Multiple hubs

The crimp on plug ends don't work reliably, with the solid cores. The solid cores are fine as you suggest, for fixed runs, socket to socket.

So it would be...

plug - flexible - plug - socket ------------ solid -------------- socket - plug - flexible - plug

If you wanted to not bother with sockets at all, then it would be...

plug ------flexible -------plug

I have only ever used solid core with RJ45 plugs. The cables (cat5e) were fairly static.

Terminating stranded in a RJ45 sounds like a nightmare. Have you actually done it?
 
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I have only ever used solid core with RJ45 plugs. The cables (cat5e) were fairly static.

Solid cores and RJ45 plugs are not designed to work together, yes I have tried, and it usually works, but it cannot be relied up. I long ago, swapped all mine over, to sockets, with fly leads. What happens is, the pin are inline with the wire, and tend to skid down the side of the insulation, and miss the copper. Using flexible, the pins can spear through the actual conductors. The socket IDC's, present a V, across the solid core, which nicks its way through the insulation.

I did once investigate if there were any RJ45 plugs, designed for solid cores and one seller claimed they stocked them. I bought some samples, they did seem to make slightly more reliable connection than the normal type, but not 100%.

Terminating stranded in a RJ45 sounds like a nightmare. Have you actually done it?

Yep, I've done lots of stranded, into RJ45 plugs, it's not difficult. strip the outer, fan the wires out in the correct order, trim to length push in, crimp, then finally test with the continuity gadget. Once you start the fanned out wires going into the RJ45, they are retained in the correct order by the grooves in the plugs. Look through the clear plastic and if you see colour, white, colour, white all the way across, chances are - you got it right, if you fanned them out correctly at the beginning.
 
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Solid cores and RJ45 plugs are not designed to work together, yes I have tried, and it usually works, but it cannot be relied up. I long ago, swapped all mine over, to sockets, with fly leads. What happens is, the pin are inline with the wire, and tend to skid down the side of the insulation, and miss the copper. Using flexible, the pins can spear through the actual conductors. The socket IDC's, present a V, across the solid core, which nicks its way through the insulation.

I did once investigate if there were any RJ45 plugs, designed for solid cores and one seller claimed they stocked them. I bought some samples, they did seem to make slightly more reliable connection than the normal type, but not 100%.



Yep, I've done lots of stranded, into RJ45 plugs, it's not difficult. strip the outer, fan the wires out in the correct order, trim to length push in, crimp, then finally test with the continuity gadget. Once you start the fanned out wires going into the RJ45, they are retained in the correct order by the grooves in the plugs. Look through the clear plastic and if you see colour, white, colour, white all the way across, chances are - you got it right, if you fanned them out correctly at the beginning.

Thanks.

Every day is a school day.

I have only ever purchased solid core cable. I have probably only ever fitted about 50 plugs. Each of those were fine but it looks like I was either lucky or had unknowingly purchased the recommended ones with the 3 prong contacts.
 
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Can 't be bothered.

Is it Cat 5E?

Are Cat6 sockets better?
You won't see any difference over the distances you're talking about but if 6 is available to your budget, use it instead. You might live long enough to see/make valid use of an Ethernet speed that can't work over 5E but 5E will happily do gigabit which is the predominant speed for consumer grade gear these days

For improving wifi coverage I'd consider getting some second hand ubiquiti unifi access points off eBay and installing throughout the house, wiring back to the Internet router. They get power and network over the same wire so only one wire to install and look nice and discreet when mounted. Generally rock solid reliability (I haven't had to reboot mine in 8 years) and can host a passwordless guest network that is speed restricted

I have one unifi AP in the ground floor, one on the first, and two outdoor on diagonally opposite building corners, but by all means just buy one, install, check coverage, install another - can go incrementally rather than buying all in one go
 
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+1 vote to the UniFi gear; I had to power mine down but that’s cause I moved house and wasn’t leaving the dream machine and AP’s behind.
 
I'm beging to think that 'Community' Wi-Fi would be better all round.
Where I presently live I can 'see' in the region of 25 Wi-Fi sources including my own. New neighbours have put a 'Mesh' network in place - apparently have located each of 4 disks on the inside of their exterior walls with another 2 in their conservatory for use in the garden. There is so much signal from their Wi-Fi mine is only workable in less than half my house - literally move from one end to the other end of the sofa and the Wi-Fi link drops out.
If I hadn't cabled the house up years ago I'd be at the end of tether. Their neighbours in the other side have just the same problem.
 
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I'm beging to think that 'Community' Wi-Fi would be better. Where I presently live I can 'see' in the region of 25 Wi-Fi sources including my own. New neighbours have put a 'Mesh' network in place - apparently have located each of 4 disks on exterior wall with another 2 in their conservatory for use in the garden. There is so much signal from their Wi-Fi mine is only workable in less than half my house - literally move from one end to the other end of the sofa and the link drops out
Ask your neighbour for their password. ;)

I've given my old smart TV to a friend who is giving it to a OAP she knows who hasn’t even got a phone line as he was talking about catchup TV and 'streaming'. His next door neighbour has kindly given him their password for him to use it in his house. It’s being set up this week for him but he can’t even use an iPhone (he just has a flip phone to open and answer calls) so it’ll be interesting to see if he can get his head around it.
 
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It’s a tough one, but I had similar issues at my previous place.

UniFi and some others have channel scanners and it’s about finding a channel that is not used by those other networks. They have a utility called WiFi-man that helps me find the right channel to configure my broadcasting on.

I find the hubs from all the providers (virgin, Bt, sky, etc etc etc) to be pretty crap. The antennas in their devices are unable to be easily configured to the channels with the least amount of traffic. I remember some of the older hubs all picked the same channel.

There’s a good article here about it: https://www.howtogeek.com/197268/ho...nnel-for-your-router-on-any-operating-system/

Maybe I missed it, but what hub are you using?
 
Ask your neighbour for their password. ;)

I've given my old smart TV to a friend who is giving it to a OAP she knows who hasn’t even got a phone line as he was talking about catchup TV and 'streaming'. His next door neighbour has kindly given him their password for him to use it in his house. It’s being set up this week for him but he can’t even use an iPhone (he just has a flip phone to open and answer calls) so it’ll be interesting to see if he can get his head around it.
I did the same at the old place I lived at. I actually boosted my WiFi across the road and then donated my old smart TV to the OAP!

The internet was a new concept to them; Netflix was a game changer and a year later the OAP’s had smart phones, WhatsApp and were embracing technology.

Blew their mind how email works and how we could video call them across the street. When we moved house earlier this year; the first thing the old man across the road asked me to do, was help him get his own internet contract.
 
Ask your neighbour for their password. ;)

I've given my old smart TV to a friend who is giving it to a OAP she knows who hasn’t even got a phone line as he was talking about catchup TV and 'streaming'. His next door neighbour has kindly given him their password for him to use it in his house. It’s being set up this week for him but he can’t even use an iPhone (he just has a flip phone to open and answer calls) so it’ll be interesting to see if he can get his head around it.

Back in the day, I drilled a hole through a terraced house wall, and ran an extension phone line, so two OAP's could share the same phone line between them.

When wifi first appeared, I set up a 1/2 mile link, so my partner's grandson could share our broadband.
 
For improving wifi coverage I'd consider getting some second hand ubiquiti unifi access points off eBay and installing throughout the house, wiring back to the Internet router.

How many APs can one power injector supply? I gather there are 12v and 24v ones - presumably they are incompatible?
 
If you can, rather use a POE switch; again Ubiquiti does these to. I haven’t read the documentation to see how many AP’s one can power but depends on the the injector.

A lot of this comes down to what you want out of your network. For most, one AP would be enough but as I am in IT, guess my home is over engineered for the average person and it all comes at a cost too.

For me, consistency across my house under load was important; so this is speed on my mobile along with both TV’s streaming Netflix, work laptop doing some work stuff, wife working and the Ps5 downloading an update for a game.
IMG_4216.jpeg
 
How many APs can one power injector supply? I gather there are 12v and 24v ones - presumably they are incompatible?
An injector typically supplies just one because it also passes through the network data. You can buy a switch (Ethernet switch, a box like a router that has multiple network ports on it) that has power over Ethernet (PoE) on some or all ports, but be aware.. not all flavours of PoE are the same. Industry standard is typically around 48v to 52v but the older unifi gear uses 24. You can buy a ubiquiti switch that emits their 24v or use the injectors, or you can pay a little more and buy newer ubiquiti gear that uses a more standard flavour of PoE. An old 24v AP might be about 30 to 40 quid and a newer one 80 to 100. Sometimes the eBay older gear comes with a power injector, sometimes not. It's also possible to get DC DC converters that are inline and convert an industry standard 48v PoE to 24v for older ubiquiti kit, but they're getting rare now and might well end up costing nearly the same as buying a newer AP
 
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