In a previous post titled "
The Struggle for Broadband" I mentioned some of the hassle it has been for Bro. Bill to get hooked up with a high speed internet connection. Some of the hassle I didn't mention was the 2 or 3 attempts he made to get DSL at his place. His line showed "DSL available" each time he tried to proceed with the Verizon DSL order. Each attempt was met with Verizon telling him "We are sorry sir, but our DSL service is not available for you after all". What a disappointment to be sure. So we talked it over and decided to try a "plan B". This "plan B" meant teaming up with Comcast to get their cable based broadband service going at his place. This option started out looking rather expensive (in the 1200.00 to 2000.00 range) for the initial underground cable installation. The installation cost was because of how far they had to run the cable back his lengthy driveway. The distance of over 500 feet would require the use of the pricey large "hard line" type cable. After much discussion with a manager from Comcast, he agreed to work with me on getting bro. Bill connected at a much lower price of 120.00 for their install fee! They would run the more standard cable up to 320 feet at which point I would install an enclosure to house the cable modem. From the enclosure we ran a cat5, in conduit, the rest of the 290 feet to the Netgear wireless router that we installed in his garage. We also had to run a 110v. line (to power the modem) to the enclosure.
Before we actually got started on this "plan B" one of the things the manager at Comcast said was "The 320 feet length on their cable will not allow enough signal to support any TV service but should still be fine for the cable modem to work at full capacity". His other words were something like "We have never really tried this sort of installation before but we are willing to give this a try". Wow, it almost felt like we were into some kind of experiment and even had me wondering if it would work! I felt all along that it would work because of some similar things I had done at my own place. The distance of the cat5 had me a little concerned, I must admit, since the maximum distance on a cat5 is supposedly 320 feet. We were at around 290 feet from the modem to the router!
To sum all this up, IT WORKED! He now has 2 computers networked and both online with broadband. The
speed test results showed near 4300 KBPS. Folks, that is cruising! Now he is ready to send/recieve Autocad files at blistering speeds.
As you can see, quite a distance from the road!
The trench for the cat5 and 110v modem line is shown here....
We took the guts out of an old meter pan and turned it into "The Enclosure"
Don't laugh. It works!
Hey Willis, are you ready to get hooked up?
