Re: Germolene
Even worse is the resin they use to bond the extra grip surface to roads at crossings in the UK. Ever thought 'i can smell burning electronics, oh crap' on a warm day while stopped at lights? If so, that's your culprit
1639 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Oct 2013
Telephone extension wire will feck your speeds right up. Put the router directly on the NTE 5, (without a filter if you no longer use landline phones) and use the ethernet to distribute round the house to your wifi AP etc... a few feet of poor quality 1980s extension kit can really ruin your speeds
Looking at the map linked, it's VERY patchy... unless they roll out loads of fibre REALLY quickly, the copper network is gonna live for another decade at least (so far as the customer is concerned, no doubt it'll be racks of VoIP ATA's at the exchange or cabinet)
Icon because I still remember the test codes for the strowger exchange that was replaced by a txe4 , then a nortel system (system Y, not system x), then ... i moved :)
I was assuming the OP meant the telegraph pole ones, which have between 4 and 12 individual fibre outlets. They DO make the top of the poles look cramped, especially when there may be a copper DP, a separate Toob DP, and maybe a couple of abandoned in place DACS II units (anyone remember the horror of finding your line was DACS'd during the dialup era?
I have a segment of the o/r fibre they're using in the fareham area (an offcut from my work colleague's install). it is a mix of kevlar and nylon strength members, and a double sheathed single mode fibre in an outer black PE jacket. Looks very much like normal dropwire. I wouldn't have any worries about the initial strength, but over the decades, who knows with manmade materials?
Had same in our own loft, set my circ saw to the depth of the boards less 0.5mm to avoid ANY risk. Cut my access panel, and the lights went out. Some b****rd had gouged out the underside of the boards for the cables going over the joists..... embarassing for a sparky but it was our own house lol
That is an increasing problem it seems. Not that I'm in IT myself (other than the wiring side!) but the number of times some outage is 'we have no idea why this happened' seems to be increasing. Overly complex systems? Or they laid off the only guy who knows how it worked. Or both?
Have a beer on behalf of that insider, he or she will need it>>
Ta for the reminder to put the robertson driver back in my toolbag.... I'm a british sparky and I do it to STOP plasterers removing boxes!
And yes, I keep a cheap battery drill with a 3.5mm tap in it for threading the holes on electrical boxes, it never hurts even (or especially!) on brand new boxes
Ah yes, I've worked on such building control systems aka 'dumb home'... The switches are godawful and plasticky for the money, and yes, there are MILES of cable literally, every single light or bank of light has to be wired back to the distribution board. We had around 1200metres of mains wiring (1.5mm thank gawd, larger would have been unmanageable) and nearly double that of cat[x]. Switches only used RS422 or 485 (can't remember which) so only needed cat5, but everything else got cat6A. The building inspector was actually worried about the structural integrity of the joists due to the number of holes, so we had the builder double them up. Fun job but absolutely ludicrous price.
Yep, we have several customers who've queried the accuracy of the meter, the usual reaction is to install a check meter... they're always in agreement to within that spec... [of course the main meter will be reading the voltage sense and power consumption of the check meter, but that's usually very VERY minimal]