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Pre cabling ahead of CityFibre install

Doofus

Regular Member
My comms cabinet with power and 10G network switch is at the rear of the house and the CityFibre cables run under the pavement at the front. When Virgin (CableTel) installed they sent a man under the floorboards to run co-ax to the rear and neatly out to the back. That won't happen now but I'm up for running fibre under the floor and out the property to the front. Question being what type of fibre and connector should I run to make the installers job easier on the day?
 
Why use fibre? Terminating fibre is hard and you have have a fibre connection in your ISP router or ONT, just a RJ45. So just run Cat 6A which is perfectly capable of running 10G speeds.
 
Tell them to put the junction box (the brown box that goes outside) wherever it's easiest for you. The fibre that comes in from the road doesn't go straight into your ONT, they provide you with a short 2m~ "SC/APC" (I think) cable that goes into the ONT, and that connects to the cable coming from the road inside the brown junction box.

So if you replace that "SC/APC" cable with a 20M one or whatever length you need, you'll be able to put the ONT wherever you want then...

I would just get the install done, and then do that at all in your own time.
The engineer who did my install was nice enough to give me a 20M cable aswell, it's an "SC/APC" connector.

Searching on the internet you can get the cable for as cheap as £4.
Just double check with someone else on here that it is SC/APC cause I can't remember 100% before you buy it.
 
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I'm up for running fibre under the floor and out the property to the front.
Cityfibre won't splice to an existing fibre of yours.

If you can have a conduit with a drawstring already in place *before* the installation day, they may agree to pull their fibre through it, similar to Virgin. There are no guarantees, but if it's done in such a way that it makes their install easier overall, they'll likely do it.

They may also agree to route the external cable around the outside of the house, if that's acceptable to you.

In principle you could join onto their fibre with a SC-SC coupler and a pre-made OS2 (single mode) fibre, but the join would need to be indoors, not outdoors - i.e. they'd drill through the wall and install the ONT at the front of the house, and then later you'd move it and add the extension. However the coupler will introduce a point of unreliability, and if there's ever a problem with your service, they may blame it on that. I would never choose this option.

I agree with the other comment: if they insist on installing the ONT at the front of the house, then run internal CAT6A. (CAT5e would be fine for the 1G ONT you get today, but Cityfibre are planning to roll out XGS-PON so you may be able to take a >1G service soon)

If you want your ONT to benefit from UPS then you can get PoE adapters to power it over the same cable.
 
Thanks all for the advice. Ideally I'd want the ONT placed with the rest of the kit at the back which is why I'd asked if I could pre-run the fibre to it. It's a mid terraced house so running along the outside is not feasible.

Interesting about CityFibre looking to roll out XGS-PON as the new Vodafone 6E router has both a 2.5GE WAN port and also a SFP+ cage but would require a newer ONT or a SFP+ ONT transceiver .
 
Thanks all for the advice. Ideally I'd want the ONT placed with the rest of the kit at the back which is why I'd asked if I could pre-run the fibre to it. It's a mid terraced house so running along the outside is not feasible.
That's exactly what you can do & what I've done... just buy an SC/APC Fibre cable and run it from the CityFibre junction box to your ONT which can be as far as you'd like it to be. Just get the SC/APC cable however long you need 10m/20/50m/100m, whatever it is!

If you can have a conduit with a drawstring already in place *before* the installation day, they may agree to pull their fibre through it, similar to Virgin. There are no guarantees, but if it's done in such a way that it makes their install easier overall, they'll likely do it.
That was the default option for me, they didn't run the cable that comes from the road straight into the ONT. If it gets damaged, they have to go onto the pole to run a new cable.
It goes into the junction box, and from there there's a shorter cable that goes into the house & into the ONT. That's how I understand it at least.
 
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