Data Cable Repair- Garden Office Cabling At The Avenue In Ickenham, Uxbridge, UK

Whilst undertaking a Data Cabling Repair Job–Whole Home WIFI installation– at a very impressive property at The Avenue in Ickenham. our engineers uncovered a very interesting but at the same time confusing Fault, A little detective work by our experienced engineers led them to discover a very interesting repair on the link that effectively slowed it down

The Fault-Issues With The Data Network In Ickenham

The customer had a quite impressive Internet connection of 100 Mbps. Throughout the extensive property,  structured cabling had been installed at the construction stage making the installation of New Ubiquiti Nano HD Wireless access points relatively easy . At the bottom of the 100 metre garden was a large outbuilding housing a Gym and Indoor swimming pool. A small SOHO cabinet was situated in the pool plant room housing a switch and providing network access for the CCTV , WIFI and Sky Q.

Finding A Solution For Slow Connection Speeds At The Outbuilding

After we had completed the installation of the Wireless Access Points (WAP) we noticed that the connection speed at the outbuilding was a lot slower  ( 11.9 Mbps)than the rest of the property and required investigation. The customer informed us that the building was installed a few years prior and the electricians had installed a “high speed  internet connection” however the cameras did not stream images and the Sky Q buffered . It was decided to test the backbone link using our Fluke DSX  5000 with the OLTS module installed to test the fibre optic cabling with the garden over 100 metres long and the Comms Cabinet situated in the garage at front of house Fibre was the only way to get a reliable internet connection .

Our Cabling Engineers discovered the first of many mistakes on this installation. It was not a Fibre Optic backbone Cable, but insted, a Cat 5e Cable and it was also terminated incorrectly.  The brown pair of Cat 5e Cables were crossed. When our Data Cable Engineer tested the the Cat 5e Cable, it failed.  There was 491 ft (149mts) of Cat 5e cabling installed, but the maximum length of a Cat 5e permanent link is 90 metres. The installed link was 59mts over the limit.

When following the route of the Backbone Link, our engineers discovered 2 IP65 Rated Adaptable Boxes  mounted to the chain link fence. The cable entering and exiting these two IP65 Rated Boxes had been repaired. One of our Structured Cabling Technicians noticed during his investigation of the boxes. With the correct IDC joint boxes it is possible to make a repair on a damaged cable. You would not normally use 2 on the same link or especially you don’t do is what is in the next image- coil up the ends of the Cat5e Cable and then add another 50 metres of cable.

So an already overlength backbone cable was damaged at some point and the cable was repaired by pulling back the damaged Cat5e Cable and coiling up. Then another 50 metres of cat 5e cable inserted using a badly terminated Cat 5e Euro Module and an equally badly terminated Cat 5 RJ45 . The sum effect of this caused the massive loss of bandwidth on the Link and hence the slow connection speed to network. We were amazed that it was even achieving a connection.

However whilst it was relatively easy to redo the Joints by cutting out the excess coiled cable and terminating them onto IDC connection boxes, which we did as a temporary measure, the cable was still very much overlength and the external Cat 5 cable had been run within 75mm duct alongside the mains power causing a lot of interference on the link.

-A Review of our Data Cabling Project’s Issues-

Original Installed CAT 5e Cable was overlength- the maximum distance of a permanent link is 90mts 

The Installed Data Cable was run inside ducting for a length of 70mts, next to Main Power Lines

The Installed cable was not SWA ( Steel Wire Armored ) or indeed Duct grade.

The “Repair” was poorly undertaken using the incorrect joiners

The insertion of an extra 50mts of cable to repair the break had added 50mts of cable to the link 

Solutions For This Customer

We installed 4 core SWA Fibre Optic Cable inside ducting. We also used Fibre Optic Media Convertors at both cabinets.  This created a perfect backbone link between cabinets, along with full speed connections. Fibre Optic Cables are not affected by proximity to electrical interference( main power lines in ducting) making for a perfect interference link.

If you are interested in having Cabledan come to your home, office, or warehouse to fix any Data Cabling  or Wireless Networking Issues, here is how you can contact us.

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