Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Install Complete!

It's installation day and I'm pleased to say everything went very smoothly.

Original install time was going to be 1pm, but got a phone call first thing this morning asking if they could do it this morning. Certainly wasn't going to turn down an earlier time!

Step 1 was to identify where everything was to be installed. I'd made their lives relatively easy, so this bit didn't take too long.

Step 2 involved getting a jackpoint (not much bigger than a standard Telecom style jackpoint) installed inside the house.


An optical connector goes from this box into an optical connection on the Huawei router.
Photos of this later.



Step 3 was to install another box on the outside of the house which is where the fibre comes into the house.

Step 4 - getting the fibre to the house - was the bit that took the longest. To do this, they had to wait until the van with the correct equipment was available. They went away to the cabinet and effectively "blew" the fibre from the cabinet all the way back to our house. They connected the fibre in the cabinet and then connected it to the box you can see in the picture above.

Step 5 - Enable networks is notified to activate the circuit.

Step 6 - Gave Snap a call, at which point they checked everything for me and activated the cut-over from Telecom.

So by lunchtime, I was swapped over to a high speed link with my telephone working perfectly with my old "Telecom" phone number.

Some more photos

This is the Huawei router into which the optical link connects.

Optical link is on the far left, LAN1 connection is a standard ethernet (RJ45) link to the Fritz!Box.


Fritz!Box has a USB on the side.

Additional ports at rear of Fritz!Box. 
Left hand cable (black) is an RJ6 that connects to the base station for my cordless phone.
LAN1 on Fritz!Box is connected back into the Huawei router.

Tip: Chances are your ADSL modem will be connected with an RJ6-RJ6 cable, so you can use it to connect your cordless phone to the Fritz!Box versus having to go and buy one 8-).


First Impressions

Internet link is very fast and isn't slowed down by the traffic you normally see in the evenings.

I'm finding that I get somewhere between 29-30Mb/s on www.speedtest.net.
Nice that I appear to be getting a bonus 9Mb/s tonight 8-).

Phone system is awesome.
Got teenagers? Then the phone system alone might be useful!
We can all make phone calls at the same time on our respective smart phones via the Fritz!Box.
Can also program it so only phone calls from people you want to talk to are routed to your respective "phone". I put "phone" in quotes, because while connected to the wireless network at home, my daughters iPod Touch is even a "phone".

Feel free to leave comments or questions.









Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Phase 2 Complete!

Came home tonight and noticed that part of the footpath (near to where the fiber pair are located at our property boundary) had been dug up.

Maybe they had done the tunneling and fiber pipe/conduit installation already?


They had talked about potentially doing an open-trench installation (ie they had the option of digging a ditch/trench all the way to the house), but there didn't appear to be anything visible.

Going through the gate and to the point near the house where the outside box will be placed confirmed that they had completed the installation of the "pipe" and would now be able to place an optical fiber down it to connect us up next Tuesday.

Congratulation Enable Networks / Downer Engineering (or whomever actually does the installation of this part). A very nice, tidy job totally well done 8-).



Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Planning Phase Complete

Had Downer engineering out yesterday to plan the installation of the fibre on my property.

This was a relatively simple task, as I had already decided that the best option was to tunnel from the right hand side of my property (versus the left where the existing services are).

Not everyone will have this choice, but luckily for us we've got 2 fibre pairs on either side of the property!

Sounds like it will be a relatively simple install so I'm crossing my fingers that everything will go smoothly next Tuesday.

In the mean time I've been doing more research on my Fritz box.
That thing is one serious device. Will post a summary of the new features that are coming out soon.

Oh - and still haven't heard from Orcon. Never mind.