COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

[David Whipp]

Does it matter if they are on different circuits in a domestic (single phase) setting?

[Big Kev]

Does it matter if they are on different circuits in a domestic (single phase) setting?

No. It says on the box "all circuits on the same meter" so I reckon it's using earth or neutral. I have one plugged in downstairs and one upstairs (different circuits) and all is good.

[Pluggy]

They aren't really different circuits on the same phase, the're all connected together (usually a big busbar in the consumer unit) upstream of the fuses / circuit breakers.

[David Whipp]

Thanks both. Currently(!) we're using wi-fi extenders so Tom and Lucy can suck all the bandwidth... will have a look at powerline.

[Tizer]

Yes, thanks everyone! Very useful information and I'll definitely buy a pair - I've got to go into town today so I'll have a look in Argos at the `through' equivalent of Kev's version:
http://www.google.co.uk/shopping/produc ... d=0CB8QrhI
We're a bit tight on power sockets and need to keep as many as possible available!

[Big Kev]

Depending on how quick you want them you could save yourself a few quid on Amazon

[plaques]

Just one small point, they don't like being in the same circuit as a surge protector.Something to to with the filtering that goes on to clean up the signal.

[Pluggy]

Hadn't thought of that, yes such devices are effectively low pass filters which remove high frequency 'noise', and since ethernet over power lines are high frequency 'noise'.....

[Steven Chorkley]

You could always go the entirely dodgy route of 'skybox' internet connected satellite receivers and **cough** gift warranties : http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/12-MONTHS-Gif ... 4897.l4275

Or how to get ALL the sky channels for £35 a year (and around £85 for the box) beneath the Ebay appeasement language.

They don't need much bandwidth since the content comes from Sky's satellites and the **cough** decryption from the internet.

How would you receive the stream? I don't understand what service this is providing. If they are decoding the streams, a box can only decode one stream, and how dodgy will the servers be?

Not a lame excuse at all Plaques, as you are aware Talk Talk do not own the network and it would seem that once reported they have notified the network provider and lodged an engineering request. Open Reach have responded with their diagnosis of the problem and the latest status of work progression. The fact that it would appear to be a major fault that may take some time to resolve is not the fault of your ISP and there is indeed nothing that they can do about it. It is up to Open Reach to categorise the level of importance of the fault which I would assume will rest to some degree on the overall impact on the local infrastructure and knock on effect to the service provision. If it is in a major part of the backbone infrastructure you may well be lucky in that it will probably percolate up the service pile fairly rapidly, (worse is better in some circumstances).

Your ISP has done all they are contracted to do and what is within their power.

Actually, TalkTalk own the LLU in the exchange, however the exchange to home connection they rent from OpenReach

In the old cinema days if the projector broke down half way through the film you would get your money back. I am contracted with my ISP to supply broadband to their advertised standard. Who does what is not my concern. To plead that a brake down is unforeseeable is absolute rubbish. The logic of placing a main cable network under the centre of a road carrying vehicles of 40 tons or more beggars belief. The fact that I "may be lucky" speaks for itself. These people should have clear cut penalties for not providing the service they are selling.

AMEN!

It would be interesting to find out where the major delays actually were, was it with Openreach or permissions required in order to open up the road?

With regard to where the service infrastructures are actually located, where else can they go if not under road or pavement. A lot of the infrastructure will be based on legacy installations I would imagine and the fact that roads have been widened, moved or otherwise altered will have some impact on where the services below end up. You cant rip everything out and start again every time you do a bit of remodelling or town centre development.

If you took all the underground electricity and telecom cabling from underground and stuck it all up on poles it would become considerably more unreliable. We could do away with the fresh water supply and the sewage system but most folk would not welcome the trips to the local well or the resurgence of the night soil men. You can't have it all ways.

They do need permission, however permission is granted immediately in most cases.
I think the majority of infrastructure just uses ducts. If the fault is in-between these ducts, that's when the delays occur.

Have any of you tried that alternative way of distributing your broadband throughout the house by using adapters to carry the signal through the electrical power circuits? We can't use wireless connectivity because of our house's old, thick stone walls, and now our new super-duper insulation which is foil-coated makes it even worse. Our builder suggested the power circuit adapters as an alternative. From what I've read it sounds like I need to plug the network cable into an adapter then wherever I want another gadget connected I just plug in an adapter to the mains and connect a network cable between that and the gadget. Can it really be that easy? What's the catch?

Powerliners, agreed. However they don't provide as much bandwidth as quoted, significantly less if you have old cables. I own Netgears 200mbps adapters, and they work at about 90mbps in my parents house (old, old, old wiring + huge distances).
However it doesn't work the same way as WiFi as the signal isn't repeated (i.e. you don't loose half of your bandwidth on transmissions). Please don't skimp on the price, you will definitely notice the difference. The others are right about the different ring mains, My Netgears work between two ring mains (but not 3) which is usually suitable for most people.
Surge Protectors do drop signal, they often stop the connection if you run them through 2.

[Steven Chorkley]

You could always go the entirely dodgy route of 'skybox' internet connected satellite receivers and **cough** gift warranties : http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/12-MONTHS-Gif ... 4897.l4275

Or how to get ALL the sky channels for £35 a year (and around £85 for the box) beneath the Ebay appeasement language.

They don't need much bandwidth since the content comes from Sky's satellites and the **cough** decryption from the internet.

How would you receive the stream? I don't understand what service this is providing. If they are decoding the streams, a box can only decode one stream, and how dodgy will the servers be?

Not a lame excuse at all Plaques, as you are aware Talk Talk do not own the network and it would seem that once reported they have notified the network provider and lodged an engineering request. Open Reach have responded with their diagnosis of the problem and the latest status of work progression. The fact that it would appear to be a major fault that may take some time to resolve is not the fault of your ISP and there is indeed nothing that they can do about it. It is up to Open Reach to categorise the level of importance of the fault which I would assume will rest to some degree on the overall impact on the local infrastructure and knock on effect to the service provision. If it is in a major part of the backbone infrastructure you may well be lucky in that it will probably percolate up the service pile fairly rapidly, (worse is better in some circumstances).

Your ISP has done all they are contracted to do and what is within their power.

Actually, TalkTalk own the LLU in the exchange, however the exchange to home connection they rent from OpenReach

In the old cinema days if the projector broke down half way through the film you would get your money back. I am contracted with my ISP to supply broadband to their advertised standard. Who does what is not my concern. To plead that a brake down is unforeseeable is absolute rubbish. The logic of placing a main cable network under the centre of a road carrying vehicles of 40 tons or more beggars belief. The fact that I "may be lucky" speaks for itself. These people should have clear cut penalties for not providing the service they are selling.

AMEN!

It would be interesting to find out where the major delays actually were, was it with Openreach or permissions required in order to open up the road?

With regard to where the service infrastructures are actually located, where else can they go if not under road or pavement. A lot of the infrastructure will be based on legacy installations I would imagine and the fact that roads have been widened, moved or otherwise altered will have some impact on where the services below end up. You cant rip everything out and start again every time you do a bit of remodelling or town centre development.

If you took all the underground electricity and telecom cabling from underground and stuck it all up on poles it would become considerably more unreliable. We could do away with the fresh water supply and the sewage system but most folk would not welcome the trips to the local well or the resurgence of the night soil men. You can't have it all ways.

They do need permission, however permission is granted immediately in most cases.
I think the majority of infrastructure just uses ducts. If the fault is in-between these ducts, that's when the delays occur.

Have any of you tried that alternative way of distributing your broadband throughout the house by using adapters to carry the signal through the electrical power circuits? We can't use wireless connectivity because of our house's old, thick stone walls, and now our new super-duper insulation which is foil-coated makes it even worse. Our builder suggested the power circuit adapters as an alternative. From what I've read it sounds like I need to plug the network cable into an adapter then wherever I want another gadget connected I just plug in an adapter to the mains and connect a network cable between that and the gadget. Can it really be that easy? What's the catch?

Powerliners, agreed. However they don't provide as much bandwidth as quoted, significantly less if you have old cables. I own Netgears 200mbps adapters, and they work at about 90mbps in my parents house (old, old, old wiring + huge distances).
However it doesn't work the same way as WiFi as the signal isn't repeated (i.e. you don't loose half of your bandwidth on transmissions). Please don't skimp on the price, you will definitely notice the difference. The others are right about the different ring mains, My Netgears work between two ring mains (but not 3) which is usually suitable for most people.
Surge Protectors do drop signal, they often stop the connection if you run them through 2.

I will make a recommendation. I don't know the state of your house, however my parents house has thick thick walls and is rather large. My wireless router the Asus RT-N66U strategically placed provides signal to the majority of the house. I use the power-line adapters and additional access points to provide signal in both the greenhouse and back shed using the same SSID to provide transparency.
The RT-N66U is expensive, however the reviews are fantastic. If your wanting to be futureproof you could purchase the RT-AC66U

[Pluggy]

You could always go the entirely dodgy route of 'skybox' internet connected satellite receivers and **cough** gift warranties : http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/12-MONTHS-Gif ... 4897.l4275

Or how to get ALL the sky channels for £35 a year (and around £85 for the box) beneath the Ebay appeasement language.

They don't need much bandwidth since the content comes from Sky's satellites and the **cough** decryption from the internet.

How would you receive the stream? I don't understand what service this is providing. If they are decoding the streams, a box can only decode one stream, and how dodgy will the servers be?

I take you haven't met the sky/open box satellite receivers.

They are linux computers with satellite receiver hardware built in. THey'll receive the sky freebies without an internet connection. They sell (or give you a short trial) of a 'Gift' which hooks up to a server via the internet with a sky card decoder reading a real sky card with all the channels enabled and it then decrypts the channels without you actually having a card. The bod with the server will 'rent' you access to his server for typically £35 a year. They can't exactly advertise on Ebay that they're ripping off Sky's expensive content, so its sold as a 'Gift Warrenty' Many small satellite shops sell them and the 'service' under the counter. All very cloak and dagger. If the Bod's server goes down or is taken down, its tough. Apparently Sky don't change the decryption all that often, so it may continue to work for a day or three without access to the Bod's server.

Heres a nice man flogging one on Ebay for £100 with a Year's 'Gift' http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SKYBOX-F5s-12 ... 4d1f9f5876

[Pluggy]

Interesting thread on Sky's own forum here : http://helpforum.sky.com/t5/Archived-Di ... -p/1304647

They make a lot of noise about stopping it but since the thread is 10 months old and the stuff is still freely available and working its says to me they can't do anything about it wholesale.

Its been hacked and any changes they make will be hacked again, its the way of the world. Which brings to another point, since the government is allowing self driving cars on the road from next year, what happens when somebody hacks the technology and uses such a vehicle to ram-raid a bank or some-such taking out 15 people stood in a bus queue en-route ?

[Wendyf]

Clearing out the loft at Mum's today we discovered the Compukit UK101 which Col built for my dad in 1979. There is a tiny monitor that goes with it and even a modem that the handset of a phone sits in. Col is delighted, he thought it all got thrown away years ago.

[PanBiker]

I remember that one Wendy, lots of nice stuff about to build from kit at the time. I built the ZX80 from kit and then the Acorn Atom, dabbled around with an 8K Commodore Pet as well, wrote a program for that for amateur radio contest scoring, took ages to load from cassette tape!

[Tizer]

Steven said: "Powerliners, agreed. However they don't provide as much bandwidth as quoted, significantly less if you have old cables. I own Netgears 200mbps adapters, and they work at about 90mbps in my parents house (old, old, old wiring + huge distances)."
As my broadband comes in at 6mbps I assume I won't notice if the powerline varied between 200 and 90mbps....or am I missing something? (Which is very likely with my minimal IT know-how! )

Kev, thanks for that Amazon link, I'll probably use it, especially at that price. My planned visit to Argos today was `hijacked' by my dad and I didn't have time to look for poweliners. We had to replace his old TV last week and got him one from Argos but it's failed already. I didn't know until I got to his flat today and when I took it back to Argos I had trouble because I didn't have the receipt with me and it would have meant a 15 mile round trip to collect it from home (and he can't wait because his TV is so important to him now). But the Argos staff were very helpful and tracked down my purchase details and agreed to exchange it...but then didn't have one of the same. In the end they gave us a bigger TV instead and for the same price (thank you Argos!). I got it to him and set it up just in time for him to see the two Lancasters flying together

[Pluggy]

I built a UK 101, way back in the day. I sold it many years ago. Fond memories.

[Wendyf]

I remember the thrill of seeing that little cursor in the corner of the screen....Col is trying to get it working now, there is a lot of rummaging through boxes going on.

[PanBiker]

First one I built was the Acorn System 1 with a 6502 processor, hex keypad and 8 digit 7 segment display.

[Stanley]

On a more mundane level... Talktalk outgoing server down yesterday morning. No sweat for me but it must be bugger if you are running a business!

[Pluggy]

I abandoned my ISP's outgoing mail server (and Thunderbird) in favour of Gmail. I use it for all my mail now.

[Steven Chorkley]

Steven said: "Powerliners, agreed. However they don't provide as much bandwidth as quoted, significantly less if you have old cables. I own Netgears 200mbps adapters, and they work at about 90mbps in my parents house (old, old, old wiring + huge distances)."
As my broadband comes in at 6mbps I assume I won't notice if the powerline varied between 200 and 90mbps....or am I missing something? (Which is very likely with my minimal IT know-how! )

In your case, if your solely using it for using your 6mpbs connection, then no.

You'll definitely be better shopping around online instead of in-store as you'll be closer to trade price.

[Steven Chorkley]

I dread using ISP services, they are dated and don't hold the same importance as they did in the 90 / 2000's. Gmail servers are my choice, your also able to use their SMTP servers without authentication which is FANTASTIC! (Appear to be any address). Cloud computing is the next thing. At work, we run a couple of servers. We used to host our own exchange server, but cloud computing has come down so much in price, it is actually cheaper to use Office 365. Same story at college.
Few outages too... And a service provided by Google is definitely going to be at the top of its game.

[Steven Chorkley]

I take you haven't met the sky/open box satellite receivers.

They are linux computers with satellite receiver hardware built in. THey'll receive the sky freebies without an internet connection. They sell (or give you a short trial) of a 'Gift' which hooks up to a server via the internet with a sky card decoder reading a real sky card with all the channels enabled and it then decrypts the channels without you actually having a card. The bod with the server will 'rent' you access to his server for typically £35 a year. They can't exactly advertise on Ebay that they're ripping off Sky's expensive content, so its sold as a 'Gift Warrenty' Many small satellite shops sell them and the 'service' under the counter. All very cloak and dagger. If the Bod's server goes down or is taken down, its tough. Apparently Sky don't change the decryption all that often, so it may continue to work for a day or three without access to the Bod's server.

Heres a nice man flogging one on Ebay for £100 with a Year's 'Gift' http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SKYBOX-F5s-12 ... 4d1f9f5876

That's quite clever, but I would never trust those servers. Those guys are in the money though! Hmmmm.

If sky changed their encryption system, I would presume new sky boxes will need to be sent to customers as some are still using really dated hardware.
Interesting fact... Sky channels that are free to air, are exactly the same broadcast that is offered on FreeSAT, it's simply Sky market it as "FreeSAT from Sky" and charge customers for the channels that are free to air, but are still encrypted. They simply provide a sky card... For £70...... it's unbelievable!!!

[Pluggy]

There aren't many of the free to view are encrypted now, my granddaughter pulled the Sky card out of our receiver and it was lost for about 3 months. We don't notice the difference other than we didn't get the localised versions of BBC1 and ITV1 in the usual places. We got the London versions. We used to swich to channel 967 or something (they transmit all the varients up there) if we didn't want news about Boris I eventially found the card inside our old VCR when I tried to repair it. The Beebs channels have always been clear, ITV, Ch4 and Ch5 have been encrypted in the past but are clear now. Some of the 'obscure channels' are free but encrypted, but I never watch them anyhow. I got out of bed with Sky about 10 years ago, I'm in no hurry to get back in. We have the old school aerial connected via a freeview box to our 'second' telly, we watch everything via satellite on our main telly.

Sky change the encryption system by changing the Sky cards, they were last changed around 2009, We got one for about 20 quid from somewhere or other (all above board) because some of the mainstream free to air channels were encrypted back then. The receivers (or at least the bit involved in decryption) hasn't changed since Sky went digital about 15 years ago. If the channels I want to watch remain clear I probaly won't bother buying a new card when Sky next change them. No doubt shortly after the next change , somebody will crack the system and work out a way around paying for it.

[Wendyf]

Our Sky card got cut off a couple of years after Col stopped working for Pace, all the engineers who worked on the Sky boxes got a free card for, er, development purposes back then. We don't miss it at all. (Actually that's a lie....I really hate it when I can't watch F1 live!)
No problems setting up the local channels for Beeb on freesat, but stuck with Northwest on Freeview.