Wiring Whirlwind
Apr. 5th, 2023 10:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kevin_standleeThis afternoon, I was very worn out and fell into bed about 2 PM. I awoke three hours later to hear lots of rushing around by Lisa. I got back up and discovered that she was working with a technician from Spectrum, our local cable/internet provider. Apparently, there was a wiring problem that they ended up tracing to our house. The problem was with the wire that ran from the wiring box on the side of the house through a hole in the wall and to our cable modem. Lisa convinced the technician that the best fix was to connect in the coax line that Lisa had installed some time ago that runs under the house and over to a wiring closet that has connections to other parts of the house. He did so, and that led to a series of other changes and repairs, all to the good.
Lisa moved the cable modem from where it had been sitting on the floor in the living room (near where the old connection entered the house) to the wiring closet. She also moved the router into which that modem fed, and then connected that the the wiring patch panel that is in that closet. Years ago, we bought a small rack panel from the long-departed-and-missed Weird Stuff Warehouse, and Lisa put in rack-mounted hardware to manage the internet wiring in this house. Wires run from the panel to various part of the house, and in particular four lines run to a four-port plug in the living room. We confirmed that we had connectivity at one of my computers, and we thanked the Spectrum technician for his help.
Now, we've been having wonky and erratic internet speed for a while now, with the speed fluctuating wildly, and the defective coax cable may well have been the main culprit, but we've also been having erratic results on the various computers connected to that four-port outlet. Lisa had had enough of this, and we went over to Lowe's and bought a cable tester. We knew that we had at least one good port of the four, and she started testing lines. It turned out that three of the four ports had either cross-wired or completely disconnected wiring. Working one port at a time, Lisa rewired the three mis-wired ports, testing after she re-punched each pair of wires. Eventually, we got every port working the way it should. Now, all three of my computers (my personal machine and the two computers I have for work — besides my company machine, our client requires I use one of their computers to access their systems, for security reasons) are getting the high speed for which we're paying.
Here's the patch panel. The cable modem that used to be on the floor of the living room is now located behind this panel. The line with the white label around the cable is the line from the router that connects to the cable modem and is the main feed to the rest of the system. Ports 1-4 are what is patched to the four ports in the living room. Also now connected in this room instead of in the living room is a 15 TB hard drive that was previously sitting on the floor because it was the only place we were able to connect it and also have it visible on the home network. Now it is in the wiring closet no longer in danger of me accidentally kicking it. There is even a line that runs in conduit out to the travel trailer, so you can connect a computer there. However, later in the evening when we tested it, we found that is also has a cross-wired Ethernet line that will need to be checked out and corrected. It works, but only about 6 mbps download speed instead of 400-500. Lisa says she'll work on it later. Now that we have the cable tester, this will be much easier to fix.
This is our typical download/upload speed these days, and it works on all three of the connections in the living room, with one port still available, now that the 15 TB drive is in the wiring closet.
There is a whole lot of spare capacity here, which is great. As time and energy permit, Lisa can run more lines to other parts of the house, including maybe someday reaching upstairs, where we've always wanted to move my home office. Someday we hope we'll have the means to complete the upstairs office, including putting in heating/air conditioning and repairing the plumbing that the previous owner broke. But for now, we have working high-speed internet again, and the tools to repair and extend it throughout the house.
Lisa moved the cable modem from where it had been sitting on the floor in the living room (near where the old connection entered the house) to the wiring closet. She also moved the router into which that modem fed, and then connected that the the wiring patch panel that is in that closet. Years ago, we bought a small rack panel from the long-departed-and-missed Weird Stuff Warehouse, and Lisa put in rack-mounted hardware to manage the internet wiring in this house. Wires run from the panel to various part of the house, and in particular four lines run to a four-port plug in the living room. We confirmed that we had connectivity at one of my computers, and we thanked the Spectrum technician for his help.
Now, we've been having wonky and erratic internet speed for a while now, with the speed fluctuating wildly, and the defective coax cable may well have been the main culprit, but we've also been having erratic results on the various computers connected to that four-port outlet. Lisa had had enough of this, and we went over to Lowe's and bought a cable tester. We knew that we had at least one good port of the four, and she started testing lines. It turned out that three of the four ports had either cross-wired or completely disconnected wiring. Working one port at a time, Lisa rewired the three mis-wired ports, testing after she re-punched each pair of wires. Eventually, we got every port working the way it should. Now, all three of my computers (my personal machine and the two computers I have for work — besides my company machine, our client requires I use one of their computers to access their systems, for security reasons) are getting the high speed for which we're paying.
Here's the patch panel. The cable modem that used to be on the floor of the living room is now located behind this panel. The line with the white label around the cable is the line from the router that connects to the cable modem and is the main feed to the rest of the system. Ports 1-4 are what is patched to the four ports in the living room. Also now connected in this room instead of in the living room is a 15 TB hard drive that was previously sitting on the floor because it was the only place we were able to connect it and also have it visible on the home network. Now it is in the wiring closet no longer in danger of me accidentally kicking it. There is even a line that runs in conduit out to the travel trailer, so you can connect a computer there. However, later in the evening when we tested it, we found that is also has a cross-wired Ethernet line that will need to be checked out and corrected. It works, but only about 6 mbps download speed instead of 400-500. Lisa says she'll work on it later. Now that we have the cable tester, this will be much easier to fix.
This is our typical download/upload speed these days, and it works on all three of the connections in the living room, with one port still available, now that the 15 TB drive is in the wiring closet.
There is a whole lot of spare capacity here, which is great. As time and energy permit, Lisa can run more lines to other parts of the house, including maybe someday reaching upstairs, where we've always wanted to move my home office. Someday we hope we'll have the means to complete the upstairs office, including putting in heating/air conditioning and repairing the plumbing that the previous owner broke. But for now, we have working high-speed internet again, and the tools to repair and extend it throughout the house.
no subject
Date: 2023-04-06 06:43 am (UTC)