What’s with the Wiring?

So this morning we have some people coming round to look at our wiring and cables! Hopefully they are going to sort it all out for us!

After months of flaky broadband my husband finally decided to do an audit of telephone sockets and cable. It turns out that the telephone wire comes in to one room in the house then does a merry dance around each room, splitting itself several times and ending up at the place the router is plugged in to. Basically the wiring is a mess! This combined with our rural location (we are quite a long way from the nearest radio mast) results in our slow, temperamental broadband. (At least that is our current theory!)

We’re hoping that shortening and improving the cables will give us a better chance of being permanently connected. With all the online tools my new job requires I really want to avoid long periods of being offline.

Interestingly my colleague Brian Kelly has been asking about cabling for his own house. He’s even created a Storify (What cabling is needed for a network in a large house?) with the responses. See below for the tweets.

The consensus among the more technical on Twitter is that you shouldn’t scrimp on cable and it’s worth shelling out for Cat5e and possibly Cat6e if you have it installed professionally. We’ve decided to leave this to the experts, fingers crossed they are as clued up as the Twitteratti!

For further information see the useful link to Automated House: Wiring guide with some guidance on installation of the various wiring systems around the ‘automated home’.