Power dips

[Tony]

Quick update, the forum may drop in and out of connectivity as we've been getting some power dips this morning.  I've got a UPS if this continues, but obviously as it costs in power to use 24/7 it's not normally connected.

Oh well, the server needed rebooting for a kernel upgrade to complete anyway

[Julian]

Only noticed a break in service a few days ago for a very short period.

Similarly I've noticed my internet connection keeps dropping out recently.  I suspect it's because they are installing fibre to the green street boxes in this area.

On that note I investigated changing to a "fibre" service.  Currently I have a 5 Meg line with a 60 Gig down load limit and inclusive phone calls.  A couple of times we've gone over the 60 Gig at a cost of £5.00. A 50 Meg service with unlimited download and inclusive evening and weekend calls, works out about £5.00 a month cheaper. It would still be cheaper with any time phone calls ... how does that work?

Only down side is that I have my master socket in the loft and I've arranged just one splitter thing to run all the phone sockets in the house and run CAT 5 cable down to the router.  Plus net are now saying that I need CAT5e cable between the main socket and the router.

There appears to be no physical difference between CAT5 and CAT5e other than the manufacturers guarantee CAT5e will operate at faster speeds.  Looking at the grotty BT incoming cable, I'm gambling on the CAT5 cable being able to carry sufficient speed.  The "Tech support" at Plus net didn't seem too sure of the effect it would have, but I'm just wondering if they are covering their backsides.

Any experts got any opinions?

[julianf]

You say "cat 5 to the router"

From what?  Or you have two routers?  In which case, surely its your call what you put between them?


As a side note, we are with plusnet.  We get about 8mbit but the the local loop here isnt unbundled, so it costs us more than it should : (

[Julian]

 I hacked into the master socket and used CAT5 cable to run to the router.  I did it years ago, it seemed very logical at the time and has worked fine since.

They send an engineer to do things in the green box down the street and whilst there he comes and plays in the house too.  Hoping he can sus it out, but there answer to not having power near the master socket is to run a surface cable which is one of my pet hates.  I think the plan is to fit a highspeed modem near the master socket (which needs power) and a new "high speed" router.  This despite the new router appearing to have an identical spec to the current one they supply ... but they insist I need it.  (new router is only 6 quid postage so it seemed silly not to have it.  However, I'm at a loss to know why the engineer, if he's bringing the modem, can't also bring the router).

[Julian]

Oh, and they say the new installation won't need any filters.

[Tony]

The FTTC system has three components in the house:

- a replacement master socket integrating a filter to split broadband and voice calls (so the new master socket has two sockets in it)
- a modem (supplied and maintained by OpenReach)
- a router (supplied and maintained by the ISP or yourself - essentially any router that can do PPPoE)

I can't see a problem with cat5 allowing the modem to be situated away from the master socket.  But plusnet need to cover their behinds.

I would be very tempted to supply power to the loft and get them to install the modem next to your loft-based master socket, and when they are gone relocate the modem wherever you fancy.

Obviously in the future if you have connection problems it would be wise to relocate the modem to the loft before raising a support ticket.

[Julian]

The FTTC system has three components in the house:

- a replacement master socket integrating a filter to split broadband and voice calls (so the new master socket has two sockets in it)
- a modem (supplied and maintained by OpenReach)
- a router (supplied and maintained by the ISP or yourself - essentially any router that can do PPPoE)

I can't see a problem with cat5 allowing the modem to be situated away from the master socket.  But plusnet need to cover their behinds.

I would be very tempted to supply power to the loft and get them to install the modem next to your loft-based master socket, and when they are gone relocate the modem wherever you fancy.

Obviously in the future if you have connection problems it would be wise to relocate the modem to the loft before raising a support ticket.

Thanks, Tony.

That makes more sense than anything on the plus net site and that their tech support said!

I think you're right.  I'll give them a temporary extension lead in the loft for the modem, and see if they can use the CAT5 to run down to the router ... if that makes sense.

[Tony]

Perfect sense.

I suppose if you had permanent power in the loft you could just leave the modem there.  Depends how you think it would fair the heat of summer and cold of winter.

Speaking of which the OpenReach modems do apparently suffer a bit with heat and it's recommended to mount them vertically for air flow purposes (the vent slots are in the sides).

[Julian]

I did a little googling and found a Sky Users page that suggested removing the "ring" wire (terminal 3) from the master socket.  It says it's not needed with modern phones and can improve internet signals for some reason, presumably an interference issue.

http://www.skyuser.co.uk/tutorials/how_to_remove_the_ring_wire_from_your_master_socket.html

[Julian]

Speaking of which the OpenReach modems do apparently suffer a bit with heat and it's recommended to mount them vertically for air flow purposes (the vent slots are in the sides).

I'd like it down with the computer.

As for mounting I feel a printed bracket to hold modem and router coming on!

[Rossey]

What ups is it?

Some you can connect in eco mode which doesnt use much power.

[Tony]

I *think* it's an APC SUA750RM1U.  I know it had a USB interface so that if the UPS was running out of charge the server would detect this and graceful shutdown before the power went.

At any rate, the brownouts have been fixed, it was a faulty underground cable apparently.

[Rossey]

Thats a tiny thing, dont have many of them at  work.

Dont think you'll get an eco mode on that.

[Tony]

I didn't think so.  It adds a 20W overhead running a 50W idle/70W loaded server.