Community Fibre installation questions

Community fibre will be installing their broadband service in my home at the end of September. The main worry I have is that I won't be able to receive the full 300Mb/s speed in my room as I don't know where the modem and router they'll be providing will be placed. I currently have a fttc connection with the master socket and BT router in my room which gives me around 70Mb/s.

What are my options if I can't get (close to) maximum speeds in my room via wifi? Should I use a powerline adapter, purchase a second mesh router (which is cheaper than paying them monthly for a second one) or something else?

Thanks.

You may be able to get them to terminate it in the same place (in your room).

If not then the first choice is always a network cable if you can run one.

If you can't then you may find that if your devices have up to date network cards that you could actually get pretty good speeds via WiFi. Even at a bit of a distance - this will depend on how far and what walls (and other thing) are in the way. WiFi mesh may well be needed if you have longer distance or lots of walls blocking signal (you'll still be limited by whatever wifi tech you have in the client device).

PowerLine I would probably consider to be very much the last resort. Haven't used them for quite a while as WiFi has become so much better that I am not sure PowerLine would give you much of a benefit.

Just to give more information, I live in a two story house. My bedroom is on the second floor towards the garden, whereas they'll be installing the fibre cable from the front of my house.

The reason why a powerline adapter came to mind is because it'll give me (close to) full connection without worrying about walls or whatever else disrupting the wifi signal. And then I can use it for wifi from there. Otherwise I'd probably have to invest in a second mesh. I'm not sure if running a long cable in my house would be a good idea.

I would absolutely recommend you avoid a powerline network link if you possibly can. It will negate much of the benefit from your FTTP service.

For the small investment in time/materials you are better off getting a Cat5e/Cat6 cabling link in place. Even if it’s 2 hours of sparkles time to run it in some conduit / trunking and get it where it needs to be.

I'm trying to understand why using a powerline will be problematic if it maintain or give close to the full 300mb up and down?

In reply to a post by seemehd:

I'm trying to understand why using a powerline will be problematic if it maintain or give close to the full 300mb up and down?

none of them get anywhere near that speed even on a perfect link.
https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/tools/charts/powerli...

https://www.solwise.co.uk/net-powerline-real-world-p...

or instance, the home plug 200AV standard is associated with 200 megabits per second. It is important to understand that this number does not represent the data throughput between two devices. What the number does describe is the ‘Total, Fully loaded back-bone physical rate’, sometimes called the PHY rate.

The data throughput rate between any pair of devices will be significantly less than the PHY rate. There are a number of reasons for this discrepancy, most of which are beyond the scope of this article, but you should understand that it is normal to represent networking equipment this way. For instance a basic Ethernet port which is described as 100Mbps uses a significant portion of its rated speed for internal addressing purposes. This is called packet-overhead.

Going back to the home plug standards, a good rule of thumb would be to expect a maximum throughput between a single pair of devices to be about one third of the headline PHY rate. For example you may find that a pair of home plug 200AV devices in a particular setup exchange data at about 60Mbps. Another pair could quite possibly achieve a similar rate at the same time as the first pair, and more capacity is still available on the backbone for extra devices.

Despite what vendors say, in the real world you'll be hard pushed to get a reliable 300M on powerline.

I agree with what others have said: try to get the router installed where you want it, and if you can't, then get a run of CAT5e installed.

I don't know if CF provide a normal ONT with ethernet presentation: if they do, then you can use the CAT5e to connect the ONT to the router. If this isn't possible, then you'd use the CAT5e to connect a port on the router to a wireless access point in the other room - or even to a switch, so you can plug in one or more wired devices as well. A wired gigabit ethernet is always going to be better than wifi.

Wiring does give some other options as well. For example, rather than putting the access point in the back room, you could get a wall or ceiling-mounted access point and stick it on the landing - such as the Unifi AC Lite which is about the size of a side plate.

Edited by candlerb (Thu 23-Sep-21 20:10:13)

For all the reason above. Also latency and jitter on them in particular can be terribly unpredictable.

So forget about the nice consistent 2-3ms ping you would otherwise get.

Putting a powerline comms link on the main feed from a fast FTTP connection is akin to buying a McLaren and shodding it with tyres from a 10 speed push bike.

Edited by Pheasant (Thu 23-Sep-21 20:57:00)

Ok so a powerline adapter is out of the equation.

To be honest, I wouldn't want long cables around the house unless they can be installed in a way that isn't too visible. Otherwise, it looks like another mesh is required.

You could find an electrician or 2 to do a free quote for running the cabling and they would be able to advise on routes and whether it could be installed to your requirements for visibility.

Ok so I finally got the new service installed yesterday. The good news is that it was installed upstairs, but I still want the router in my room. I've decided to purchase a 10m cat5e ethernet cable which will connect from the modem to the router which will be moved to my room.

I also purchased a 5 port gigabit switch as I have a few devices and the linksys router only has one spare ethernet port. I was wondering, can I use one of my existing routers rather than the linksys as they have more ethernet ports? I have the sky hub 4.2 and bt smart hub 2. I've heard that the smart hub 2 can work with another isp, but I may have to return it as I joined BT after december 2019 (I wasn't under contract).

So if the smart hub isn't an option, can the sky hub 4.2 work instead? Or will I have to purchase a different router such as the TP-Link Archer C6 AC1200?

The less devices I have to use and plug in, the better.

A small additional switch doesn’t sound too bad from a device proliferation perspective. How many ports do you need altogether?

I’d be reluctant using another ISP supplied router on another providers service. Just me. I just don’t like it. There are far better options out there.

If your spare router from the other ISP has multiple LAN ports, then you could use it as both a switch and wireless access point. That'd give you the extra ethernet ports where you want them, *and* a strong wireless signal in the same room.

What you'd need to do is to turn off its built-in DHCP server, and ensure its management IP is different to your main router's management IP - although preferably on the same subnet - e.g. change 192.168.1.1 to 192.168.1.2.

Then connect both the main router and any other local devices into its LAN ports, ignoring its WAN port.

EDIT: I didn't notice you've said you've already bought the switch, and already moved the router to where you want the wireless signal. In that case, just use those two boxes.

It's simple, reliable, no compatibility issues, and no problems if there's a fault you need to report.

Edited by candlerb (Thu 30-Sep-21 10:50:12)

You could do that, giving 3 useable ports on either the BT or Sky box plus 1 left on the Velop box (unless he stacks them all, for a total 6 ports, but I think he wants to reduce boxes and it’s rather inefficient powering 3 boxes for so few ports)

I think he has ordered a 5-port switch so altogether would have 4 + 1 useable.

Depends how many wired devices he needs to support.

Edited by Pheasant (Thu 30-Sep-21 11:29:49)

My sky hub 4.2 and smart hub 2 both have better wifi coverage in my house than the linksys. I've read how to use the smart hub as a router, but unfortunately i'd have to return it. How can I try the sky hub as a router? It would save space and electricity if it works.

You could switch off the WiFi functionality on the Linksys, however leave it as the main router (for now anyway) and run the Sky box as a WiFi access point (not in router mode and with its DHCP server function switched off).