ONT location, with full fibre 900 package

[Monir]

I'm soon getting the full fibre 900 package and I was wondering, when the engineer has to install the ONT inside my house, there are two ways that I am aware of that it could be installed. The first way being, the ONT being installed opposite the outside box(which I think is called the external junction box), and the fibre cable will be routed into the ONT from the other side(as in this case the ONT will be mounted very close to the drilled hole), after that the ethernet cable from the ONT will go under my carpet and back up again into the SH2. Note that the SH2 is about 3 or 4 metres away from where the hole for the fibre will be drilled.

Option 2 is that the fibre optic cable from the drilled hole comes through, and then goes under the carpet and back up again into the ONT(which is now mounted much closer to the SH2, and is about the same distance away from the drilled hole as the SH2). And after that the ethernet cable goes from the ONT to the SH2 without going under any carpets.

Also there are 3 bends that the optical/ethernet cable will have to be routed around to get to the SH2.

Which option is better? Personally I lean more towards the second option as the ONT would be closer to a power socket and it would be a bit harder to connect the ONT to power in the first option, but please let me know of your thoughts, and any Info on this matter would be appreciated 👍

Also I'm wondering which kind of ethernet cable to use as I've heard i'd be better off with a cat 6 cable instead of cat5e, but I'm not really sure. 

And would these bends affect performance especially with option 2, would it be harder to route fibre optic around bends?

[licquorice]

Putting any cables under a carpet is a bad idea, putting a fibre cable under a carpet is a non starter.

[countrypaul]

As @licquorice  says putting the cables under the carpet is definitely not a good solution. If you put the fibre under the carpet and it gets damaged (which is likely) it would be chargeable to fix. The Ethernet cable would be yours so much simpler and cheaper to replace. Cat6 or better still 6a would be the way to go for an Ethernet cable, especially if you want to go to faster than 1gb/s in the future.

You say your chosen route would be  3 or 4 metres, and have some sharp turns, could you run it along skirting and over architrave instead  you don't give any clues for alternative solutions in you post. You could always extend the power cable to the ONT either the 230V side, or the 12v side (5.5mm x 2.1mm fittings) which might be neater and could also run along side the Ethernet cable.

[Monir]

Thanks for the reply, I'll be using option 1 with some adjustments. You've mentioned I could run the ethernet cable along skirting and architrave, Unfortunately If I did run it without going under any carpet,the ethernet cable would have to be very long as it would have to travel almost around the entire room(which I dont want to have to route it around) this is probably because the drilled hole and ONT will be on the outside side of my stairs and there isn't really anything much to run it along, until after reaching the bottom of the stairs. So I think I'll have to run it under the stairs carpet first(which isn't that long of a distance), then I can bring it out and route along a skirting board, this would also reduce the amount of bends it would go through by about 2. In regards to the ethernet cable, would it be better to get the flat wire type ones instead of the typical round ones(would the flat ones be affected more or less by the bends than the typical ones).

You've also said how I can extend the power cable to the ONT. I'd prefer not to extend the 230v side. But how do I extend the 12v side? Will the power cable that I get originally with the ONT be long enough? The distance from the ONT and the nearest power socket is about 5 or 6 metres. And yes, running the 12v side power cable along with the ethernet cable would be neater.

[countrypaul · Accepted solution]

Without knowing the layout you are dealing with, any answer are based on the little information you have supplied, so this may be completely irrelevant but, you do not need to have the fibre cable from the CSP to the ONT come directly through the wall behind the CSP.  The fibre cable could go round the outside of your house before going through the wall  - details would have to be discussed with the engineer fitting the cable but it may avoid some of the restrictions you are trying to deal with.

If you search for "2.1 mm dc extension cable" you will see lots of options with lengths from 0.5m to 10m and probably longer, in black or white (other colours may be possible), they are commonly used for CCTV cameras.

Another option for the power could be to use POE, with a power injector at the BTHub end and a splitter at the ONT end. Never tried this so unsure of the details but having only one cable might be more acceptable? I know there are splitters for cameras that provide 12v over gigabit ethernet. Possibly a more expensive option, though that might be outweighed by the benefit of a single cable.

Not sure whether the flat cables would offer you much advantage over round cables, it might depend on whether all the bends would be the easy way with the cable or the difficult way.