Ask HN: Getting HOA to upgrade Ethernet wiring Hi HN, I naively purchased a condo that said it had google fiber. Unfortunately, the building is wired with CAT5 and limits out at 100 megabytes. I’ve reached out to my HOA to advocate for an upgrade of each units wiring so we can take full advantage of the fiber connection. Has anyone gone through something like this in the past? How would you advise I attempt to get folks on board? Thanks in advance! |
It's pretty unusual to actually have cat5 and not cat5e or at least cable marked as cat5 but substantially exceeding the specs.
Only the most recent 'multigig 2.5/5g/10g' ethernet devices actually do anything approaching measuring the quality of your lines. Standards compliant 1g and 10g equipment will be happy to negotiate to the highest shared standard over a 2-pair cable through the 1mbps link pulse data and then be unable to communicate ethernet frames if pairs are missing or the wiring isn't sufficient quality for the encoding. Although some drivers compensate and reduce the advertised capabilities when there is no data exchanged after negotiation completes.
It usually takes active steps to negotiate down to 100M with gigE equipment.
All that said, 100M/100M is still a pretty solid experience if that's what you can get.
As for getting people on board, you'd need to get an idea of the cost, and then probably propose it to the HOA board and/or at a meeting. Expect most people not to really care though. 100M gets you 5x solid video streams (netflix and/or video conferencing), and in a dense condo building, wifi speeds are going to be less than that due to spectrum congestion anyway.
DIY ethernet can be fun. You can buy all the tools needed for a simple install at a home improvement store here in the US - crimping tools, outlet boxes, wire, etc. You may also need a wall-fish device to make it easier to get wires through the walls. Usually all wiring inside walls is stapled/fastened to the internal wall structure in some way so removing the CAT5 may not be worth the time/effort.
You'd generally need a permission from other owners for any work in the hallways and such, but as long as the disruption is not too bad, and nothing is coming out of their pocket, you probably won't have much issue.
Syncing at gigabit on Cat5 is common, even if a spec sheet says it's not l.
You would need pro-grade equipment, but the high-end stuff won't have trouble approaching Google Fiber speeds.
(1) Running gigabit ethernet over the cat 5. Maybe it works?
(2) Look at GFast. I run a GFast service in my apartment block. We have Cat 3 (yes, 3!) cable. We can do 500mbit. You would need to buy a DSLAM.
Source: I've setup and managed two such environments back in the day at an ISP, and also a couple of older VDSL setups in apartment blocks. It's a good way of getting some extra mileage out of old wiring but its expensive, creates another SPOF, and requires at least some knowledge. It can also be a giant PITA to troubleshoot, and all your wiring becomes far more precious when it comes to water/damp and interference.
Lots of rewiring questions asked and answered there.