I’d agree with your guesses MHC

Are there blanking plates in any of the rooms? It could be that the Cat 6 cables run to other locations in the property and it is for you to have the appropriate sockets installed for those you decide to use.

In reply to a post by MHC:

Can you pull any-more of the wire through?

And if so, what is written on them? And where do they go to? Can you get clearer picture of the cable and cores?



First guess ... The red and green are Cat6 cables, 4 off.

The white, they look more like sat TV distribution ...

I can't seem to pull any of the cables further through, and from what I'm able to see there's nothing written on them.

I have been supplied with some electrical plans, although they only indicate where the outlets are located, and the type of outlets they are supposed to be, but not how they are all interconnected.

Where I physically see 3x BT phone sockets, the plans state they should be "CAT5E RJ45 TELEPHONE EXTENSION OUTLET". In addition to this, the main bedroom and living room have these "media plates". The plans describe these "media plates" as follows: "4 EURO MODULE PLATE WITH 1No TV / FM / SAT 1 & 2 QUAD MODULE, 1No CAT5E RJ45 MODULE AND 1No MODULE FOR FUTURE VIRGIN MEDIA CO-AX PROVISION (CABLE LEFT BEHIND PLATE FOR FUTURE TERMINATION BY VIRGIN MEDIA)."

The service cupboard (as depicted in the plans) has points for BT Fibre, Hyperoptic and Virgin Media.

You are very lucky in that you seem to have Openreach fttp and Hyperoptic fttb available. Hyperoptic for example offer a 150/150 service for £38 (£35?) after 12 months. In this situation you could choose to take all your services over the Ethernet cables from the internet, i.e. don't use the copper phone and TV wiring.

But you probably have the "classic" wiring. All the sockets around the flat are usually wired back to a central point and that is what we see in your second picture. Here you have to feed into the cables whatever services you want. To do this you need wall plates with sockets, the top one looks like you need 4 ethernet sockets RJ45 and for the bottom one you fit 4x female F-sockets.

You then use up to 4 ethernet patch leads from your new sockets to the sockets on whichever router you are using, and then you can find out by trial and error which new socket goes to which socket in the flat.

Similarly, if you had a Sky+HD dish you would plug the two downleads into the new sockets and fit the Sky box in the living room or master bedroom and identify the cables. Or you could feed in a Virgin service the same way if you had one. You can combine TV/FM/DAB aerial signals on the same cables too.

But of course Sky is now moving to SkyQ so you only need one cable for that. There is also SkyX in which the signals are delivered over the internet. The way of the future, not yet available in the UK (but see NowTV, etc for internet TV).

If you need more ethernet sockets in rooms where there aren't any, you may get lucky by changing the phone sockets to ethernet, or you may be able to use the phone wires to pull through ethernet cables, or use other access means, such as homeplug or wifi.

The suggestion from Hyperoptic to move their router out into the flat does not seem helpful as you want to use wired connections. It might be a good idea if you needed a better wifi coverage, but the way to do this would be to put a wireless access point on one of your ethernet sockets around the flat.

It was a pain trying to get my phone to focus properly, but it seems there are 8 internal wires, so I'm assuming these are definitely somehow connected to the RJ45 outlets around the property.

That sounds promising even if a bit of extra work is required. My intention is to have two additional routers in bridge mode, each situated near a RJ45 outlet to support multiple wired connections (desktops/consoles) at each 'base'.

I'm still waiting for information from the developer's technical team (who are best able to assist but have been the most absent throughout this entire process).

Those look like Cat5e/6 cables.

Fit a four module RJ45 faceplate to there and have your modem/hub/router close by.

From there, a short patch lead into each socket means you will get a network connection to three or four places. Then as you suggest, if one is in a study for example a small switch will allow you to coonect PC, printer, NAS, WAP ... locally.

Not the best way for it to be done, but if a builder can save £20 on a £400,000 house he will do it. It is typical builder laziness tha he di d not even fit RJ45s or source/specify matching accessory plates. And as for the ***** that put the Hyperotic termination there ... so close to a power socket, it would be obvious that fouling of power leads would occur.

From what you said before, it looks like you should have Cat5e cable to the telephone sockets, and to the media plates, so these could be used for ethernet. That's 5 cables. Also apparently 3 or 4 coaxial cables to each media plate.

It remains to be seen how many there actually are and if it matches the number in the service cupboard. But with luck it will all match up, and perhaps you now have enough info to take it from there.

If you need more accurate info that you are going to act on before you move in, it may be safer to go and have another look if you can, rather than rely on what anyone else says!

Hello! We just want to make sure that you're aware of all the possibilities. You can leave the router where it is and still have other sockets in the new build home activated through the patch board. If you need any further clarification and assistance with your home setup, feel free to send us a message and we'll gladly assist!

In reply to a post by TBUser2012:

My intention is to have two additional routers in bridge mode, each situated near a RJ45 outlet to support multiple wired connections (desktops/consoles) at each 'base'.

For one service you can only have one router, and unless you have a block of IP4 addresses and are routing them, you'll want that router to do NAT. You will want a network switch if you have more wired devices than sockets at any location, and depending on the size and layout you might want a WiFi access point.