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Moving Smart Hub to living room from utility cupboard

cmartina1 — Sun, 29 Sep 2024 09:34:20 GMT

Hello,

We’ve just had an engineer fix a congestion issue which was leading to connection dropouts.

While he was here, I asked if we can move the Smart Hub out of the cupboard to improve wireless signal and speed. He suggested connecting the Openreach box to one of the Ethernet patch bay ports and plugging in the Smart Hub into an Ethernet port in the desired room.

I’ve tried every patch bay port and none of them seem to be working, the Smart Hub flashes purple every time.

I’ve attached some photos to help understand/troubleshoot. Any help would be massively appreciated!

Picture 1 is the utility cupboard where the Openreach box and patch bay are located.

Picture 2 is the destination port in the living room.

Picture 3 is where the living room port is connected to on the Smart Hub.

Re: Moving Smart Hub to living room from utility cupboard

imjolly — Sun, 29 Sep 2024 09:48:57 GMT

it is as if your patch panel is not wired up.

have you tried connecting hub in cupboard to the openreach modem (ONT) then connecting ethernet cable from hub to each socket in patch panel and trying the ethernet outlets in each room with ethernet connected laptop to see if you actually get a connection proving they panel is wired correctly

Re: Moving Smart Hub to living room from utility cupboard

Anonymous — Sun, 29 Sep 2024 10:01:19 GMT

There looks to be quite a lot of that plug sticking out of the SH2, so firstly make sure it's fully pushed home. If it is, try another cable.

If no joy, put the SH2 back in the cupboard & connect another device in the living room. Either a laptop with an ethernet connection or to the TV, if it has ethernet. Hopefully either should have a connectivity LED on the ethernet socket that will tell you when you have a physical connection. Then work your way through the patch panels until it lights up. Then you know you have the right port, so mark it. Unfortunately the SH2 doesn't have LEDs.

Then try to connect the TV/laptop to the Internet. If all is good then the SH2 should work over the same connection.

Re: Moving Smart Hub to living room from utility cupboard

iniltous — Sun, 29 Sep 2024 10:04:21 GMT

It’s not unheard of , for developers to offer ‘Ethernet connectivity’ in various rooms an an optional extra , and the ‘hardware’ is provided irrespective of the purchaser taking the option, they only connect the network for those that have paid , a little like a car manufacturer using the same wiring loom in all models, but obviously the lower specification models don’t have much connected to wiring loom , while the top spec models have equipment connected .
If the Ethernet patch panel is wired , then presumably in four locations around the home will be Ethernet sockets ( four individual ones ) , if you are connected in the cupboard to one of these and none of the four single Ethernet ports are ‘live’ , it suggests the Ethernet option wasn’t taken by the original house buyer .

You could try taking a look behind the four gang Ethernet patch panel to see if any wiring actually is connected.

Re: Moving Smart Hub to living room from utility cupboard

cmartina1 — Sun, 29 Sep 2024 11:38:12 GMT

I’ve tried all of the patch bay ports and none of them are working. I removed the faceplate of the patch bay and they’re all wired, although the 5th port on the bottom row has different coloured wiring than the other ports.

As others have suggested, I plugged the Smart Hub back in to its original place and ran an Ethernet cable from one of the Smart Hub ports into the patch bay ports. None of them seem to be connected to the living room port - tested with a PS5 as we don’t have any laptops with an Ethernet port.

Having looked around the flat, the Ethernet port in the living room is the only one here. Other rooms only have a telephone line with no Ethernet. No idea what the patch bay is connected to!

Re: Moving Smart Hub to living room from utility cupboard

imjolly — Sun, 29 Sep 2024 11:54:58 GMT

have you checked the living room patch to see if it is wired?

Re: Moving Smart Hub to living room from utility cupboard

cmartina1 — Sun, 29 Sep 2024 13:01:17 GMT

Just checked, the living room Ethernet port is wired and is the same colour as the single port in the bottom patch bay box.

I’ve connected port 1 on Smart Hub to the single patch bay port, then connected the TV with an Ethernet cable in the front room - still not working.

Any ideas on what could be the issue now?

Re: Moving Smart Hub to living room from utility cupboard

cmartina1 — Sun, 29 Sep 2024 13:14:26 GMT

This is what's showing up in Hub Manager if this helps?

Re: Moving Smart Hub to living room from utility cupboard

iniltous — Sun, 29 Sep 2024 13:18:29 GMT

TBH , of these type of installations I’ve seen in new builds that offer this type of network , the gang of four will be Ethernet and the single socket is a telephone socket , in the same way you don’t want your router in the cupboard, you may also not want your telephone in the same cupboard, if the phone is connected to the router ( and this is obviously FTTP only ) ….the developer provided the means ( if selected in the option list ) to patch the router LAN and telephone socket to sockets elsewhere within the property , if the wiring in the living room matches the single socket , that suggests you connected your TV into the extension telephone socket not a Ethernet one , so no surprise it doesn’t work .

Are there four corresponding single Ethernet sockets located around the property, one for each of what we assume are a Gang of Four Ethernet sockets in the cupboard ? , and does the wiring match …it’s likely an electrician rather than a data network installer terminated these Ethernet sockets , perhaps they have never been tested

Re: Moving Smart Hub to living room from utility cupboard

cmartina1 — Sun, 29 Sep 2024 13:28:21 GMT

From what I could see, the 4-way patch bay are all fully wired but have white cable housing. The single port in the bottom patch bay is also fully wired, but has purple cable housing which matches the ethernet port in the living room. There is a telephone port next to the ethernet port in the living room. The only other place where telephone ports exist are in the bedrooms.

So it seems that we have the 4-way patch bay with only a single ethernet port in the living room, and a total of 3 telephone ports in the other rooms. Maybe the patch bay are only for telephones, and not internet. Come to think of it, I don't think they've ever worked and have a very vague memory of trying to do this before when we first moved in. Without buying a testing device myself, is there any other way of getting the wiring tested, perhaps asking the landlord?

Re: Moving Smart Hub to living room from utility cupboard

iniltous — Sun, 29 Sep 2024 13:50:19 GMT

It’s possible the 4 way gang is for extending the telephone connection into 4 different locations and the single way is Ethernet, but in my experience that’s not the normal way developers provide network around the property, generally 1 telephone socket and DECT handsets are the norm , but if the single way is an Ethernet socket and it doesn’t work , ( obviously try a few different Ethernet cables incase the one you are using is faulty ) then it’s wired incorrectly, or the cable is faulty , wether the landlord will be interested is anyone’s guess .

AFAIK, you can buy Ethernet testers quite cheaply that test Ethernet cabling .

Re: Moving Smart Hub to living room from utility cupboard

cmartina1 — Sun, 29 Sep 2024 14:11:25 GMT

I've just tried a load of different cables, in the 5 different patch bay ports and still nothing. Never mind then, just another thing to add to the list of things that don't work in this flat! haha

Thanks for all your help.

Re: Moving Smart Hub to living room from utility cupboard

Anonymous — Sun, 29 Sep 2024 14:46:27 GMT

Depending on your package speed, another option could be to use powerline adapters. Better suited to lower speeds as they never reach the advertised speeds.

Re: Moving Smart Hub to living room from utility cupboard

cmartina1 — Sun, 29 Sep 2024 15:22:27 GMT

We have the 900 package, can’t remember the exact name but power line adapters probably aren’t going to come close to those speeds.

Re: Moving Smart Hub to living room from utility cupboard

WSH — Sun, 29 Sep 2024 16:10:42 GMT

I was going to say try different patch cables but iniltous beat me to it. A cheap wire map tester is about a tenner on Amazon. You don't need the more expensive ones.

A picture of the connections would be nice. They should be as follows, at both ends:

Connection Wire colour

1 Orange/white

2 Orange

3 Green/white

4 Blue

5 Blue/white

6 Green

7 Brown/white

8 Brown