New build ONT in utility room - can I set-up router in my living room?

[iniltous]

As already indicated, on new builds with OR FTTP ,Openreach pay the developer, but it’s the developer who install the ‘internal’ fibre optic cable from wherever the developer chooses, to the outside wall ,( where the external cable appears ) , so the position of the ONT , is nothing to do with OR or the ISP, the only stipulation OR have ,  is it is next to a double power socket.
Some developers also install ‘network’ cables from the location of the ONT to other rooms , so the router doesn’t have to be co-located where the ONT is ,  using RJ45 cables the router can be sited away from the ONT,  but some developers may only provide these network cables if the client pays for this as an extra ( done while the building is being constructed , it’s not going to be added after the keys are handed over ) , the sockets may exist but no cabling between them, and some make no provision at all,  …some only provide RJ11 phone sockets even though they are unlikely to ever be used.

[WSH]

Sorry, I didn’t mean sparkies don’t know how to wire electrics.  Of course, that area is much more complex.  You’ve only got to look at the size of the 18th edition bible to see that.  Some of them are just not that good at network cabling in my experience.

The expression Ethernet cable is not used much any more because it never actually existed.  Ethernet can be passed over twisted pair, co-axial and fibre optic, so what is Ethernet cable?

[Gary_C]

Ethernet cable certainly did exist ! 

Look up 10Base5 and 10Base2 ethernet standards.

The original ethernet cable was a coax cable to which taps were added at specific points along the cable (where the standing wave was strongest), these taps pushed through the insulation and made contact with the core of the coax cable.
This 'vampire tap' MAU (Medium attachment unit) usually had the Attachment Unit Interface which connected via a 15 pin cable to the network card on the computer. All transmission was done on the single core using CSMA/CD which stands for Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Detection using an MAC address to determine the source and destination of the ethernet packets. The AUI/Network card would detect activity on the ethernet cable and when free, would allow transmission. Because there is a chance two units could try to talk at the same time, the collision detection function would detect it and halt transmission, the transmission would then be reattempted after a delay which is based on the units ethernet address which has to be unique so preventing the two units from colliding again.

The current systems of course don't use thick or thin ethernet cable, and use twisted pairs to communicate over individual wires but interestingly, the ethernet spec still includes the collision detection function even though CSMA isn't used anymore.

I am currently sitting about 50 yards from several computer systems that still uses thick ethernet to communicate with our supermini computers using 10base5 Thick ethernet cable. I even have several MicroVax computers at home that network together using thin ethernet. As twisted pair became the norm, AUI's that connect to twisted pair cables were produced to allow older machines to connect to a modern switch. Fundamentally, ethernet protocol is the same, its the medium it uses that has changed.

Real ethernet cable had the advantage of just needing to run a single coax cable between every computer on the network (not the bundles of twisted pairs we have today) but of course, the more machines you had, the more collisions were likely and the slower the connections got. It then became popular to use bridges that would build routing tables and identify on which side of the bridge a MAC address existed and not burden an ethernet cable with a transmission that would not be used by any machine on that cable. This functionality is also used on modern switches.

But yes, IDC connectors isn't or wasn't normally part of an electricians training 🙂