Fibre upgrade - switching provider

[Harrison]

I had the fibre upgrade yesterday. Only thing they had to do was replace my existing ONT as the one I already had was only 1GBit so that had to be swapped out for a 2.5Gbit one. The most time taken was the engineer getting it to connect and had to resort to ringing up to pair the ONT number to my incoming fibre connection. Once done that was up and running that was it. Plug the new router in and check it was working. Job done. Bet the Openreach engineers wish all their callouts were that simple.

[Harrison]

Test ran from the hub to check speed from the fibre to the hub.

Screenshot_20240618_225207.jpg

[Harrison]

I'm not going to upgrade the router to a third party one at the moment as I don't yet have anything that has any 2.5 Ethernet ports. This router does have Wifi6 though and I've noticed an improvement with tesponse time on devices that are compatible, although that is only portable things as I like to hardwire everything I can.

Hardest job yesterday was getting everything in the house connected back up to the new router. Onviously I could have edited the new routers login to the old router so everything would have jussi carried on oblivious to the changes, but I normally find setting a lot of devices up again with the new details is better overall. Just a bit of a hassle.

One was my Ring doorbell. I couldn't see any wifi networks, whereas my phone could see networks from both next door neighbours and my own. I had to manually enter the network details, then it connected first time. Very odd.

And some smart devices are stupidly designed. Hardest to get working was a tp-link smart extension lead my wife has by the bed. It has 3 seperate smart plug sockets that can be controlled separately via app or Alexa. It's useful for the bedside light, but also for her straighters and hairdryer as she can double check they are off if she's forgotten to check. Anyway they seemed no way to change the wifi settings in the app. I looked through the maker's FAQs and it has one for moving the sevice to a new network and stated the app has no ability to do that. You have to factor reset the device and remove them all from the app. Then set it up again as a new device. That in itself is fiddly, but then you have to fight with the Alexa app to make it realise the existing entries are no longer valid and the new devices it discovered and added without asking were the same. Anyway got it working in the end.

Last headache is Sky Q. My main Sky Q box was working without doing anything because its hard wired, but the sky Q mini box in the bedroom obviously was offline. So I has to reset the network on the main box, thrn restart and reinitialise the mini box 3 times before it evened devices to see the Sky Q mesh and connect. That's now working. But another mini box I have in the log cabin still refused to reconnect. Its hardwired as way too far from the house to ever see the Sky Q mesh (why they couldn't just use the house wifi as the wifi mesh booster is right next to the mini in there). It's been installed in there for 4 years connected via ethernet and working fine. I have had a couple of times when the internet has dropped in thy cabin and has to reinitialise it to get it back up and running. But yesterday no matter what I tried it wouldn't connect. It just keep telling me it has to connect via wifi and I needed to press the wps button on the main Sky Q box. No because that wouldn't work. Every time I tried resetting the box it just went back to that screen asking me to press the button. So I have up yesterday. Will try again in a minute.

Anyway I think I have most things back in the network now. Smart lights, plugs, security cameras, doorbells, all the Amazon echos in every room, laptops, tablets, phones, Hive central heating.

Actually that's busy made me realise there are 2 now I've not done. The Netatmo weather station and a smart electric panel heater both in the cabin.

Also discovered the outside blink camera on the cabin decided to have flat batteries Ystradgynlais so had to order some new lithium AAs. Those things are expensive.

[Harrison]

The Sky Mini box in the cabin ended up being something I'm blaming my wife for.

After it refusing to see the network and insisting on trying to connect wirelessly I noticed the ethernet cable wasn't plugged until the switch. Strange as they don't normally just fall out. Still no light on the router so I rebooted the sky box. Still nothing. I ran out of time so gave up after trying for over 30 mins.

Yesterday I went in there and still no joy. Decided to double check the cable. It was still plugged into the switch, but I thought I had better check the other end and it wasn't plugged into the sky box! Doh! Plugged it in and within seconds reconnected and Sky up and running.

Why would it suddenly be unplugged at both ends? RJ45s don't just fall out! They are normally hard to release if anything. My wife did a full clean of the cabin a couple of days before the broadband upgrade so I'm blaming her for somehow accidently pulling the cable out of both ends. Very odd though.

So finally nearly everything reconnected. Be lithium batteries arrived for the outside camera so that was back up and running quickly. But I then discovered another worrying thing I'm also definitely blaming my wife for! The outdoor Blink cameras use a small sync module to connect them wirelessly, and thy sync module then connected to the Wifi. It's only a little box with a couple of lights on and was plugged in and sat on the floor in the corner under the desk. I had to reset it to get the camera reconnected and discovered there was a big hole melted right though the top of the case. And only one thing in there could have done that. My wife makes wooden signs to sell on Etsy and does wood burning on them for the lettering. It's basically a soldering iron with different shaped ends and the hole fits the iron! Of course she denied any knowledge of it which is worrying. How did it happen without her realising? Themselves the sync module still works with the big melted hole in it!