Thanks everyone for your replies.

Decided to look through some old photos from when the house was being refurbished and can now see I have no chance of ever threading a new duct or cable down. Unless I had a magic wand.

My plan B, is on another wall, to go straight down from where the fibre will attach to the building from the pole. Then into my office, on the same wall, into the house about two floors down, near an ethernet plug and power points. The wall is only about 30cm thick there, so should be fine to drill through.

I have only limited networking knowledge but if I plug in the FTTP router and patch it into the ethernet socket in my office, I should be able to then connect up to a draytek router to have a failover with the VM router in the central comms cupboard that I had originally wanted to get the fibre to?

The office computer won't have failover, as it will be connected direct to the BT router but that's not that big a deal.

In reply to a post by WillSm:

I have only limited networking knowledge but if I plug in the FTTP router and patch it into the ethernet socket in my office, I should be able to then connect up to a draytek router to have a failover with the VM router in the central comms cupboard that I had originally wanted to get the fibre to?

The office computer won't have failover, as it will be connected direct to the BT router but that's not that big a deal.

If you can manage to locate the ONT within reach of your data cabling outlet, then you can connect the copper port of the ONT and run that to where you need it. Probably best to keep all routing and switching in your central comms cupboard if you can rather than scattering it around. The ONT basically presents a gateway, so for all intents can be left located at a convenient powered point near the point of cable entry.

In other words keep all your other gear centrally located as it will make upkeep, maintenance, patching etc far easier.

You might want to think over how you do your “failover” with possibly 2 routers and 2 provider circuits in play. There are numerous ways to skin a cat depending on what’s needed, the capability of your hardware etc.

Edited by Pheasant (Wed 27-Oct-21 11:07:21)

I'm not sure if this is possible, but would going through from the roof, downwards into the comms cupboard work? I'm assuming here that your premise is a single story unit

Good idea but it's 3 storey and the comms cupboard is on the bottom floor, so it wouldn't really work sadly.

I'm now thinking it should go into my office which is on the wall the FTTP should attach to the house. This has one ethernet cable to the comms cupboard, so I am looking at a draytek switch with vlans, so I can send the FTTP signal to a FTTP / VM WAN switching router there and back to the office. Then everything in the house can switch ISPs.

Not sure of your budget but if internal cable is not an issue go with at least cat 6a if you wish to with copper cabling, or maybe go fibre for the internal route back to the comms cupboard

Actually if you went with two fibre cabling you could use the exiting ethernet cable as a draw string, and upside is that you are 10gb plus ready. Downside is spending more on spf+ switches

Edited by Taras (Wed 27-Oct-21 14:51:06)