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Old 06-05-2011, 22:35   #1
windbag
Inactive
 
Join Date: May 2011
Location: Loughborough-UK Midlands
Services: Virgin 10M Broadband
Posts: 13
windbag is an unknown quantity at this point
Moving ISP in old house-routing issue?

Hi Folks

First post on this forum.
I've read some other threads about installation, particularly:
New install - wiring questions
but I have a slightly different situation. The Virgin installer is calling Wednesday, and I'm trying to anticipate what could be problems & how we can mitigate them.

Current (pipex) broadband is via old BT copper phone wire, via overhead cable & down side wall, to box about head height. Actually there are two full connections, as there used to be two phone lines to a previous owner (years ago). The house is 1923, solid wall.
From the box is a maze of standard 4-core wires, running round the entire back of the house, through what is now a conservatory under what was the only suspended ground floor & into the hallway, where it terminates in the "primary outlet". A few years ago, we had the solid floor parts of the ground floor dug out and put in suspended floors throughout (a leaky central heating pipe issue), but this has never been used for routing phone lines. Another line runs from the house wall box to a master bedroom, where it daisy chains to the far bedroom where I'm currently at the PC.

Although the current maze sounds an abortion, it was put in when such work was expensive, is good quality and all works a treat. Even the furthest daisy chain line (this room) gave 3.7 Mb speed before Pipex contention spoils the speed (and is now unworkable at times)

The issue? I was looking to install the Virgin WiFi router in the hallway near the current primary socket, with a view to progressing to a WiFi-router/NAS/printer hub "under the stairs" as a resource for all the future household PC use.

Going through the wall where the current box is won't work, as that is a special "collections" room with absolutely no space for such a hub down the line.

A potentially bigger complication is that we have a brick-paved driveway across most of the front face of the house. The only bit accessible by going round the driveway paving bit is to the living room, or the bottom of the stairs in the hallway. Might that be the best route?

How's the Virgin tech going to assess the best route in, and my aspiration to keep the main outlet in the central hallway?
I can take up floorboards, but there will be a large amount of moving involved in getting such access.

Difficult query, I know, but some form of guidance could help me get a good result rather than an almost unusable one!
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