I said why not leave that one alone and add another anchor point on the other corner which would be directly accessible from the fibre glassed flat roof of my kitchen. Agreed she said but that would need a flat roof engineer with the right kit to access the job! I did mention that my window cleaner is on and off that every fortnight without any issues and also that I have used it many times as a platform for my antenna installations.
Can't be done due to the Open Reach H&S fairies so a phone call was made to call the cavalry, she then discovered that the flat roof engineer was well outside the area so she opted for the next bit of kit which was a platform lift! In the meantime an additional van had rocked up with another of the Barlick engineers, he offered to help to progress the job faster while waiting for the artillery.
Internal and external hubs fitted and fibre cabling between the two sorted. Van number 3 then came with his platform lift to access the other corner of my bathroom (which could have easily been done from the flat roof with a short ladder (stepped or half a standard ladder). Lift engineer installed the anchor point, and dressed the fibre cable following the original route of the copper, (never got out of his box). Bottom dressing was done by the other Barlick engineer.
Sophie climbed the pole 20 meters from my house and picked up the fibre lead from the platform guy. She had to run the cable via there though down to the pole at the bottom of the street as the node for my telephone line is not on the top pole? In the meantime Barlick engineer had his rather swish fibre splicing machine out and was connecting it to the fibre from the internal hub. The outside box basically is just a box to hold the connected joints, no terminals involved or punch downs, clips or anything just the spliced cables run in through rubber glands, the box has an integral round cable tidy that can hold about a meter of optical fibre cable once its armour support has been stripped off. I had a good look a the fibre cable and it actually looks like figure 8 cable but more substantial. The two outer lines are insulated steel which gives the line its enormous strength, the fibre line itself is sandwiched between the two outer lines and is actually only about 1mm diameter plus its outer jacket.
I watched the splicing method which was all done with the same rechargeable portable machine. Both ends to be spliced are clamped into small blocks which hold the fibre secure. First step is to strip the outer jacket and trim the centre glass conductors to the correct lengths. This is done automatically when a hinged lid is closed over the top of the blocks. Each end, still in the block is then cleaned. They are then transferred to a different channel in the machine, this one heats the joint and melts the two end together. The spliced joint is then wrapped in heat shrink insulation, lid closed again an it heats again sufficiently to shrink the insulation. Pressing another button on the unit does a stress test on the spliced joint to test the integrity of the weld. The first attempt failed this and the line snapped on the stress test. Failed joint was chopped out and the procedure repeated, second attempt passed so the resultant spliced cable was the wound onto the internal reel within the Open Reach outside junction box. The internal box is and open reach powered hub which provides an RJ45 socket for access to the WAN ( Wide Area Network). It has led lights on to indicate power, network activity and WAN status. This box also transposes the fibre network back to UTP copper so you can use standard Ethernet infrastructure.
It was not possible to position the internal hub where my computer is as that is in the middle of the house downstairs. From ingress into the kitchen the line runs round behind a double solid wood cupboard and drawer unit and a full height and fully populated freezer. That is just in the kitchen, from there it comes through the wall and down under the carpet round the back fireplace and then emerges under the built in cupboards that we have in the alcove where the main machine and power is. I elected to have the WAN connection left in the clear and accessible in the kitchen. I will extend from there with a single cat5 cable and terminate that in an RJ45 socket under the computer cupboard. I have all the tooling to do that as it was part of my bread and butter when I earned my crust in network management.
Anyway all up and running at 75Mbps down and 16Mbps up.
All was good until yesterday morning when it all went belly up! TLOS, orange light on router, no broadband no WiFi and no phone, (which is now on VOIP) and plugged into the router. I rang Talk Talk and after about three goes managed to get through to register the TLOS. Got another ticket for an Open Reach engineer for this morning 8am to 1pm. The morning slot came and went so I left it until about 2pm today and tried to ring to report the no show by Open Reach. Not much joy, phone lines reported as very busy so passed to support via text, first art automated to get you details then I got Fibre Commissioning section guy on. As it was TLOS he couldn't help and suggested I ring directly to techinical support, (catch 22). I tried a few times but still got the message of long waits. I decided to make brew then bite the bullet and go on hold for as long as it took.When I went in the kitchen to make a brew I noticed the router had gone to a white LED, I tried the phone and got a dial tone. WiFi back on my phone so I logged into the router, logs say it came back on at 2.58pm. Obviously a remote network problem that did not require an engineer to visit home. I wish they could have notified me though but having said that Open Reach don't have my mobile number only the land line which of course was stuffed during the process.
Anyway, all good, all up and running. I have temporarily fitted a USB WiFi adapter to the desktop computer and am connecting via that at the moment. I will get the cat5 extension sorted tomorrow so I can re-site the router here at the computer. I can then hard wire to the computer and reconnect the Freeesat box and the power line adapters that take the broadband up into the attic for my radio station PC. All the leads for them emerge here. Phone will move back here as well.
I will strip out all my internal copper infrastructure but only back as far as the original line termination box behind the kitchen door. I can use the existing cables to pull the new cat5 WAN feed through the tight bits between the back living room and the kitchen. I will not fasten it to the skirting behind the freezer or the wood cupboard, its all out of sight and can be tidied if and when we ever move them.
