a day. That's not to say there will never be issues, it's often the case that generators fail because they haven't been maintained or the automatic switching mechanism screws up somehow, it's happened but there are always engineers on standby so the amount of downtime will very limited.

That's ignoring the cost, Virgin Media charge £16.99 for line rental on their basic package for phones which doesn't include free minutes or the likes. The average VoIP will also charge a similar rate for a SIP trunk but the way my company is billed, is that we have a fixed price for a large block of numbers and we get charged on the usage at BT Wholesale rates, so essentially if I were to use a SIP trunk I'd save £16.99/month. Most VoIP providers do charge 'line' rental for VoIP although there are some that follow a similar model to my companies where it's a low rental, I believe AA ISP is one of them.

In any case, with the SIP trunk setup I'm moving to, I should have better uptime than a POTS for the reasons I've mentioned about the data centre and the fact that I have a nice backup power system at home, a nice beefy inverter with some marine batteries - I don't have an automatic switching mechanism but it's better than nothing. I do have a UPS I could use while switching over, but nothing is that important at home. Now obviously if the internet goes out too my pfSense router will failover to mobile internet, so no phone disruption. ;-)

Obviously VoIP isn't for everyone, but if you can have someone set it up it's well worth the saving, at home or even more saving in a business because you can use virtual PBX's and voice mailing, access extensions on your phone, have unified networking etc.

sorry, I got a bit carried away there with that answer

On Sunday, January 17, 2016 at 10:29:01 PM UTC, Humza wrote:
sorry, I got a bit carried away there with that answer

My grammar is all over the place in that post, I blame SwiftKey. ;p

On Sunday, January 17, 2016 at 4:13:08 PM UTC, Dave Liquorice wrote:
If you haven't already make sure you have done this properly, there
are some hefty tax implications, mainly Capital Gains Tax. HMRC have
the transfer of property (or other assets) very much sown up so they
get a cut and the rules are anything but simple and changee all the
time as HMRC plays "whack a mole" with any loop holes people find.

If only your father was on the deeds when you got added to them, you
technically had a Capital Gain of 50% of the value of the house at
that time. You should have paid CGT on that, I think. CGT is normally
only applicable at selling of an asset and only on the selling price
less cost price. But if you didn't buy your share it then becomes a
"gift" and several new cans of worms are opened.

Yeah, I became aware of that after it happened. It was given as a gift, but the whole process was done by a lawyer so I didn't think much of it at the time.

Bear in mind that lofts get very hot in the summer. I wouldn't be
surprise to see 50 C ambinet...

I'm not too worried about the cat5e, if it melts, which is unlikely I'll just recable it, no biggie. I'd be more worried about the twin and earth cable that I'd be running up there, although 50 C shouldn't kill it. The whole thing is a bodge anyway. ;-)

I also see you have torous skirting that goove at the tip of the
arrow "trunking" can hide a cable quite well but held with cable
staples not hammer in clips. Example:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0091CECNE

Hard when you have 3 cables, explained somewhere above why I need 3 cables.

In message ,
Humza writes
On Sunday, January 17, 2016 at 10:29:01 PM UTC, Humza wrote:
sorry, I got a bit carried away there with that answer

My grammar is all over the place in that post, I blame SwiftKey. ;p

On Sunday, January 17, 2016 at 4:13:08 PM UTC, Dave Liquorice wrote:

Bear in mind that lofts get very hot in the summer. I wouldn't be
surprise to see 50 C ambinet...

I'm not too worried about the cat5e, if it melts, which is unlikely
I'll just recable it, no biggie. I'd be more worried about the twin and
earth cable that I'd be running up there, although 50 C shouldn't kill
it. The whole thing is a bodge anyway. ;-)

It's not cables melting that is the issue. It would need to be a lot
hotter for that

It's the electronic kit that might not like it, as at that sort of temp
there is a real risk of overheating and failing
--
Chris French

On Mon, 18 Jan 2016 00:02:10 +0000, Chris French wrote:

It's the electronic kit that might not like it, as at that sort of temp
there is a real risk of overheating and failing

Yep, especially as it has been mentioned that the switch going up
there is a "beefy" managed one. I'm imagining a 1 or 2 U rack mounted
thing with several little screamer fans on the back that struggles to
keep itself cool enough with ambient much above 25 C.


--
Cheers
Dave.

On Sun, 17 Jan 2016 14:40:19 -0800 (PST), Humza wrote:

But if you didn't buy your share it then becomes a "gift" and
several
new cans of worms are opened.

Yeah, I became aware of that after it happened. It was given as a gift,
but the whole process was done by a lawyer so I didn't think much of it
at the time.

BTDTGTTS, we also got a lawyer/solicitor to make the arrangements to
transfer our parents house to us. Needless to say it wasn't done
according to the rules at the time and we very nearly got lumbered
with 20k or so CGT. It was trying to workout what we should have
done, what we could do now and which holes to squeeze through meant
we didn't. But that was mostly down to my accountant being a tax
specialist. Made him really think and have to dig through the rules
and get second opinions.

Yer average run of the mill solicitor isn't really up to the job as
far as "gifts" and tax are concerned. Who ever you use needs to be
practising tax specialist to stand any chance of getting it right.
I also see you have torous skirting that goove at the tip of the
arrow "trunking" can hide a cable quite well but held with cable
staples not hammer in clips. Example:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0091CECNE

Hard when you have 3 cables, explained somewhere above why I need 3
cables.

One in the groove, one along the top of the half round, one along the
top. With staples not hammer in clips, they are what makes a cable
run stand out.

--
Cheers
Dave.

On Monday, January 18, 2016 at 12:12:26 AM UTC, Chris French wrote:
It's not cables melting that is the issue. It would need to be a lot
hotter for that

It's the electronic kit that might not like it, as at that sort of temp
there is a real risk of overheating and failing

On Monday, January 18, 2016 at 7:43:07 PM UTC, Dave Liquorice wrote:
Yep, especially as it has been mentioned that the switch going up
there is a "beefy" managed one. I'm imagining a 1 or 2 U rack mounted
thing with several little screamer fans on the back that struggles to
keep itself cool enough with ambient much above 25 C.

I am aware cables don't just melt in that ambient temperature. ;-)

The switch is a Juniper EX3200, it's all old equipment from my companies data center deployment, this one doesn't have any 10Gig ports so isn't much use to me anymore. It still is a really good switch but on eBay you can pick some up for under £300, when they were originally worth over £800.

Anyway, it only has one fairly big blower style fan in the case then some small screamers in the power supply modules. I'll see how the temperature is, the unit will obviously turn itself off it it can't handle the heat, at the very least I'll have plenty of SNMP graphs to take a look at.

I'll see how it goes, it's not ideal but that switch is loud and the attic is the only place where it won't be heard. The attic does have vents and doesn't get all that hot during the summer. Worst comes to worst I can bring in larger fans or perhaps an extractor fan of some sorts.

On Sun, 17 Jan 2016 14:28:56 -0800 (PST), Humza wrote:

TBH to be decently resilient it would be better to spend another
£4.00/month for Total Care on the BT POTS line so when the line
fails
BT fix in within 24 hrs of the fault being reported. Faults can be
logged 24/7 and repairs are made daytime, *every* day of the year.

What use case scenario are you thinking of here? If it's it won't be a
disaster if the home phone goes out, your average joe has a "power bank"
for their phone too. It's quite unlikely power will be out long enough
to drain a phone and power bank. If it does, tough. ;p

If the 'net is down here I don't half get it in the neck from the
family.
Well worth £4/month for Total Care. BT is the only available provider
of the local loop, even if there was I've yet to find a provider that
offers a service level approaching Total Care.

Anyway a powered up phone may as well be a chocolate teapot if the
cell(s) you might be able to access have no power.

If it's a business then you should have backup power, no if's, no buts
and all of the network installations I've done at small businesses I've also included failover 3G internet, a very small amount of data is on
those SIM's but it will work for emergencies.

Your making the assumption that the mobile networks will be
operational under power fail conditions. Very few cell sites have
much in the way fo backup power.

As far as I know those Virgin Media cabinets have very small batteries,
so I'd say maximum half an hour to an hour of usage.

Just about enough to tide it over a locked out auto-recloser and, if
possible, power restored via an alternative route setup by the DNO's
manually operating switchs within the distibution network. If the
cell/cabinet is powered from the section with the fault I doubt it'll
last the 6 hours or so most faults take to trace and clear.

Personally, I was talking about the landline at home, which isn't
urgent. If it's down, tough. However the chances of a setup like mine
being down compared with Virgin Media (who don't give two craps about
something being down in my local area, because there are few customers)
is much higher, and same with BT.

VOIP requires a 'net connection. How is the provisioned? I assume VM
who you have just stated don't care a monkeys. At least with BT and
Total Care you have the Service Level Agreement on your side. In my
experience BT do jump when you report a fault on a line with Total
care. Even to the extent of pulling an engineer of a job 40 miles
away when the first one couldn't fix it.

The likeliness of a VoIP setup being down even close to 24 hours is
quite low, compared with a POTS unless is a local fault in the SIP trunk
endpoint.

What about the single point of failure the data link from you to the
'net.

Now obviously if the internet goes out too my pfSense router will
failover to mobile internet, so no phone disruption. ;-)

Assuming the mobile network(s)m are still working. a POTS line is a
physical connection back to the exchnage that has BFO batteries and
even the "garden shed" exchanges out in the sticks have generator
exhausts sticking out of them. The POTS network is very resilient.
And even if the mobile network is still up it could well be unuseable
due to being overloaded by everyone using their mobiles for
voice/data/WHY.

Obviously VoIP isn't for everyone, but if you can have someone set it up
it's well worth the saving,

I have VOIP as well as the BT POTS but then the POTS is the only way
to get the data connection for the VOIP... I've can use VOIP from my
mobile phone but the delay is really bad, but at least the codecs are
better. IMHO mobiles for voice are only just useable with the
combination of delay and Dalek crossed with Donald Duck codecs

I do have a feeling you havn't really thought through all the "what
if's" and tracked down all the Single Points of Failure.

--
Cheers
Dave.

In article ,
Humza scribeth thus
On Sunday, January 17, 2016 at 4:28:07 PM UTC, Dave Liquorice wrote:
BT will do you a POTS line for £16.19/month. This will work when
there is a local or wide area power outage.

How long will the Virgin Media cabinet run after the power fails?
How long will your kit run after the local power fails?
Don't bank on your mobile still working either.

TBH to be decently resilient it would be better to spend another
£4.00/month for Total Care on the BT POTS line so when the line fails
BT fix in within 24 hrs of the fault being reported. Faults can be
logged 24/7 and repairs are made daytime, *every* day of the year.

What use case scenario are you thinking of here? If it's it won't be a disaster
if the home phone goes out, your average joe has a "power bank" for their phone
too. It's quite unlikely power will be out long enough to drain a phone and
power bank. If it does, tough. ;p

If it's a business then you should have backup power, no if's, no buts and all
of the network installations I've done at small businesses I've also included
failover 3G internet, a very small amount of data is on those SIM's but it will
work for emergencies. All of their buildings had


generators

If they start;!..

All small businesses? I only know of one out of the 30 we deal with!

and UPS's,

As long as there're decent ones that is..

if your
building doesn't then invest in small UPS's. For businesses that use our SIP
trunk service they also have access to their extensions via their mobiles even
if power is out.

As far as I know those Virgin Media cabinets have very small batteries, so I'd
say maximum half an hour to an hour of usage.

They do have a bloke and van and inbuilt generator out pretty quickly
we've only been off service for the BB three times sine 1996 and the
phone never!.

Personally, I was talking about the landline at home, which isn't urgent. If
it's down, tough. However the chances of a setup like mine being down compared
with Virgin Media (who don't give two craps about something being down in my
local area, because there are few customers) is much higher, and same with BT.
The likeliness of a VoIP setup being down even close to 24 hours is quite low,
compared with a POTS unless is a local fault in the SIP trunk endpoint.

The SIP trunk that my company provides is from BT starts at BT's Reading data
centre which will almost certainly have backup power and technicians standby if
there's any issue, software, hardware or electrical. T


he SIP trunk then makes
its way through lots of redundant fibre to a data center we are tenants of,
which has two separate feeds from the national grid,

Yes do they really have those?, the one in Telecity the other week
didn't


UPS with a large bank of
batteries, and a diesel generator that can run the building on full load for
over a day. That's not to say there will never be issues, it's often the case
that generators fail because they haven't been maintained or the automatic
switching mechanism screws up somehow, it's happened but there are always
engineers on standby so the amount of downtime will very limited.

That's ignoring the cost, Virgin Media charge £16.99 for line rental on their
basic package for phones which doesn't include free minutes or the likes.

I think some packages do now.

The
average VoIP will also charge a similar rate for a SIP trunk but the way my
company is billed, is that we have a fixed price for a large block of numbers
and we get charged on the usage at BT Wholesale rates, so essentially if I were
to use a SIP trunk I'd save £16.99/month. Most VoIP providers do charge 'line'
rental for VoIP although there are some that follow a similar model to my
companies where it's a low rental, I believe AA ISP is one of them.

In any case, with the SIP trunk setup I'm moving to, I should have better uptime
than a POTS for the reasons I've mentioned about the data centre and the fact
that I have a nice backup power system at home, a nice beefy inverter with some
marine batteries - I don't have an automatic switching mechanism but it's better
than nothing. I do have a UPS I could use while switching over, but nothing is
that important at home. Now obviously if the internet goes out too my pfSense
router will failover to mobile internet, so no phone disruption. ;-)

Obviously VoIP isn't for everyone, but if you can have someone set it up it's
well worth the saving, at home or even more saving in a business because you can
use virtual PBX's and voice mailing, access extensions on your phone, have
unified networking etc.

Yep we use it over VM Cable

sorry, I got a bit carried away there with that answer

--
Tony Sayer

In article o.uk, Dave
Liquorice scribeth thus
Best Universal Grit Grime and Effluent Remover wrong button half
way through post...

On Sun, 17 Jan 2016 06:10:05 -0800 (PST), Humza wrote:


because next thing is to move our telephone line over to VoIP, as part
of my company we do VoIP we have some SIP trunks from BT wholesale, so I
can save £16.99 a month for line rental with Virgin Media by just using
a SIP trunk and get cheaper rates.

BT will do you a POTS line for £16.19/month. This will work when
there is a local or wide area power outage.

How long will the Virgin Media cabinet run after the power fails?
How long will your kit run after the local power fails?
Don't bank on your mobile still working either.

TBH to be decently resilient it would be better to spend another
£4.00/month for Total Care on the BT POTS line so when the line fails
BT fix in within 24 hrs of the fault being reported. Faults can be
logged 24/7 and repairs are made daytime, *every* day of the year.

--

How long did it Take BT effing T to sort out a cable in a duct the other
month that we use at a distant site, around 10 days off-line;(...

Cheers
Dave.




--
Tony Sayer

On Wednesday, January 20, 2016 at 11:08:13 PM UTC, tony sayer wrote:

generators

If they start;!..

Yes, that's certainly a problem which is why I said it doesn't make sure that power never goes out. Even if the generators are kept warm they struggle to start up or faults develop because they've been idle for so long.

and UPS's

As long as there're decent ones that is..

I don't know if you've visited a data centre before but as long as you're not in someone's back shed which they call a data centre they will all have large enterprise units. They don't often fail, from what I've seen it's usually the most odd combination of issues that actually cause outages, not just a bad UPS for example.

All small businesses? I only know of one out of the 30 we deal with!

Of course not all, but at least in London most small businesses in office buildings have generators in the basements.

I haven't done many installations in my time, as it isn't a day job for me and I haven't really dealt with shops and the like (you can work my age out somewhere in this thread). So far I've only focused on the infrastructure and backend side of servers, networking and the like. I have only been on a few installations so far as a small time freelance, which is separate to the hosting and infrastructure business of mine.

They do have a bloke and van and inbuilt generator out pretty quickly
we've only been off service for the BB three times sine 1996 and the
phone never!.

Yeah, I'll give Virgin that their van service is fairly good, they'll come out at the oddest times to fix issues.

The phones have never had problems either, once they are set up properly in the first place.

Personally, I was talking about the landline at home, which isn't urgent.. If
it's down, tough. However the chances of a setup like mine being down compared
with Virgin Media (who don't give two craps about something being down in my
local area, because there are few customers) is much higher, and same with BT.
The likeliness of a VoIP setup being down even close to 24 hours is quite low,
compared with a POTS unless is a local fault in the SIP trunk endpoint.

The SIP trunk that my company provides is from BT starts at BT's Reading data
centre which will almost certainly have backup power and technicians standby if
there's any issue, software, hardware or electrical. T


he SIP trunk then makes
its way through lots of redundant fibre to a data center we are tenants of,
which has two separate feeds from the national grid,

Yes do they really have those?, the one in Telecity the other week
didn't

Which Telecity data centre? They own a fair few data centres, Telehouse North does have two feeds, I have a rack there with A+B power.

Which Telecity data centre? They own a fair few data centres, Telehouse North does have two feeds, I have a rack there with A+B power.

Just to make it clear, I'm aware Telehouse != Telecity but was using as an example of a major data centre in roughly the same area before people start waving their hands over the place. Most major facilities do have two feeds,

As far as I know Telecity Harbour Exchange has two feeds from the national grid, if you were referring to that place.

On Wed, 20 Jan 2016 23:09:20 +0000, tony sayer wrote:

How long did it Take BT effing T to sort out a cable in a duct the other
month that we use at a distant site, around 10 days off-line;(...

Total care on the line? What was the problem? Farmer digging a ditch
just choping through it or pikeys yanking 400 yards of cable out and
BT finding the duct collapsed when they come to push the drain rods
through to get a draw rope in.

With the former when that happened here BT had fixed it almost before
I'd noticed. The latter requiring groundworks does slow things down
and Total Care or not a 400 yard spark gap is going to be a problem.
If it's fairly chunky cable, 200 pair say it'll take the best part of
a day to joint it, thats' assuming there is enough left in each
chamber to joint to and the lengths each side don't have to be
replaced as well.

--
Cheers
Dave.

On Wed, 20 Jan 2016 15:59:07 -0800 (PST), Humza wrote:

As far as I know Telecity Harbour Exchange has two feeds from the
national grid, if you were referring to that place.

Good grief how much power does the place take! IIRC Anything below
125 kV is the DNO not National Grid. It's also been known for "two
independant diveresly routed feeds" to end up at the same primary
substation. They ought to go to seperate primary substations but that
can be Fing expensive. Our primary is 3 miles away, the next nearest
(on our DNO's patch) is 15 miles away. There might be a nearer one
but that would be on a different DNO, which probably wouldn't a be a
Good Idea. Two live feeds on a DNO's patch one of which they don't
have direct control of, recipe for fried linesman.

--
Cheers
Dave.

Get cable of the colour of the paint in each room?

Build a ceiling high cupboard and cable through there ?

A long (2 feet?) thin sds masonary bit will drill up through the ceiling,
but dont hit an electric cable!

With steam and water and patience it is possible to lift up a section of wall paper,
then groove behind there for your cable, polyfilla, then wallpaper back.

[george]

On 22/01/2016 08:53, Dave Liquorice wrote:
Good grief how much power does the place take! IIRC Anything below
125 kV is the DNO not National Grid. It's also been known for "two
independant diveresly routed feeds" to end up at the same primary
substation. They ought to go to seperate primary substations but that
can be Fing expensive. Our primary is 3 miles away, the next nearest
(on our DNO's patch) is 15 miles away. There might be a nearer one
but that would be on a different DNO, which probably wouldn't a be a
Good Idea. Two live feeds on a DNO's patch one of which they don't
have direct control of, recipe for fried linesman.

My son works in a place which has 2 independent feeds _and_ diesels. And
a black site if that all fails.

A bank can lose a lot of money quickly...

Andy