Re: Which is the virgin street cabinet?
 

I promised some photos. There is a typical street cabinet photo, a 230V cabinet photo and a PDF of my nerdish research in Winnersh.

The PDF differentiates typical cabinets from 230V cabinets (Optical Nodes) and also shows the BT Infinity cabinets. The number of houses per street is also shown so that I could get the homes passed number. It's 39 homes passed on average per street cabinet and 480 per optical node.

Re: Which is the virgin street cabinet?
 

Very interesting read!

Wow, so many wires in the first image of yours Seph!

Re: Which is the virgin street cabinet?
 

I chode a smaller cabinet for clarity! You should see some of them. Each home has its own cable to the tap point you see. That lot is combined and put into the amplifier which combines it all together with the incoming from the next durthest away (from the fibre optic node) cabinet. Upstream is split from the common cable and fed back to the tap points.

Something like that!

Re: Which is the virgin street cabinet?
 

how long did that PDF take you to make LOL damn i thought i was bad wanting to know how everything works :dozey:

Re: Which is the virgin street cabinet?
 

You shouldn't have asked then! I did it in Visio and it did take a couple of weeks to walk (after first research with Streetview) and a few evenings drawing etc. Utter nerd stuff.

Re: Which is the virgin street cabinet?
 

LOL what do the differen't colours mean on the PDF?

Re: Which is the virgin street cabinet?
 

Ouch! Visio can be very fiddly too; well, unless that's just me :P

Re: Which is the virgin street cabinet?
 

also; i noticed some streetcabs have the usual 2 doors; but then an extra small door to the side; whats behind there?

Re: Which is the virgin street cabinet?
 

typosThe extra small door on some cabs are telephone terminations. If it's a very large cabinet with CATV on the floor, then it's a telephone only cabinet.

The colours on the drawing are as follows:

Red square:--------------------Typical VM cabinet
Red rectangle with 230 legend:--Optical Node

Green square:------------------Typical BT cabinet
Green rectangle with F legened:-BT FTTC cabinet

Numbered roundel:--------------Number of homes in the street (from electoral roll)

As it happens, there is a VM Core station in Wharfedale Road, where the backbone passes through (as in winn-bb-1a-so-130.virginmedia.net). So all the optical nodes from Bracknell, Wokingham, Winnersh to the east and a whole chunk more from the other directions) pile into Reading where there are 23 CMTSs. Each CMTS has 12 line card slots. Each card (of the type they're putting in now) provides 72 downstream and 60 upstream channels (the older line cards do 20 DS + 20 US channels).

From Reading, a head end switch sends the aggregated data from the CMTSs to Winnersh where it is switched onto the backbone that you see on all the traceroutes people publish.

Re: Which is the virgin street cabinet?
 

What I find interesting is the people who know their stuff have BT Infinity.

Re: Which is the virgin street cabinet?
 

I've got BT Infinity so that I'm never without internet. Not that I've needed this luxury more than twice over the past 5 years (once when it wasn't Infinity) and once recently when VM were upgrading the CMTSs in Reading and piled a load of peops onto a single CMTS without telling them beforehand (not that BT would either).

Also there's professional curiosity. I'm getting a load balancing router and then I can use both simultaneously according to policies I set in the router.

Re: Which is the virgin street cabinet?
 

I wonder why???:D

Re: Which is the virgin street cabinet?
 

Turns out there is a manhole cover for the street cab; but its on the other side of the road for whatever reason LOL it says NYNEX on it aswell rather then CATV

Re: Which is the virgin street cabinet?
 

NYNEX was a forerunner of NTL. Used to be with them myself!

Re: Which is the virgin street cabinet?
 

For you Seph, underground plant.