Journal Sylver Dragon's Journal: Return of the Internet 2
Well, true to their word, the tech to install our AT&T UVerse service was at our apartment yesterday right around noon. I was in the middle of a lunch meeting with Dell and Microsoft (actually a pretty good one too), so my wife was there for the install and kept me updated via text messages. Unfortunately for the tech, our apartment was not well setup for UVerse (amazingly enough, I never felt it necessary to run Cat 5 to my TV), so it was necessary for him to make a few cable runs.
Now, I will give the guy credit, he did a clean job of it. He had to bring a cable through one wall, and he used an existing phone plate in the wall to hide one side of it and kept the other side fairly neat. In the other wall he needed to go through he was able to simply go through an existing plate on each side. In the living room, after coming through the wall, he needed to get to the opposite side of the room; his solution (and the one I would have gone back and done anyway) was to tack the wire along the base board, follow the jam up and around the sliding glass door, and go back down and around the base board the rest of the way. In all very clean.
Despite the cleanliness of the cable runs, the ends the tech put on the cables are crap. While I may not be the best cabler in the world, I can at least put an RJ-45 end on a Cat 5 cable which doesn't have the actual pairs hanging out. In his defense, my wife said that he did not have a crimping tool (apparently the company doesn't provide one), and did the whole job with a pair of scissors. That being the case, it's probably a small miracle that it all works to begin with. I just wish I had known (or been there) at the time. I have a crimping tool, and would have been happy to let him use it or just do it myself, since I'll now want to go back and do it anyway. Oh well, if I had to choose between redoing the run or redoing the ends, I'll redo the ends.
With one evening of testing, so far the service is good, if not what I ordered. Amazingly enough, after everything I went through to get the service ordered, it appears that we ended up not quite where we had planned to be at the beginning of all this. However, given the road to this point, I'm happy to have what we have and I figure I can sort the rest out. On the TV itself, we had planned to get the U300 package and add HBO. Well, we have the U300 package, but no HBO. The internet service was supposed to be the Elite level (6mbps/2mbps) and we landed at the Pro (3mbbs/1mbps). Though testing at DSL Reports confirms that we are getting near the maximum on our line, which is very nice.
Still, at this point I can get my porn and that's what the internet is for, right?
Now, I will give the guy credit, he did a clean job of it. He had to bring a cable through one wall, and he used an existing phone plate in the wall to hide one side of it and kept the other side fairly neat. In the other wall he needed to go through he was able to simply go through an existing plate on each side. In the living room, after coming through the wall, he needed to get to the opposite side of the room; his solution (and the one I would have gone back and done anyway) was to tack the wire along the base board, follow the jam up and around the sliding glass door, and go back down and around the base board the rest of the way. In all very clean.
Despite the cleanliness of the cable runs, the ends the tech put on the cables are crap. While I may not be the best cabler in the world, I can at least put an RJ-45 end on a Cat 5 cable which doesn't have the actual pairs hanging out. In his defense, my wife said that he did not have a crimping tool (apparently the company doesn't provide one), and did the whole job with a pair of scissors. That being the case, it's probably a small miracle that it all works to begin with. I just wish I had known (or been there) at the time. I have a crimping tool, and would have been happy to let him use it or just do it myself, since I'll now want to go back and do it anyway. Oh well, if I had to choose between redoing the run or redoing the ends, I'll redo the ends.
With one evening of testing, so far the service is good, if not what I ordered. Amazingly enough, after everything I went through to get the service ordered, it appears that we ended up not quite where we had planned to be at the beginning of all this. However, given the road to this point, I'm happy to have what we have and I figure I can sort the rest out. On the TV itself, we had planned to get the U300 package and add HBO. Well, we have the U300 package, but no HBO. The internet service was supposed to be the Elite level (6mbps/2mbps) and we landed at the Pro (3mbbs/1mbps). Though testing at DSL Reports confirms that we are getting near the maximum on our line, which is very nice.
Still, at this point I can get my porn and that's what the internet is for, right?
Bloody hell (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)