Cable installed wrong place

stphnstevey

I got Virgin Broadband installed and stupidly went with the advice of the installation gguy and the modem is installed next to the TV where the cable enters the house. However, I niavely thought the broadband would come down the phone line and therefore be accessible at each of the phone sockets I have installed.

So now I have ultra fast broadband - but not able to utilise it! Currently have a wireless router set up, which isn't too bad. But would like to utilise the full speed if possible.

I have a laptop which although I use it close to the router, I like not having a cable.

I have another computer in the study where I do most of my downloading and would benefit most from a quicker speed.

I can only see two ways round this:

- Use those gizmo's that plug into a socket and use the electrical mains - however, the router uses 2 sockets at the moment and I just concerned about all the electricity it eats up already, without introducing another two more plugins

- Wait untill renewal and see if I can negotiate another install and get it put into the study

Any other ideas are welcome?

Dime_Bar

What speed are you running your wireless at and what speed is your connection, unless your on the old "b" standard the wireless conection will likely be faster than the broadband connection so you will not lose any speed.

Conor_3

stphnstevey wrote: »

So now I have ultra fast broadband - but not able to utilise it! Currently have a wireless router set up, which isn't too bad. But would like to utilise the full speed if possible.

You already are unless the wireless on your laptop is 5 years old.

[Deleted User]

You could ring Virgin and get them to come back around and install your broadband near your computer, although they may charge you something in the region of £25 to do so.

d900

just get http://www.digitalera.co.uk/catalog/Devolo-93-1.html
the devolo range is cheap but works really well
and then turn it off when ur not using it

Alias_Omega

Get yourself down to maplins, pick up some satellite cable and the correct ends, and run the cable to where you want it. Clip or staple it too the skirting board and hey presto..

We move our virgin box through out the year as the wife changes the room round. As of this, we put white M2 trunking on top of the skirting to accomodate the surround sound system, and the coax cables.

esuhl

If your router is 802.11b compatible, it will run at (up to) 11Mb/s, 802.11g will run at (up to) 54Mb/s, and 802.11n is faster still.

Looking at Virgin's website, your Internet connection speed could be as high as 20Mb/s if you're paying for their fastest product.

So unless you have the fastest connection that Virgin can provide AND you're using a 802.11b router, you won't improve your Internet download speeds by using a wired connection.

fluffymuffy

I can't add anything useful but I'll take the opportunity to have a little moan about Virgin Cable....

Our house was built with cable already fully wired to all TV and phone sockets. We moved in recently to find the last occupants had had the service disconnected.

The Virgin man who came out to install refused to wire it up as it had been built in the first place and now we only have TV in the living room. It seems that they are only geared up to adding cable as an addition to a property and don't know what to do if it's already there. The cable actually entered the house inside through a pipe and the installer drilled a hole to take the wire outside, threaded it round the house and then drilled another hole to bring it back in and put the ugly box in the living room with another wire tacked to the skirting board.

There's now a heap of wires by the TV, including the internet thingy to which I've had to add more wires to get a wireless connection. Why? When there's a phone and TV socket in every room and it was all on cable only a month ago.

stphnstevey

Wow - hadn't expected such a good response - thanks MSE'ers!

I have the fastest speed Virgin do - 20 mb (I am not sure about the mb/MB convention, but I do know there is a difference? Maybe somebody could explain? But until then, please excuse if I inter mix them nievely)

My router is a Netgear one I got free from Virgin (think it comes up with 54mb), the laptop fairly new (within five years), but the other computer is a desktop which is 10yrs old.

I installed Netgear wireless card in the desktop as it didn't have wireless - the most I have been able to get out of it is 500 Kb (?)/sec.

Can anyone explain what these numbers actually mean! ie 20mb speed (which I checked a speed tester and get 18mb or so, so not bad), 500kb/sec etc

esuhl

stphnstevey wrote: »

I have the fastest speed Virgin do - 20 mb (I am not sure about the mb/MB convention, but I do know there is a difference? Maybe somebody could explain?

* "M" stands for "mega", which means 10^6 in decimal (1,000,000) or 2^20 in binary (1,048,576).

(By the way "^" means "to the power of")

* "m" stands for "milli" - 10^-3 in decimal. I don't think it is used in the binary approximation because you can't subdivide a bit.

* "b" stands for "bit", which is short for "binary digit" - a 0 or 1; the smallest unit of data.

* "B" stands for "byte", which is equal to 8 bits (computers process data in batches of 8, or multiples thereof).


So... if your Internet connection is 20Mb/s (megabits per second), then since there are 8 bits to a byte, you could download at (up to) 2.5MB/s (megabytes per second).

Hope this helps...

DCFC79

fluffymuffy wrote: »

I can't add anything useful but I'll take the opportunity to have a little moan about Virgin Cable....

Our house was built with cable already fully wired to all TV and phone sockets. We moved in recently to find the last occupants had had the service disconnected.

The Virgin man who came out to install refused to wire it up as it had been built in the first place and now we only have TV in the living room. It seems that they are only geared up to adding cable as an addition to a property and don't know what to do if it's already there. The cable actually entered the house inside through a pipe and the installer drilled a hole to take the wire outside, threaded it round the house and then drilled another hole to bring it back in and put the ugly box in the living room with another wire tacked to the skirting board.

There's now a heap of wires by the TV, including the internet thingy to which I've had to add more wires to get a wireless connection. Why? When there's a phone and TV socket in every room and it was all on cable only a month ago.

why dont you complain to virgin then, you can have the cable for your internet put where ever you want, you just explain to the guy where you want the tv cable in and where you want the cable for the internet positioned