Cost of getting an installer for ethernet plus virgin woes!

Sorry for the long backstory here.

Just had virgin install a 1 gig line last friday, refused to install it upstairs saying they can only install downstairs and they would get into trouble from head office if they installed it upstairs. Problem I have is my office is upstairs. No problem you're on the 1 gig system we'll give you a mesh extender. After relucantly accepting this I was 'told' by the engineer most computers can't accept 1 gig anyway (!) and you'll get 1/2 gig with the extender. I duly corrected him, indicating all three computers in my room which I built myself, including the one built 12 years ago, are all capable of receiving / sending 1 gig and I am taking on work that needs the faster connect. Aha, he says maybe we should have done a survey first. Yes I reply!!!! Needless to say its taken a week before the speed on the router increased from 1/2 gig to 800 mbps )according to speed tests on my mobile next to the router) and the mesh router has increased from 240 mbps to 280 mbps!!!

Now onto the main story. I got an engineer to come out today to give me a price for running a cable from upstairs to downstairs, just the cable mind and I was quoted £325. Is this normal for North Yorkshire, it might be for London! Was expecting £100 to 150 max - is this unreasonable? In the meantime I've ordered a couple of 1gig powerlines from amazon at under £50 to see if that can improve the speed.

Looking forward to what other posters think of the price, and if they can direct me to a reasonably priced installer (I am a yorkshireman after all!)

@Malti121,

It really depends on the amount of work involved. It's sounds fairly reasonable to me. If someone asked me, as an IT Consultant, to install some cable and it involved some drilling and getting the cable from downstairs to upstairs then I might quote a few hundred pounds. Your engineer might also have included everything in that quote such as length of cable needed, their time, etc.

HTH,

In reply to a post by Malti121:

Sorry for the long backstory here.

Just had virgin install a 1 gig line last friday, refused to install it upstairs saying they can only install downstairs and they would get into trouble from head office if they installed it upstairs. Problem I have is my office is upstairs. No problem you're on the 1 gig system we'll give you a mesh extender. After relucantly accepting this I was 'told' by the engineer most computers can't accept 1 gig anyway (!) and you'll get 1/2 gig with the extender. I duly corrected him, indicating all three computers in my room which I built myself, including the one built 12 years ago, are all capable of receiving / sending 1 gig and I am taking on work that needs the faster connect.

Most modern computers are capable of using sfp28. If you have a spare pcie x16 - say hello to 100gbits/s plus

In reply to a post by Malti121:

Aha, he says maybe we should have done a survey first. Yes I reply!!!! Needless to say its taken a week before the speed on the router increased from 1/2 gig to 800 mbps )according to speed tests on my mobile next to the router) and the mesh router has increased from 240 mbps to 280 mbps!!!

wired backhaul all the way.

In reply to a post by Malti121:

Now onto the main story. I got an engineer to come out today to give me a price for running a cable from upstairs to downstairs, just the cable mind and I was quoted £325. Is this normal for North Yorkshire, it might be for London! Was expecting £100 to 150 max - is this unreasonable? In the meantime I've ordered a couple of 1gig powerlines from amazon at under £50 to see if that can improve the speed.

Looking forward to what other posters think of the price, and if they can direct me to a reasonably priced installer (I am a yorkshireman after all!)

What you were expecting was about right if its a single external cat 6a cable, plus trunking. out and in at the top. As that covers cabling, existing equipment costs, labour, vat and profit. The install should in this case be charged on what is done rather than how long it takes. If it takes him 3 hours and that is a result of his ability - you shouldn't be charged for it.

With no unexpected issues, it should be a 30 to 45 minute if done carefully.

Mark its on the expensive side.

Sounds expensive to me. When you say "an engineer", what do you mean? Most electricians should be able to do the job for you, so get a few quotes.

The cost will depend on the complexity of the work. If it's just drill two holes and pull some outdoor-rated cable through, then it's a small job - but will leave you with an exposed cable.

It would be better to be completely in trunking, so you can pull through Cat5e initially but replace with fibre later. Note that proper cable trunking is not the same as water pipe: the latter has very sharp bends which would make pulling either copper or fibre very difficult.

If you do it internally, it may or may not be an easy job depending on the chosen routing, how accessible your floorboards are and so on. Flexible trunking might be the right option here.

I suspect the one you got a quote from didn't really want to do the job, so quoted on the high side to discourage you from accepting it.

As for powerline adapters, I'd say you're unlikely to get more than 200-300M usable throughput.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

As for powerline adapters, I'd say you're unlikely to get more than 200-300M usable throughput.

Might be lucky and get 500 Mbps on the 1Gig rated ones.

I note that the HomePlug Alliance association has closed. This tech didn't work out.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HomePlug

On 18 October 2016 the HomePlug Alliance announced that all of its specifications would be put into the public domain and that other organizations would be taking on future activities relating to deployment of the existing technologies.[1] There was no mention in the announcement of any further technology development within the HomePlug community.

In reply to a post by Malti121:

and if they can direct me to a reasonably priced installer (I am a yorkshireman after all!)

Google for local electricians and CCTV or alarm installers. Any of them will be able to do it. For cheapness you'll probably want a one-man outfit.
(A few years ago I [censored] my BT master socket and managed to find an ex-BT engineer to fix it. He was spending his time doing telephone extensions and network installs. Don't remember what search terms I used to find him though.)

if its internal then the quote maybe ok but, we don't know if the property is a standard uk two story house or 3 story townhouse. So its easy to assume - i certainly did..

But the 325 on the face of it is high. Also i'd use cat 6 over 5e (as its a nice half way house from 5e and 6a)

If you can get Cat6 for the same price as Cat5e then you might as well, although it's a bit less flexible so sometimes harder to install neatly.

Cat5e can do 1G and 2.5G up to 100m. Cat6 additionally gives you 5G up to 100m (I've never seen any deployment of 5G on copper though) and 10G up to ~30m.

In reply to a post by Malti121:

Now onto the main story. I got an engineer to come out today to give me a price for running a cable from upstairs to downstairs, just the cable mind and I was quoted £325. Is this normal for North Yorkshire, it might be for London! Was expecting £100 to 150 max - is this unreasonable? In the meantime I've ordered a couple of 1gig powerlines from amazon at under £50 to see if that can improve the speed.

Looking forward to what other posters think of the price, and if they can direct me to a reasonably priced installer (I am a yorkshireman after all!)

As others have suggested, if you have a trusted sparky get them to run the cable.

£325 is definitely on the high side for a single cable, but saying that we haven't seen the cable run.

Any trade worth their salt should be able to tell you immediately what their hourly charge-out rate is - then you can judge for yourself. Materials won't be any more than £50-£80 including backboxes, faceplates and RJ45 jacks+adapters.

If DIY'ing the terminations: stripping and terminating a Cat5/6 cable into an RJ45 jack is pretty trivial after a few practice goes and ultimately harmless (unlike the mains). I can give you plenty of tips of do's and don'ts.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Any trade worth their salt should be able to tell you immediately what their hourly charge-out rate is - then you can judge for yourself. Materials won't be any more than £50-£80 including backboxes, faceplates and RJ45 jacks+adapters.

depending on how fancy you go.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

If DIY'ing the terminations: stripping and terminating a Cat5/6 cable into an RJ45 jack is pretty trivial after a few practice goes and ultimately harmless (unlike the mains). I can give you plenty of tips of do's and don'ts.

external grade cabling is more painful - plus he would need a network cable tester.

In reply to a post by Taras:

- plus he would need a network cable tester.

I am now working on my 5th LAN in my 4th house [The first house I put in coax ethernet initially and then cat5]. I have never needed a network tester.

Unless you're installing SYSTIMAX branded products then you're pretty safe 😅

You don't strictly speaking need a cable tester / certification tool. If this was a commercial install with dozens, tens or thousands of outlets I would be singing a *very* different tune. But in a domestic *single cable* install as long as you're reasonably careful then it will either work or it won't - a simple GbE connection will need all four pairs happy to run otherwise it will drop out or fail back to 100BaseT. Instant sign of a problem. Typically it's the terminations.

You'd be amazed at what 'professional' installers *DONT* have a proper certification tool (Fluke DSX8000's run to about £10-12K a set) and just use a pair continuity tester for a tenner.

What I would invest in (if you're installing more than one outlet) is a proper 110 style punchdown tool.

External grade cable should just have a very stiff PE sheath, it's much harder, but not impossible to score and snap. Not really a fan of running data cabling externally but hey...call me old fashioned.

The most important points are don't use stranded cable (long patch leads) for any sort of permanent building cabling - use "proper" solid core copper cable (and not CCA [censored] from Amazon or Fleabay) - don't crimp on RJ45 plugs - use proper jacks and plug your flyleads in at each end. Match the category of the cable to the outlet, Don't use Cat6A cable with Cat5e jacks. Ideally the same manufacturer but hey this isn't a system manufacturer warranted / certified install.