speed test...

[Martin Brown]

On 15/09/2023 16:39, Don Y wrote:

On 9/15/2023 3:21 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
We must surely have a lot more rain than in the US and yet our phone
lines generally do hold up for ADSL unless it gets very very wet (as
in flooding). Being on the wrong side of the beck doesn\'t help.

Are your lines fed from above (e.g., flying off telephone poles)?
Or, do they travel below grade, surfacing just before entering the
subscriber\'s premises?

Modern build is usually the latter but where I am the cables travel
underground from the exchange to the village and then up onto poles
inside the village. We are a bit unusual in that our lines are archaic
\"Exchange Only\" lines with no cabinet between us and the exchange.

Electricity also comes in overhead on the same set of poles which makes
it difficult for the telco - they have to bring in a cherry picker to
work on their signal level cables at height because of the live wires!

Water frequently infiltrates our buried cables (including the 100+ pair
that runs the length of the street, below grade).  So, a (rare!) rain
can leave you with a noisey line that resolves itself BEFORE the lineman
can get around to actually checking the line, in person.

That is pretty much the situation here except that it is a lot wetter
and the groundwater is mildly alkaline and so corrosive. In addition
tree branches can strip the insulation off the overhead cable runs which
makes it very noisy and can break conductors.

Connections to the premises wiring are done above ground in a
\"telephone network interface\" box:  the utility\'s feed is
terminated in a pair (typically) of RJ11 jacks.  The premises
wiring presents as one or more RJ11 plugs.  So, a subscriber can
\"unplug\" their wiring from the network to allow the utility
to check THEIR wiring without the subscriber\'s impacting the test.

That is how modern installs are done with a so called master socket so
you can isolate the house wiring and plug into the test socket. You are
supposed to do this before reporting a fault. My master POTS socket is
\"conveniently\" located at the far end of the loft where the old copper
cable enters the house. The new fibre install comes from a different
pole and has a splice box at ground level with a fibre up to my office.

Prehistoric ones were little more than a 4 way terminal block with a
Bakelite soap bar shaped cover over the top.

They connector housings do fail from time to time but they seem to
last 5 or 10 years before they fail badly again. I\'m not sure how they
protect wet wires from corrosion though. There are places near me with
hybrid copper meets aluminium phone wiring which partially rectifies
ADSL. So bad that some don\'t even get 256kbps. Peer to peer microwave
has been claiming these dead zones for some time - farmers need it.

Our problem is with the hundreds of feet of 100(?) pair cable
that feeds the neighborhood from the main junction box at the entrance to
the subdivision.  Lots of places for a partial short or line imbalance
to present.

It is almost invariably the wet corroded joints that cause trouble or
rodents chewing off the insulation. Ours are incredibly fragile now and
any disturbance from working on a fault tends to break something else.

It got so bad at one point that they had to ship in additional POTS
engineers from outside the county to get on top of pending repairs.

I haven\'t been able to find a picture of our underground configuration
(it is quite rare now) but this one of a normal passive BT cabinet isn\'t
too dissimilar if you image no supporting structure and the whole lot of
multicoloured knitting stuffed randomly into a double width manhole.

https://www.reddit.com/r/cablegore/comments/333ek9/inside_a_bt_telephone_cabinet/

There may be a slight difference in texture which is what seems to
guide their choice of exactly what to nibble. We solved our problems
on radio telescope cable runs by flooding the ducts with dry nitrogen.

Various \"burrowing creatures\" are more of a problem with the
AC mains (which are also below grade).  Part of the service
procedure for each of the ground-mounted transformers is to
fill the exposed earth *inside* the enclosure with mortar
and wet it to form a bit of a crust to discourage the critters
from gaining entry to the high voltage wiring (fried critters!).

Packrats tend to enjoy feasting on the wire in automobiles,
accessing that from the underside.

Apparently pine martens are keen on BMW brake hose and wiring insulation
(and they are now moving into my area of the UK).

https://www.englishforum.ch/daily-life/261913-pine-martens-brake-pipes.html

>

--
Martin Brown

 

[Martin Brown]

On 15/09/2023 16:44, Joe Gwinn wrote:

On Fri, 15 Sep 2023 11:21:06 +0100, Martin Brown
\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

On 14/09/2023 20:41, Joe Gwinn wrote:

Around here, the rodents seem to have color preferences, which is odd
because mostly this happened in permanently dark places. Must be
taste or smell.

There may be a slight difference in texture which is what seems to guide
their choice of exactly what to nibble.

I\'ve heard lots of theories on why rodents like to chew on wire, but
none has ever been shown to be more likely than any other, let alone
proven.

We had a working theory that somehow they knew the price per metre and
generally preferred the most expensive one that they could find!
(or the one that was most difficult to replace)

We solved our problems on radio
telescope cable runs by flooding the ducts with dry nitrogen.

That would certainly do it.

It also meant there was no variation in humidity to affect timing or
signal phase (which was the main reason for doing it).

--
Martin Brown

 

[John Larkin]

On Sat, 16 Sep 2023 11:51:56 +0100, Martin Brown
<\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

On 15/09/2023 16:39, Don Y wrote:
On 9/15/2023 3:21 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
We must surely have a lot more rain than in the US and yet our phone
lines generally do hold up for ADSL unless it gets very very wet (as
in flooding). Being on the wrong side of the beck doesn\'t help.

Are your lines fed from above (e.g., flying off telephone poles)?
Or, do they travel below grade, surfacing just before entering the
subscriber\'s premises?

Modern build is usually the latter but where I am the cables travel
underground from the exchange to the village and then up onto poles
inside the village. We are a bit unusual in that our lines are archaic
\"Exchange Only\" lines with no cabinet between us and the exchange.

Electricity also comes in overhead on the same set of poles which makes
it difficult for the telco - they have to bring in a cherry picker to
work on their signal level cables at height because of the live wires!

Water frequently infiltrates our buried cables (including the 100+ pair
that runs the length of the street, below grade).  So, a (rare!) rain
can leave you with a noisey line that resolves itself BEFORE the lineman
can get around to actually checking the line, in person.

That is pretty much the situation here except that it is a lot wetter
and the groundwater is mildly alkaline and so corrosive. In addition
tree branches can strip the insulation off the overhead cable runs which
makes it very noisy and can break conductors.

Connections to the premises wiring are done above ground in a
\"telephone network interface\" box:  the utility\'s feed is
terminated in a pair (typically) of RJ11 jacks.  The premises
wiring presents as one or more RJ11 plugs.  So, a subscriber can
\"unplug\" their wiring from the network to allow the utility
to check THEIR wiring without the subscriber\'s impacting the test.

That is how modern installs are done with a so called master socket so
you can isolate the house wiring and plug into the test socket. You are
supposed to do this before reporting a fault. My master POTS socket is
\"conveniently\" located at the far end of the loft where the old copper
cable enters the house. The new fibre install comes from a different
pole and has a splice box at ground level with a fibre up to my office.

Prehistoric ones were little more than a 4 way terminal block with a
Bakelite soap bar shaped cover over the top.

They connector housings do fail from time to time but they seem to
last 5 or 10 years before they fail badly again. I\'m not sure how they
protect wet wires from corrosion though. There are places near me with
hybrid copper meets aluminium phone wiring which partially rectifies
ADSL. So bad that some don\'t even get 256kbps. Peer to peer microwave
has been claiming these dead zones for some time - farmers need it.

Our problem is with the hundreds of feet of 100(?) pair cable
that feeds the neighborhood from the main junction box at the entrance to
the subdivision.  Lots of places for a partial short or line imbalance
to present.

It is almost invariably the wet corroded joints that cause trouble or
rodents chewing off the insulation. Ours are incredibly fragile now and
any disturbance from working on a fault tends to break something else.

It got so bad at one point that they had to ship in additional POTS
engineers from outside the county to get on top of pending repairs.

I haven\'t been able to find a picture of our underground configuration
(it is quite rare now) but this one of a normal passive BT cabinet isn\'t
too dissimilar if you image no supporting structure and the whole lot of
multicoloured knitting stuffed randomly into a double width manhole.

https://www.reddit.com/r/cablegore/comments/333ek9/inside_a_bt_telephone_cabinet/

There may be a slight difference in texture which is what seems to
guide their choice of exactly what to nibble. We solved our problems
on radio telescope cable runs by flooding the ducts with dry nitrogen.

Various \"burrowing creatures\" are more of a problem with the
AC mains (which are also below grade).  Part of the service
procedure for each of the ground-mounted transformers is to
fill the exposed earth *inside* the enclosure with mortar
and wet it to form a bit of a crust to discourage the critters
from gaining entry to the high voltage wiring (fried critters!).

Packrats tend to enjoy feasting on the wire in automobiles,
accessing that from the underside.

Apparently pine martens are keen on BMW brake hose and wiring insulation
(and they are now moving into my area of the UK).

https://www.englishforum.ch/daily-life/261913-pine-martens-brake-pipes.html

I collect pictures of disgusting wiring.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/rdbz4ayuw0w60ch1f4dot/h?rlkey=k14c22nkj1leclay7itlpk28z&dl=0

 

[Lasse Langwadt Christensen]

lørdag den 16. september 2023 kl. 13.19.58 UTC+2 skrev John Larkin:

On Sat, 16 Sep 2023 11:51:56 +0100, Martin Brown
\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

On 15/09/2023 16:39, Don Y wrote:
On 9/15/2023 3:21 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
We must surely have a lot more rain than in the US and yet our phone
lines generally do hold up for ADSL unless it gets very very wet (as
in flooding). Being on the wrong side of the beck doesn\'t help.

Are your lines fed from above (e.g., flying off telephone poles)?
Or, do they travel below grade, surfacing just before entering the
subscriber\'s premises?

Modern build is usually the latter but where I am the cables travel
underground from the exchange to the village and then up onto poles
inside the village. We are a bit unusual in that our lines are archaic
\"Exchange Only\" lines with no cabinet between us and the exchange.

Electricity also comes in overhead on the same set of poles which makes
it difficult for the telco - they have to bring in a cherry picker to
work on their signal level cables at height because of the live wires!

Water frequently infiltrates our buried cables (including the 100+ pair
that runs the length of the street, below grade). So, a (rare!) rain
can leave you with a noisey line that resolves itself BEFORE the lineman
can get around to actually checking the line, in person.

That is pretty much the situation here except that it is a lot wetter
and the groundwater is mildly alkaline and so corrosive. In addition
tree branches can strip the insulation off the overhead cable runs which
makes it very noisy and can break conductors.

Connections to the premises wiring are done above ground in a
\"telephone network interface\" box: the utility\'s feed is
terminated in a pair (typically) of RJ11 jacks. The premises
wiring presents as one or more RJ11 plugs. So, a subscriber can
\"unplug\" their wiring from the network to allow the utility
to check THEIR wiring without the subscriber\'s impacting the test.

That is how modern installs are done with a so called master socket so
you can isolate the house wiring and plug into the test socket. You are
supposed to do this before reporting a fault. My master POTS socket is
\"conveniently\" located at the far end of the loft where the old copper
cable enters the house. The new fibre install comes from a different
pole and has a splice box at ground level with a fibre up to my office.

Prehistoric ones were little more than a 4 way terminal block with a
Bakelite soap bar shaped cover over the top.

They connector housings do fail from time to time but they seem to
last 5 or 10 years before they fail badly again. I\'m not sure how they
protect wet wires from corrosion though. There are places near me with
hybrid copper meets aluminium phone wiring which partially rectifies
ADSL. So bad that some don\'t even get 256kbps. Peer to peer microwave
has been claiming these dead zones for some time - farmers need it.

Our problem is with the hundreds of feet of 100(?) pair cable
that feeds the neighborhood from the main junction box at the entrance to
the subdivision. Lots of places for a partial short or line imbalance
to present.

It is almost invariably the wet corroded joints that cause trouble or
rodents chewing off the insulation. Ours are incredibly fragile now and
any disturbance from working on a fault tends to break something else.

It got so bad at one point that they had to ship in additional POTS
engineers from outside the county to get on top of pending repairs.

I haven\'t been able to find a picture of our underground configuration
(it is quite rare now) but this one of a normal passive BT cabinet isn\'t
too dissimilar if you image no supporting structure and the whole lot of
multicoloured knitting stuffed randomly into a double width manhole.

https://www.reddit.com/r/cablegore/comments/333ek9/inside_a_bt_telephone_cabinet/

There may be a slight difference in texture which is what seems to
guide their choice of exactly what to nibble. We solved our problems
on radio telescope cable runs by flooding the ducts with dry nitrogen..

Various \"burrowing creatures\" are more of a problem with the
AC mains (which are also below grade). Part of the service
procedure for each of the ground-mounted transformers is to
fill the exposed earth *inside* the enclosure with mortar
and wet it to form a bit of a crust to discourage the critters
from gaining entry to the high voltage wiring (fried critters!).

Packrats tend to enjoy feasting on the wire in automobiles,
accessing that from the underside.

Apparently pine martens are keen on BMW brake hose and wiring insulation
(and they are now moving into my area of the UK).

https://www.englishforum.ch/daily-life/261913-pine-martens-brake-pipes.html


I collect pictures of disgusting wiring.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/rdbz4ayuw0w60ch1f4dot/h?rlkey=k14c22nkj1leclay7itlpk28z&dl=0

looks like artwork made by craftsmen compared to the stuff you see from India

 

[John Larkin]

On Sat, 16 Sep 2023 04:29:00 -0700 (PDT), Lasse Langwadt Christensen
<langwadt@fonz.dk> wrote:

lørdag den 16. september 2023 kl. 13.19.58 UTC+2 skrev John Larkin:
On Sat, 16 Sep 2023 11:51:56 +0100, Martin Brown
\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

On 15/09/2023 16:39, Don Y wrote:
On 9/15/2023 3:21 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
We must surely have a lot more rain than in the US and yet our phone
lines generally do hold up for ADSL unless it gets very very wet (as
in flooding). Being on the wrong side of the beck doesn\'t help.

Are your lines fed from above (e.g., flying off telephone poles)?
Or, do they travel below grade, surfacing just before entering the
subscriber\'s premises?

Modern build is usually the latter but where I am the cables travel
underground from the exchange to the village and then up onto poles
inside the village. We are a bit unusual in that our lines are archaic
\"Exchange Only\" lines with no cabinet between us and the exchange.

Electricity also comes in overhead on the same set of poles which makes
it difficult for the telco - they have to bring in a cherry picker to
work on their signal level cables at height because of the live wires!

Water frequently infiltrates our buried cables (including the 100+ pair
that runs the length of the street, below grade). So, a (rare!) rain
can leave you with a noisey line that resolves itself BEFORE the lineman
can get around to actually checking the line, in person.

That is pretty much the situation here except that it is a lot wetter
and the groundwater is mildly alkaline and so corrosive. In addition
tree branches can strip the insulation off the overhead cable runs which
makes it very noisy and can break conductors.

Connections to the premises wiring are done above ground in a
\"telephone network interface\" box: the utility\'s feed is
terminated in a pair (typically) of RJ11 jacks. The premises
wiring presents as one or more RJ11 plugs. So, a subscriber can
\"unplug\" their wiring from the network to allow the utility
to check THEIR wiring without the subscriber\'s impacting the test.

That is how modern installs are done with a so called master socket so
you can isolate the house wiring and plug into the test socket. You are
supposed to do this before reporting a fault. My master POTS socket is
\"conveniently\" located at the far end of the loft where the old copper
cable enters the house. The new fibre install comes from a different
pole and has a splice box at ground level with a fibre up to my office.

Prehistoric ones were little more than a 4 way terminal block with a
Bakelite soap bar shaped cover over the top.

They connector housings do fail from time to time but they seem to
last 5 or 10 years before they fail badly again. I\'m not sure how they
protect wet wires from corrosion though. There are places near me with
hybrid copper meets aluminium phone wiring which partially rectifies
ADSL. So bad that some don\'t even get 256kbps. Peer to peer microwave
has been claiming these dead zones for some time - farmers need it.

Our problem is with the hundreds of feet of 100(?) pair cable
that feeds the neighborhood from the main junction box at the entrance to
the subdivision. Lots of places for a partial short or line imbalance
to present.

It is almost invariably the wet corroded joints that cause trouble or
rodents chewing off the insulation. Ours are incredibly fragile now and
any disturbance from working on a fault tends to break something else.

It got so bad at one point that they had to ship in additional POTS
engineers from outside the county to get on top of pending repairs.

I haven\'t been able to find a picture of our underground configuration
(it is quite rare now) but this one of a normal passive BT cabinet isn\'t
too dissimilar if you image no supporting structure and the whole lot of
multicoloured knitting stuffed randomly into a double width manhole.

https://www.reddit.com/r/cablegore/comments/333ek9/inside_a_bt_telephone_cabinet/

There may be a slight difference in texture which is what seems to
guide their choice of exactly what to nibble. We solved our problems
on radio telescope cable runs by flooding the ducts with dry nitrogen.

Various \"burrowing creatures\" are more of a problem with the
AC mains (which are also below grade). Part of the service
procedure for each of the ground-mounted transformers is to
fill the exposed earth *inside* the enclosure with mortar
and wet it to form a bit of a crust to discourage the critters
from gaining entry to the high voltage wiring (fried critters!).

Packrats tend to enjoy feasting on the wire in automobiles,
accessing that from the underside.

Apparently pine martens are keen on BMW brake hose and wiring insulation
(and they are now moving into my area of the UK).

https://www.englishforum.ch/daily-life/261913-pine-martens-brake-pipes.html


I collect pictures of disgusting wiring.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/rdbz4ayuw0w60ch1f4dot/h?rlkey=k14c22nkj1leclay7itlpk28z&dl=0

looks like artwork made by craftsmen compared to the stuff you see from India

San Francico has stunning views that are usually ruined by hideous
wiring. It\'s being undergrounded, which should be mostly done in a
couple of hundred years.

 

[Martin Brown]

On 15/09/2023 15:55, Ricky wrote:

On Friday, September 15, 2023 at 6:13:24 AM UTC-4, Martin Brown
wrote:
On 14/09/2023 11:02, Ricky wrote:
On Thursday, September 14, 2023 at 4:35:14 AM UTC-4, Martin
Brown wrote:
On 12/09/2023 17:57, John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 12 Sep 2023 15:33:31 +0100, Martin Brown
\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

On 12/09/2023 15:18, John Larkin wrote:

This seems to be a trend, much faster internet than we
signed up for, same price. The backbone fibers must be
moving petabits.

I\'m surprised that they upgrade you 10x for free. In the
UK they invariably try to extract extra money out of you
for such speed upgrades which means a lot of people are
still on rather slow legacy speeds.

Likewise with phone contracts they try to extract constant
or ever increasing amounts of money from you by increasing
mobile data.

It seems like suppliers here are upgrading for free to keep
up with competition. We could use cable, a microwave dish, or
a couple sources for Gbit fiber.
That seems very socialist. It surely makes more sense for them
to extract at least some additional income for increasing your
speed. UK telcos are considerably more mercenary about
upgrading their customers.

That\'s one of the strangest comments I\'ve heard anyone make...
even here.

Competition is the core of capitalism. If they are upgrading the
neighborhood, it may well be they simply don\'t have the slower
speed anymore, or that they\'ve changed their rate structure so
that the higher speed is the same price as the old lower speed.

Competition might be, but if the provider can get more money for
shareholders by selling the upgrade to their customers they will do
so. It is very anti-capitalist to give something away for nowt!

Exactly, \"IF\" is the magic word. But you don\'t seem to understand
what I\'m saying, so I won\'t bother you with it further.

It is quite simple they offer the upgrade to their customers *for an
incremental price* rather than just giving it away. That is how it
always works in the UK which is why plenty are stuck on lower speeds
than the local lines can support.

Leaving the customers where they are is a valid option - most punters
have no idea what speed they are actually getting. So long as it will
stream a couple of HD channels they mostly don\'t care. Gamers are a bit
more fussy since they like bandwidth and low latency.

In the UK if you aren\'t talking to customer retention at least
every couple of years you will be ripped off. That applies to
utilities, mobile phone, internet and insurance. There is a big
penalty in the UK for being loyal to your supplier since they like
to price gouge. (most people don\'t seem to notice either)

Perhaps you could read what I wrote and make more effort to
understand it. If you continue to focus on your own thoughts, you
can\'t learn anything new.

You seem incapable of reading or understanding what I wrote.

The sales pitch is simple enough. Give us an extra $1/$2 a month and you
can have 2x/5x the speed you have at the moment. Otherwise they get
nothing more until they either ask for it or threaten to leave for a
competitor. Normal SOP for skinners and trappers in sales speak.

Maybe for new installations, but this is an area where the rule
applies, \"if it ain\'t broke, don\'t fix it!\". The POTS home
connection works very well once in place. Even if they install
fiber, they don\'t remove all the POTS wiring.

How odd! The reason for installing fibre in my village is
precisely because the corroding copper is on its last legs and I
had about the only good for 5Mbps copper line pair on the exchange.
They couldn\'t take it off me quickly enough once my fibre line was
operational.

Sorry, by \"copper\", do you mean POTS? If you have significant
corrosion in copper lines, there\'s something very wrong with that.

Yes copper = POTS (with ADSL2 or VDSL). The lines are over 60 years old
in my area and spend a lot of time with alkaline ground water getting
into joints. Most but not quite all failures are in the junction boxes.

Overhead lines sometimes die from tree damage or stress cracking.

The POTS to my house was installed around 80 years ago and has never
failed from corrosion. I\'ve never heard of a POTS line failing from
corrosion. Maybe this is something unique to the UK. Do they mix in
other elements into your copper wires?

Not commonly. But groundwater has enough dissolved salts to corrode
copper quite comprehensively.
The main problem is that the cables are rather brittle with age.

I\'m on transitional drop cabling which is a figure of 8 profile
with the fibre on one half and a copper line pair on the other. In
the air it has a distinctive whirlygig appearance so you can tell
at a glance who has fibre. The copper line pair is not even
terminated just cropped off.

There is a waiting list for copper circuits! They had already
DACS\'d all the copper lines not used for internet connections a
long time ago. They tend to break one copper circuit for every
three they try to mend.

Wow! That\'s some bad copper. Someone should investigate this. It

Some of it is very old and combines the worst of underground and
overhead so that damage by trees and rodents/water ingress are common.

They are in the process of junking the UK copper circuits entirely -
that is the whole point of the fibre roll out. Officially due to be
completed in 2025 (it has no chance at all of happening like that).

may be something like the massive installation in the UK of foil
wrapped power lines where the foil was used as one of the conductors.
It was aluminum and corroded over a few years, requiring massive
replacements. Or am I getting a detail wrong on that? Sounds very
similar to me.

There were some telco installations of twisted pair aluminium into
systems that were mostly copper and that is disastrous for ADSL. The
oxide layer of the aluminium partially rectifies the RF and the
dissimilar metals cause fast corrosion if they get slightly damp.

BT doesn\'t even admit to these really bad circuits existing. A
neighbouring village has this problem - peer to peer microwave links for
internet have pretty much taken over that area completely now.

AFAIK new power distribution is now almost entirely aluminium but it is
on a plaited 3 or 4 core insulated cable with a steel hawser down the
core at least for the low tension household service.

Some of our mains is on bare conductors, the old rubberised copper long
since having perished and dropped off. Domestic mains voltages are
vertical on the pole so it would arc and spark in the wet as pieces of
wet insulation flapped about in the breeze sometimes touching another
phase or neutral.

This is causing a lot of trouble in the UK with BT rolling out
\"Digital Voice\" over an unwilling population of mostly elderly
people who depend on features of copper based POTS for living
independently. Notably that POTS phones still work if the
mains fails and various alarms and care on call services will
only work correctly with a true copper physical line.

Yeah, a friend moved into a retirement community some years ago
and they use fiber to the home, but he\'s actually has voice with
his cable service. No 911 location info and when power goes out,
so does the phone. I gave him a UPS for his cable box, and a
non-powered phone plugged directly into the unit. So, as long as
the rest of the cable system works, he can get a call out. But,
they\'ve also given him an emergency alert unit that is supposed
to work in a power failure. I just don\'t know who it summons.
It has become a bit of a mess. They can\'t source enough batteries
for the old people they are trying to upgrade and have left
vulnerable people with no phone for way too long. If they had
standardised the optical receiver and router to take power from USB
C it would be easier but as it is they each require their own
random choice of voltage and connector (and two mains sockets
nearby to power them)!

So, on top of everything else, the UK has a battery shortage???

Pretty much true. Now that we are outside the EU it will be impossible
to manufacture EVs for sale into the EU because the high value batteries
will come from China (outside the EU). There is no way that UK made cars
can avoid a massive import tariff into the EU (not enough EU content).
We don\'t have any significant battery manufacturing capability at all

> Jeez. I can see why there is so much resistance to EVs in the UK.

The right sort of dedicated battery for the fibre modem and router.

If only they had made them USB C so that any old powerbank would do it.


--
Martin Brown

 

[Don Y]

On 9/16/2023 3:51 AM, Martin Brown wrote:

On 15/09/2023 16:39, Don Y wrote:
On 9/15/2023 3:21 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
We must surely have a lot more rain than in the US and yet our phone lines
generally do hold up for ADSL unless it gets very very wet (as in flooding).
Being on the wrong side of the beck doesn\'t help.

Are your lines fed from above (e.g., flying off telephone poles)?
Or, do they travel below grade, surfacing just before entering the
subscriber\'s premises?

Modern build is usually the latter but where I am the cables travel underground
from the exchange to the village and then up onto poles inside the village. We

... *to* the village? Are there so few subscribers there that the CO
isn\'t located *in* the village? (\"village\" has different connotations,
depending on where it is used, here; some villages are the size of towns;
some towns the size of villages)

We\'re about 250 sq miles (city limits; metro area considerably larger
but served by several municipalities) so there are many COs within our
borders:
<https://www.thecentraloffice.com/AZ/TUSmetro.htm>

Most COs (in the places I\'ve lived) have lines coming into a
room in the basement, then up to a \"wiring room\" where all of
the pairs are laid out (on punchdown blocks?).

When/if they ever surface, I\'ve never directly observed. And, nowadays,
you don\'t know if they haven\'t run fiber out to a remote concentrator...

are a bit unusual in that our lines are archaic \"Exchange Only\" lines with no
cabinet between us and the exchange.

So, any line repair/reconfiguration is done AT the CO?

There\'s a large (20 sq ft) wiring cabinet at the entrance to our
subdivisions that terminates all of the pairs from the CO *to*
the pairs feeding the subscribers. There is ALWAYS a telco
service vehicle parked nearby \"fixing\" something (I\'m guessing
200 homes in the subdivision?)

Electricity also comes in overhead on the same set of poles which makes it
difficult for the telco - they have to bring in a cherry picker to work on
their signal level cables at height because of the live wires!

Hmmm... the places I\'ve lived with overhead wiring have usually
had the high tension wires at the top of the poles (imagine a T)
with cable and phone down much lower -- like halfway. They transit
to the home over separate paths so even if you had to access the
cable at the house, there would be sufficient clearance from the
mains feed.

Water frequently infiltrates our buried cables (including the 100+ pair
that runs the length of the street, below grade).  So, a (rare!) rain
can leave you with a noisey line that resolves itself BEFORE the lineman
can get around to actually checking the line, in person.

That is pretty much the situation here except that it is a lot wetter and the
groundwater is mildly alkaline and so corrosive.

Ours is classified as \"slightly to very strong alkaline\" with a pervasive
layer of calcium carbonate some 6-12 inches below the surface. The soil
temperature is relatively high (70-80F) tracking our average air
temperature (~75F)

As the \"main cable\" surfaces every 2 houses, there are lots of
opportunities for water to wick down into the cable as the pedestals
aren\'t well sealed/maintained.

The advent of cell phone technology took a lot of pressure off of
POTS; folks could just discard their pairs, making them available
for the next house up or down the street.

In addition tree branches can
strip the insulation off the overhead cable runs which makes it very noisy and
can break conductors.

Connections to the premises wiring are done above ground in a
\"telephone network interface\" box:  the utility\'s feed is
terminated in a pair (typically) of RJ11 jacks.  The premises
wiring presents as one or more RJ11 plugs.  So, a subscriber can
\"unplug\" their wiring from the network to allow the utility
to check THEIR wiring without the subscriber\'s impacting the test.

That is how modern installs are done with a so called master socket so you can
isolate the house wiring and plug into the test socket.

I think this has been retrofitted to all subscribers.
I know the home I grew up in had a terminal block
(spark arrestor?) in the basement that allowed the
house wiring to be disconnected from the service.
But, now see that it has a TNI (different names
for the same functionality) \"box\" located outside.

[The CATV company uses a similar approach -- a feed
to the home\'s \"access port\" from a nearby pedestal that
taps into the main cable]

You are supposed to do
this before reporting a fault.

Yes, and because a RJ11 *jack* is presented, you can
carry a station set out to the TNI and connect to the
network directly to convince yourself that the
problem lies with the provider (or in the home).

But, most folks aren\'t very savvy in that regard.

Different styles exist but this is typical:
<http://www.whoopis.com/howtos/telco-basics/demarc-big.jpg>
the left side (in this exemplar) is normally inaccessible
to the subscriber (oddball screw used for closure).
Note presence of two lines.

My master POTS socket is \"conveniently\" located
at the far end of the loft where the old copper cable enters the house. The new
fibre install comes from a different pole and has a splice box at ground level
with a fibre up to my office.

Prehistoric ones were little more than a 4 way terminal block with a Bakelite
soap bar shaped cover over the top.

This is what it was like in my original home (basement):
<https://www.lighting-gallery.net/gallery/albums/userpics/11262/normal_DSC01087.JPG>

They connector housings do fail from time to time but they seem to last 5 or
10 years before they fail badly again. I\'m not sure how they protect wet
wires from corrosion though. There are places near me with hybrid copper
meets aluminium phone wiring which partially rectifies ADSL. So bad that
some don\'t even get 256kbps. Peer to peer microwave has been claiming these
dead zones for some time - farmers need it.

Our problem is with the hundreds of feet of 100(?) pair cable
that feeds the neighborhood from the main junction box at the entrance to
the subdivision.  Lots of places for a partial short or line imbalance
to present.

It is almost invariably the wet corroded joints that cause trouble or rodents
chewing off the insulation. Ours are incredibly fragile now and any disturbance
from working on a fault tends to break something else.

Exactly. On one occasion, the lineman was \"fixing\" the neighbor\'s
service -- and broke ours in the process. I walked outside to
tell him of his error... and he suggested I call for service.

I did. Telling the TPC lineman that came that the subcontracted
lineman had done the damage and walked away! (hopefully, some
note is made of the fact as he now \"cost\" TPC for a call)

It got so bad at one point that they had to ship in additional POTS engineers
from outside the county to get on top of pending repairs.

I haven\'t been able to find a picture of our underground configuration (it is
quite rare now) but this one of a normal passive BT cabinet isn\'t too
dissimilar if you image no supporting structure and the whole lot of
multicoloured knitting stuffed randomly into a double width manhole.

https://www.reddit.com/r/cablegore/comments/333ek9/inside_a_bt_telephone_cabinet/

Here, the crimp connections would happen on punchdown (66/110) blocks.
The pedestal wiring is less disciplined; I have no idea how they
keep track of which pairs they split off of the main cable at
each pedestal! (and wonder if there is ANY documentation of this??)

I installed a set of blocks to terminate the (~30) telco drops run
throughout the house. In hindsight, I should have just installed
another switch!

There may be a slight difference in texture which is what seems to guide
their choice of exactly what to nibble. We solved our problems on radio
telescope cable runs by flooding the ducts with dry nitrogen.

Various \"burrowing creatures\" are more of a problem with the
AC mains (which are also below grade).  Part of the service
procedure for each of the ground-mounted transformers is to
fill the exposed earth *inside* the enclosure with mortar
and wet it to form a bit of a crust to discourage the critters
from gaining entry to the high voltage wiring (fried critters!).

Packrats tend to enjoy feasting on the wire in automobiles,
accessing that from the underside.

Apparently pine martens are keen on BMW brake hose and wiring insulation (and
they are now moving into my area of the UK).

https://www.englishforum.ch/daily-life/261913-pine-martens-brake-pipes.html

I\'m sure they see YOU as the encroaching entity! :>

Folks regularly complain about the coyotes, mountain lions,
javelina, bears, rattlesnakes, etc. encroaching into the developed
areas of town... forgetting that they weren\'t always \"developed\"!

 

[Don Y]

On 9/16/2023 8:17 AM, Martin Brown wrote:

Not commonly. But groundwater has enough dissolved salts to corrode copper
quite comprehensively.

Yes. We have to periodically do \"deep waterings\" of our plantings
to flush the salts down below the main root level in the soil
(all of our municipal water is ground sourced and is notorious
for the havoc it wreaks on copper plumbing!)

> The right sort of dedicated battery for the fibre modem and router.

Does it not have provisions, internally? Many cable modems,
here, have dedicated internal (rechargeable) batteries to
keep the VoIP service \"up\" during outages.

> If only they had made them USB C so that any old powerbank would do it.

 

[Martin Brown]

On 16/09/2023 16:40, Don Y wrote:

On 9/16/2023 8:17 AM, Martin Brown wrote:

The right sort of dedicated battery for the fibre modem and router.

Does it not have provisions, internally?  Many cable modems,
here, have dedicated internal (rechargeable) batteries to
keep the VoIP service \"up\" during outages.

Sadly no. It requires two different bespoke external supplies - one for
the optical modem and one for the router. Different voltages and
connectors required on each one. No reason I can see why that has to be
so. The official ones are rather poor too a whole ~1 hours operation...

https://www.businessdirect.bt.com/products/cyberpower-back-up-for-bt-digital-voice-service--fttp--097284-FV55.html

And for it to work you must have exactly the right version hardware!

The last big power cut in bad weather lasted 2 days...

>> If only they had made them USB C so that any old powerbank would do it.

--
Martin Brown

 

[Don Y]

On 9/16/2023 9:31 AM, Martin Brown wrote:

On 16/09/2023 16:40, Don Y wrote:
On 9/16/2023 8:17 AM, Martin Brown wrote:

The right sort of dedicated battery for the fibre modem and router.

Does it not have provisions, internally?  Many cable modems,
here, have dedicated internal (rechargeable) batteries to
keep the VoIP service \"up\" during outages.

Sadly no. It requires two different bespoke external supplies - one for the
optical modem and one for the router. Different voltages and connectors
required on each one. No reason I can see why that has to be so. The official
ones are rather poor too a whole ~1 hours operation...

And folks make fun of SOFTWARE! <rolls eyes>

https://www.businessdirect.bt.com/products/cyberpower-back-up-for-bt-digital-voice-service--fttp--097284-FV55.html

And for it to work you must have exactly the right version hardware!

Because the unit TIES INTO the router (instead of just backing
up the mains)?

> The last big power cut in bad weather lasted 2 days...

So, it\'s up to the end user to \"fix\" what is now THEIR problem...

It claims to deliver (just) 24W. And, with a ~80WHr battery,
that seems like <4 hours at full load (at 100% efficiency). Does
the router draw considerably LESS than 24W?

I can keep *this* computer, the router and the microwave modem
running for about 5 hours on a UPS. Of course, in a prolonged
outage, I would switch to a laptop and likely remove the
router completely (play fast and loose).

But, 2 days is a long time to try to support *anything*.

[Our outages have always been due to equipment failure
(buried cables well beyond their service life) but
never more than 4 hours. Neighbors always wonder how
we have \"lights\" (having a dozen UPSs and 7W LED lights
makes it relatively easy to keep the house lit! :> ]

>>> If only they had made them USB C so that any old powerbank would do it.

Unlike with a PC (where some transaction may be ongoing/continuous),
you could proly tolerate swapping powerbanks (losing phone/internet
service only for the duration of the changeover).

 

[Jan Panteltje]

On a sunny day (Sat, 16 Sep 2023 08:04:49 -0700) it happened John Larkin
<jjlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> wrote in
<crgbgilsv8kptrpigj9h5pnotddsq6liha@4ax.com>:

On Sat, 16 Sep 2023 04:29:00 -0700 (PDT), Lasse Langwadt Christensen
langwadt@fonz.dk> wrote:

lørdag den 16. september 2023 kl. 13.19.58 UTC+2 skrev John Larkin:
On Sat, 16 Sep 2023 11:51:56 +0100, Martin Brown
\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

On 15/09/2023 16:39, Don Y wrote:
On 9/15/2023 3:21 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
We must surely have a lot more rain than in the US and yet our phone
lines generally do hold up for ADSL unless it gets very very wet (as
in flooding). Being on the wrong side of the beck doesn\'t help.

Are your lines fed from above (e.g., flying off telephone poles)?
Or, do they travel below grade, surfacing just before entering the
subscriber\'s premises?

Modern build is usually the latter but where I am the cables travel
underground from the exchange to the village and then up onto poles
inside the village. We are a bit unusual in that our lines are archaic
\"Exchange Only\" lines with no cabinet between us and the exchange.

Electricity also comes in overhead on the same set of poles which makes
it difficult for the telco - they have to bring in a cherry picker to
work on their signal level cables at height because of the live wires!

Water frequently infiltrates our buried cables (including the 100+ pair
that runs the length of the street, below grade). So, a (rare!) rain
can leave you with a noisey line that resolves itself BEFORE the lineman
can get around to actually checking the line, in person.

That is pretty much the situation here except that it is a lot wetter
and the groundwater is mildly alkaline and so corrosive. In addition
tree branches can strip the insulation off the overhead cable runs which
makes it very noisy and can break conductors.

Connections to the premises wiring are done above ground in a
\"telephone network interface\" box: the utility\'s feed is
terminated in a pair (typically) of RJ11 jacks. The premises
wiring presents as one or more RJ11 plugs. So, a subscriber can
\"unplug\" their wiring from the network to allow the utility
to check THEIR wiring without the subscriber\'s impacting the test.

That is how modern installs are done with a so called master socket so
you can isolate the house wiring and plug into the test socket. You are
supposed to do this before reporting a fault. My master POTS socket is
\"conveniently\" located at the far end of the loft where the old copper
cable enters the house. The new fibre install comes from a different
pole and has a splice box at ground level with a fibre up to my office.

Prehistoric ones were little more than a 4 way terminal block with a
Bakelite soap bar shaped cover over the top.

They connector housings do fail from time to time but they seem to
last 5 or 10 years before they fail badly again. I\'m not sure how they
protect wet wires from corrosion though. There are places near me with
hybrid copper meets aluminium phone wiring which partially rectifies
ADSL. So bad that some don\'t even get 256kbps. Peer to peer microwave
has been claiming these dead zones for some time - farmers need it.

Our problem is with the hundreds of feet of 100(?) pair cable
that feeds the neighborhood from the main junction box at the entrance to
the subdivision. Lots of places for a partial short or line imbalance
to present.

It is almost invariably the wet corroded joints that cause trouble or
rodents chewing off the insulation. Ours are incredibly fragile now and
any disturbance from working on a fault tends to break something else.

It got so bad at one point that they had to ship in additional POTS
engineers from outside the county to get on top of pending repairs.

I haven\'t been able to find a picture of our underground configuration
(it is quite rare now) but this one of a normal passive BT cabinet isn\'t
too dissimilar if you image no supporting structure and the whole lot of
multicoloured knitting stuffed randomly into a double width manhole.

https://www.reddit.com/r/cablegore/comments/333ek9/inside_a_bt_telephone_cabinet/

There may be a slight difference in texture which is what seems to
guide their choice of exactly what to nibble. We solved our problems
on radio telescope cable runs by flooding the ducts with dry nitrogen.

Various \"burrowing creatures\" are more of a problem with the
AC mains (which are also below grade). Part of the service
procedure for each of the ground-mounted transformers is to
fill the exposed earth *inside* the enclosure with mortar
and wet it to form a bit of a crust to discourage the critters
from gaining entry to the high voltage wiring (fried critters!).

Packrats tend to enjoy feasting on the wire in automobiles,
accessing that from the underside.

Apparently pine martens are keen on BMW brake hose and wiring insulation
(and they are now moving into my area of the UK).

https://www.englishforum.ch/daily-life/261913-pine-martens-brake-pipes.html


I collect pictures of disgusting wiring.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/rdbz4ayuw0w60ch1f4dot/h?rlkey=k14c22nkj1leclay7itlpk28z&dl=0

looks like artwork made by craftsmen compared to the stuff you see from India

San Francico has stunning views that are usually ruined by hideous
wiring. It\'s being undergrounded, which should be mostly done in a
couple of hundred years.

SF likely will not exist in a couple of years...
I was just reading that California is going to sue five big oil and gas companies for heating up earth:
ExxonMobil,BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and Shell.

They should be grateful to those companies that made California liveable and the industry and jobs they created,
The complete insane climate idiots that infected politics using CO2 witch hunts means the end of civilization.

 

[whit3rd]

On Saturday, September 16, 2023 at 10:05:07 PM UTC-7, Jan Panteltje wrote:

On a sunny day (Sat, 16 Sep 2023 08:04:49 -0700) it happened John Larkin
jjla...@highlandtechnology.com> wrote in
crgbgilsv8kptrpig...@4ax.com>:
On Sat, 16 Sep 2023 04:29:00 -0700 (PDT), Lasse Langwadt Christensen
lang...@fonz.dk> wrote:

lørdag den 16. september 2023 kl. 13.19.58 UTC+2 skrev John Larkin:
On Sat, 16 Sep 2023 11:51:56 +0100, Martin Brown
\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

On 15/09/2023 16:39, Don Y wrote:
On 9/15/2023 3:21 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
We must surely have a lot more rain than in the US and yet our phone
lines generally do hold up for ADSL unless it gets very very wet (as
in flooding). Being on the wrong side of the beck doesn\'t help.

Are your lines fed from above (e.g., flying off telephone poles)?
Or, do they travel below grade, surfacing just before entering the
subscriber\'s premises?

Modern build is usually the latter but where I am the cables travel
underground from the exchange to the village and then up onto poles
inside the village. We are a bit unusual in that our lines are archaic
\"Exchange Only\" lines with no cabinet between us and the exchange.

Electricity also comes in overhead on the same set of poles which makes
it difficult for the telco - they have to bring in a cherry picker to
work on their signal level cables at height because of the live wires!

Water frequently infiltrates our buried cables (including the 100+ pair
that runs the length of the street, below grade). So, a (rare!) rain
can leave you with a noisey line that resolves itself BEFORE the lineman
can get around to actually checking the line, in person.

That is pretty much the situation here except that it is a lot wetter
and the groundwater is mildly alkaline and so corrosive. In addition
tree branches can strip the insulation off the overhead cable runs which
makes it very noisy and can break conductors.

Connections to the premises wiring are done above ground in a
\"telephone network interface\" box: the utility\'s feed is
terminated in a pair (typically) of RJ11 jacks. The premises
wiring presents as one or more RJ11 plugs. So, a subscriber can
\"unplug\" their wiring from the network to allow the utility
to check THEIR wiring without the subscriber\'s impacting the test.

That is how modern installs are done with a so called master socket so
you can isolate the house wiring and plug into the test socket. You are
supposed to do this before reporting a fault. My master POTS socket is
\"conveniently\" located at the far end of the loft where the old copper
cable enters the house. The new fibre install comes from a different
pole and has a splice box at ground level with a fibre up to my office.

Prehistoric ones were little more than a 4 way terminal block with a
Bakelite soap bar shaped cover over the top.

They connector housings do fail from time to time but they seem to
last 5 or 10 years before they fail badly again. I\'m not sure how they
protect wet wires from corrosion though. There are places near me with
hybrid copper meets aluminium phone wiring which partially rectifies
ADSL. So bad that some don\'t even get 256kbps. Peer to peer microwave
has been claiming these dead zones for some time - farmers need it.

Our problem is with the hundreds of feet of 100(?) pair cable
that feeds the neighborhood from the main junction box at the entrance to
the subdivision. Lots of places for a partial short or line imbalance
to present.

It is almost invariably the wet corroded joints that cause trouble or
rodents chewing off the insulation. Ours are incredibly fragile now and
any disturbance from working on a fault tends to break something else.

It got so bad at one point that they had to ship in additional POTS
engineers from outside the county to get on top of pending repairs.

I haven\'t been able to find a picture of our underground configuration
(it is quite rare now) but this one of a normal passive BT cabinet isn\'t
too dissimilar if you image no supporting structure and the whole lot of
multicoloured knitting stuffed randomly into a double width manhole.

https://www.reddit.com/r/cablegore/comments/333ek9/inside_a_bt_telephone_cabinet/

There may be a slight difference in texture which is what seems to
guide their choice of exactly what to nibble. We solved our problems
on radio telescope cable runs by flooding the ducts with dry nitrogen.

Various \"burrowing creatures\" are more of a problem with the
AC mains (which are also below grade). Part of the service
procedure for each of the ground-mounted transformers is to
fill the exposed earth *inside* the enclosure with mortar
and wet it to form a bit of a crust to discourage the critters
from gaining entry to the high voltage wiring (fried critters!).

Packrats tend to enjoy feasting on the wire in automobiles,
accessing that from the underside.

Apparently pine martens are keen on BMW brake hose and wiring insulation
(and they are now moving into my area of the UK).

https://www.englishforum.ch/daily-life/261913-pine-martens-brake-pipes.html


I collect pictures of disgusting wiring.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/rdbz4ayuw0w60ch1f4dot/h?rlkey=k14c22nkj1leclay7itlpk28z&dl=0

looks like artwork made by craftsmen compared to the stuff you see from India

San Francico has stunning views that are usually ruined by hideous
wiring. It\'s being undergrounded, which should be mostly done in a
couple of hundred years.
SF likely will not exist in a couple of years...
I was just reading that California is going to sue five big oil and gas companies for heating up earth:
ExxonMobil,BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and Shell.

They should be grateful to those companies ...

Gratitude for products, but not for byproducts. The purpose of suing is to get a court to
consider the issue of those byproducts having a large-scale pollution cost, that SHOULD
be accounted for in economic decisions, and paid for by the customers of
\'big oil and gas companies\'. If those bit companies add the cost of
pollution to their products\' costs, the suits will have satisfied California,
and reward the oil-and-gas folk a bit of repayment for their collection of the new tax...

The money losers, will be Jan Panteltje and associates. We\'re all his associates on
this forum, of course.

 

[Martin Brown]

On 16/09/2023 12:19, John Larkin wrote:

On Sat, 16 Sep 2023 11:51:56 +0100, Martin Brown
\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:


I haven\'t been able to find a picture of our underground configuration
(it is quite rare now) but this one of a normal passive BT cabinet isn\'t
too dissimilar if you image no supporting structure and the whole lot of
multicoloured knitting stuffed randomly into a double width manhole.

https://www.reddit.com/r/cablegore/comments/333ek9/inside_a_bt_telephone_cabinet/

That example is a textbook layout neat one. Ours looks like that one
after you have put a fork into it and and turned it over a few times!

I collect pictures of disgusting wiring.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/rdbz4ayuw0w60ch1f4dot/h?rlkey=k14c22nkj1leclay7itlpk28z&dl=0

It seems to me a miracle that telecoms stuff actually works!

--
Martin Brown

 

[Martin Brown]

On 16/09/2023 16:24, Don Y wrote:

On 9/16/2023 3:51 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
On 15/09/2023 16:39, Don Y wrote:
On 9/15/2023 3:21 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
We must surely have a lot more rain than in the US and yet our phone
lines generally do hold up for ADSL unless it gets very very wet (as
in flooding). Being on the wrong side of the beck doesn\'t help.

Are your lines fed from above (e.g., flying off telephone poles)?
Or, do they travel below grade, surfacing just before entering the
subscriber\'s premises?

Modern build is usually the latter but where I am the cables travel
underground from the exchange to the village and then up onto poles
inside the village. We

.. *to* the village?  Are there so few subscribers there that the CO
isn\'t located *in* the village?  (\"village\" has different connotations,
depending on where it is used, here; some villages are the size of towns;
some towns the size of villages)

UK \"village\" has some ambiguity too. Modern ones can be legally up to 5k
which means there are a lot of new builds with populations 4,999.

Mine is a former medieval village in the old sense (arguably now a
hamlet) with about 250 people in ~5 square miles. Mostly in a linear
development along the main street apart from the farms.

It was a fair bit 2-3x bigger before the black death struck it...

Most COs (in the places I\'ve lived) have lines coming into a
room in the basement, then up to a \"wiring room\" where all of
the pairs are laid out (on punchdown blocks?).

Is a CO what we would call a cabinet? Where the main trunk line back to
the exchange is terminated and the local consumer circuits start?

If so that is what is unusual about our provision - there is no cabinet
the lines go all the way back to the exchange. That is unusual here...

When/if they ever surface, I\'ve never directly observed.  And, nowadays,
you don\'t know if they haven\'t run fiber out to a remote concentrator...

That in the UK would be FTTC (VDSL fibre to the cabinet) with copper
circuits to the consumers. Putting these onto Digital Voice VOIP makes
them incredibly useless since even if the consumer end has a UPS the
powered cabinet needed for FTTC does not have any back supply.

That service is Digital in Name Only or \"DINO\" it combines all the worst
characteristics of VOIP (fails without power) without eliminating the
pesky final mile of ageing copper that carries the VDSL signals.

POTS generally continues to work even when DSL is down (except if there
is a fine break small enough for RF to jump the gap capacitively). Most
importantly it still works when the mains has failed (and for a decent
length of time too - exchanges have largish battery backup systems).

are a bit unusual in that our lines are archaic \"Exchange Only\" lines
with no cabinet between us and the exchange.

So, any line repair/reconfiguration is done AT the CO?

There is no CO the lines run right back to the exchange.

That is the meaning of an exchange only line. They are a nightmare for
VDSL operation because of the crosstalk they induce inside the exchange.
The standard fix is that they install a new powered FTTC cabinet nearby
and run anyone nearby taking the VDSL service to that.

There\'s a large (20 sq ft) wiring cabinet at the entrance to our
subdivisions that terminates all of the pairs from the CO *to*
the pairs feeding the subscribers.  There is ALWAYS a telco
service vehicle parked nearby \"fixing\" something (I\'m guessing
200 homes in the subdivision?)

That is about the size of our entire local exchange including its
battery room. My fibre service doesn\'t go to that exchange at all but to
a much larger exchange ~12 miles away in the county town.

Electricity also comes in overhead on the same set of poles which
makes it difficult for the telco - they have to bring in a cherry
picker to work on their signal level cables at height because of the
live wires!

Hmmm... the places I\'ve lived with overhead wiring have usually
had the high tension wires at the top of the poles (imagine a T)
with cable and phone down much lower -- like halfway.  They transit
to the home over separate paths so even if you had to access the
cable at the house, there would be sufficient clearance from the
mains feed.

The convention in the UK is horizontal mounted wires implies medium high
tension 33kV or thereabouts and vertical mounted wires are consumer 240v
distribution. I reckon the lowest now uninsulated hot cable is only
about 2\' above the telecoms line. Poles are also marked \"do not climb\"
for other reasons of age and decrepitude.

Water frequently infiltrates our buried cables (including the 100+ pair
that runs the length of the street, below grade).  So, a (rare!) rain
can leave you with a noisey line that resolves itself BEFORE the lineman
can get around to actually checking the line, in person.

That is pretty much the situation here except that it is a lot wetter
and the groundwater is mildly alkaline and so corrosive.

Ours is classified as \"slightly to very strong alkaline\" with a pervasive
layer of calcium carbonate some 6-12 inches below the surface.  The soil
temperature is relatively high (70-80F) tracking our average air
temperature (~75F)

It is a lot colder than that here so penetrating ground frosts also play
a part in prizing wet crimp joints apart.

The advent of cell phone technology took a lot of pressure off of
POTS; folks could just discard their pairs, making them available
for the next house up or down the street.

That is happening here too. In fact apart from going with BT you
automatically lose your landline number if you take full fibre internet.

The naming convention is pretty silly too - they first sold FTTC as
\"fibre\" so they now have to call true fibre services \"full fibre\".

You are supposed to do this before reporting a fault.

Yes, and because a RJ11 *jack* is presented, you can
carry a station set out to the TNI and connect to the
network directly to convince yourself that the
problem lies with the provider (or in the home).

UK has its own peculiar BT connector - not RJ11 although adapters are
available (thought nothing like as peculiar as Belgacom\'s connectors).

Here, the crimp connections would happen on punchdown (66/110) blocks.
The pedestal wiring is less disciplined; I have no idea how they
keep track of which pairs they split off of the main cable at
each pedestal!  (and wonder if there is ANY documentation of this??)

I have wondered about that too. They do seem to know which line pair is
which without having to put a trace signal on most of the time.

--
Martin Brown

 

[John Larkin]

On Sun, 17 Sep 2023 05:04:57 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid>
wrote:

On a sunny day (Sat, 16 Sep 2023 08:04:49 -0700) it happened John Larkin
jjlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> wrote in
crgbgilsv8kptrpigj9h5pnotddsq6liha@4ax.com>:

On Sat, 16 Sep 2023 04:29:00 -0700 (PDT), Lasse Langwadt Christensen
langwadt@fonz.dk> wrote:

lørdag den 16. september 2023 kl. 13.19.58 UTC+2 skrev John Larkin:
On Sat, 16 Sep 2023 11:51:56 +0100, Martin Brown
\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

On 15/09/2023 16:39, Don Y wrote:
On 9/15/2023 3:21 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
We must surely have a lot more rain than in the US and yet our phone
lines generally do hold up for ADSL unless it gets very very wet (as
in flooding). Being on the wrong side of the beck doesn\'t help.

Are your lines fed from above (e.g., flying off telephone poles)?
Or, do they travel below grade, surfacing just before entering the
subscriber\'s premises?

Modern build is usually the latter but where I am the cables travel
underground from the exchange to the village and then up onto poles
inside the village. We are a bit unusual in that our lines are archaic
\"Exchange Only\" lines with no cabinet between us and the exchange.

Electricity also comes in overhead on the same set of poles which makes
it difficult for the telco - they have to bring in a cherry picker to
work on their signal level cables at height because of the live wires!

Water frequently infiltrates our buried cables (including the 100+ pair
that runs the length of the street, below grade). So, a (rare!) rain
can leave you with a noisey line that resolves itself BEFORE the lineman
can get around to actually checking the line, in person.

That is pretty much the situation here except that it is a lot wetter
and the groundwater is mildly alkaline and so corrosive. In addition
tree branches can strip the insulation off the overhead cable runs which
makes it very noisy and can break conductors.

Connections to the premises wiring are done above ground in a
\"telephone network interface\" box: the utility\'s feed is
terminated in a pair (typically) of RJ11 jacks. The premises
wiring presents as one or more RJ11 plugs. So, a subscriber can
\"unplug\" their wiring from the network to allow the utility
to check THEIR wiring without the subscriber\'s impacting the test.

That is how modern installs are done with a so called master socket so
you can isolate the house wiring and plug into the test socket. You are
supposed to do this before reporting a fault. My master POTS socket is
\"conveniently\" located at the far end of the loft where the old copper
cable enters the house. The new fibre install comes from a different
pole and has a splice box at ground level with a fibre up to my office.

Prehistoric ones were little more than a 4 way terminal block with a
Bakelite soap bar shaped cover over the top.

They connector housings do fail from time to time but they seem to
last 5 or 10 years before they fail badly again. I\'m not sure how they
protect wet wires from corrosion though. There are places near me with
hybrid copper meets aluminium phone wiring which partially rectifies
ADSL. So bad that some don\'t even get 256kbps. Peer to peer microwave
has been claiming these dead zones for some time - farmers need it.

Our problem is with the hundreds of feet of 100(?) pair cable
that feeds the neighborhood from the main junction box at the entrance to
the subdivision. Lots of places for a partial short or line imbalance
to present.

It is almost invariably the wet corroded joints that cause trouble or
rodents chewing off the insulation. Ours are incredibly fragile now and
any disturbance from working on a fault tends to break something else.

It got so bad at one point that they had to ship in additional POTS
engineers from outside the county to get on top of pending repairs.

I haven\'t been able to find a picture of our underground configuration
(it is quite rare now) but this one of a normal passive BT cabinet isn\'t
too dissimilar if you image no supporting structure and the whole lot of
multicoloured knitting stuffed randomly into a double width manhole.

https://www.reddit.com/r/cablegore/comments/333ek9/inside_a_bt_telephone_cabinet/

There may be a slight difference in texture which is what seems to
guide their choice of exactly what to nibble. We solved our problems
on radio telescope cable runs by flooding the ducts with dry nitrogen.

Various \"burrowing creatures\" are more of a problem with the
AC mains (which are also below grade). Part of the service
procedure for each of the ground-mounted transformers is to
fill the exposed earth *inside* the enclosure with mortar
and wet it to form a bit of a crust to discourage the critters
from gaining entry to the high voltage wiring (fried critters!).

Packrats tend to enjoy feasting on the wire in automobiles,
accessing that from the underside.

Apparently pine martens are keen on BMW brake hose and wiring insulation
(and they are now moving into my area of the UK).

https://www.englishforum.ch/daily-life/261913-pine-martens-brake-pipes.html


I collect pictures of disgusting wiring.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/rdbz4ayuw0w60ch1f4dot/h?rlkey=k14c22nkj1leclay7itlpk28z&dl=0

looks like artwork made by craftsmen compared to the stuff you see from India

San Francico has stunning views that are usually ruined by hideous
wiring. It\'s being undergrounded, which should be mostly done in a
couple of hundred years.


SF likely will not exist in a couple of years...
I was just reading that California is going to sue five big oil and gas companies for heating up earth:
ExxonMobil,BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and Shell.

They should be grateful to those companies that made California liveable and the industry and jobs they created,
The complete insane climate idiots that infected politics using CO2 witch hunts means the end of civilization.

Electing greenie morons will change, as people sit hungry in the cold
and dark in their dead Teslas.

SF will exist for a long time. Lots of people will always want to live
here.

 

[John Larkin]

On Sun, 17 Sep 2023 15:32:28 +0100, Martin Brown
<\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/09/2023 12:19, John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 16 Sep 2023 11:51:56 +0100, Martin Brown
\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:


I haven\'t been able to find a picture of our underground configuration
(it is quite rare now) but this one of a normal passive BT cabinet isn\'t
too dissimilar if you image no supporting structure and the whole lot of
multicoloured knitting stuffed randomly into a double width manhole.

https://www.reddit.com/r/cablegore/comments/333ek9/inside_a_bt_telephone_cabinet/

That example is a textbook layout neat one. Ours looks like that one
after you have put a fork into it and and turned it over a few times!

I collect pictures of disgusting wiring.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/rdbz4ayuw0w60ch1f4dot/h?rlkey=k14c22nkj1leclay7itlpk28z&dl=0

It seems to me a miracle that telecoms stuff actually works!

Our utilities, including cable/internet, are actually quite reliable.
I can\'t explain that.

Our cable modem hangs up once in a while, but that\'s just the usual
software bugs. A hard power cycle fixes that.

 

[Jan Panteltje]

On a sunny day (Sun, 17 Sep 2023 07:58:15 -0700) it happened John Larkin
<jjlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> wrote in
<4p4egilh7pg6fufr6sadpeerkprckvn32s@4ax.com>:

On Sun, 17 Sep 2023 05:04:57 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid
wrote:

On a sunny day (Sat, 16 Sep 2023 08:04:49 -0700) it happened John Larkin
jjlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> wrote in
crgbgilsv8kptrpigj9h5pnotddsq6liha@4ax.com>:

On Sat, 16 Sep 2023 04:29:00 -0700 (PDT), Lasse Langwadt Christensen
langwadt@fonz.dk> wrote:

lørdag den 16. september 2023 kl. 13.19.58 UTC+2 skrev John Larkin:
On Sat, 16 Sep 2023 11:51:56 +0100, Martin Brown
\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

On 15/09/2023 16:39, Don Y wrote:
On 9/15/2023 3:21 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
We must surely have a lot more rain than in the US and yet our phone
lines generally do hold up for ADSL unless it gets very very wet (as
in flooding). Being on the wrong side of the beck doesn\'t help.

Are your lines fed from above (e.g., flying off telephone poles)?
Or, do they travel below grade, surfacing just before entering the
subscriber\'s premises?

Modern build is usually the latter but where I am the cables travel
underground from the exchange to the village and then up onto poles
inside the village. We are a bit unusual in that our lines are archaic
\"Exchange Only\" lines with no cabinet between us and the exchange.

Electricity also comes in overhead on the same set of poles which makes
it difficult for the telco - they have to bring in a cherry picker to
work on their signal level cables at height because of the live wires!

Water frequently infiltrates our buried cables (including the 100+ pair
that runs the length of the street, below grade). So, a (rare!) rain
can leave you with a noisey line that resolves itself BEFORE the lineman
can get around to actually checking the line, in person.

That is pretty much the situation here except that it is a lot wetter
and the groundwater is mildly alkaline and so corrosive. In addition
tree branches can strip the insulation off the overhead cable runs which
makes it very noisy and can break conductors.

Connections to the premises wiring are done above ground in a
\"telephone network interface\" box: the utility\'s feed is
terminated in a pair (typically) of RJ11 jacks. The premises
wiring presents as one or more RJ11 plugs. So, a subscriber can
\"unplug\" their wiring from the network to allow the utility
to check THEIR wiring without the subscriber\'s impacting the test.

That is how modern installs are done with a so called master socket so
you can isolate the house wiring and plug into the test socket. You are
supposed to do this before reporting a fault. My master POTS socket is
\"conveniently\" located at the far end of the loft where the old copper
cable enters the house. The new fibre install comes from a different
pole and has a splice box at ground level with a fibre up to my office.

Prehistoric ones were little more than a 4 way terminal block with a
Bakelite soap bar shaped cover over the top.

They connector housings do fail from time to time but they seem to
last 5 or 10 years before they fail badly again. I\'m not sure how they
protect wet wires from corrosion though. There are places near me with
hybrid copper meets aluminium phone wiring which partially rectifies
ADSL. So bad that some don\'t even get 256kbps. Peer to peer microwave
has been claiming these dead zones for some time - farmers need it.

Our problem is with the hundreds of feet of 100(?) pair cable
that feeds the neighborhood from the main junction box at the entrance to
the subdivision. Lots of places for a partial short or line imbalance
to present.

It is almost invariably the wet corroded joints that cause trouble or
rodents chewing off the insulation. Ours are incredibly fragile now and
any disturbance from working on a fault tends to break something else.

It got so bad at one point that they had to ship in additional POTS
engineers from outside the county to get on top of pending repairs.

I haven\'t been able to find a picture of our underground configuration
(it is quite rare now) but this one of a normal passive BT cabinet isn\'t
too dissimilar if you image no supporting structure and the whole lot of
multicoloured knitting stuffed randomly into a double width manhole.

https://www.reddit.com/r/cablegore/comments/333ek9/inside_a_bt_telephone_cabinet/

There may be a slight difference in texture which is what seems to
guide their choice of exactly what to nibble. We solved our problems
on radio telescope cable runs by flooding the ducts with dry nitrogen.

Various \"burrowing creatures\" are more of a problem with the
AC mains (which are also below grade). Part of the service
procedure for each of the ground-mounted transformers is to
fill the exposed earth *inside* the enclosure with mortar
and wet it to form a bit of a crust to discourage the critters
from gaining entry to the high voltage wiring (fried critters!).

Packrats tend to enjoy feasting on the wire in automobiles,
accessing that from the underside.

Apparently pine martens are keen on BMW brake hose and wiring insulation
(and they are now moving into my area of the UK).

https://www.englishforum.ch/daily-life/261913-pine-martens-brake-pipes.html


I collect pictures of disgusting wiring.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/rdbz4ayuw0w60ch1f4dot/h?rlkey=k14c22nkj1leclay7itlpk28z&dl=0

looks like artwork made by craftsmen compared to the stuff you see from India

San Francico has stunning views that are usually ruined by hideous
wiring. It\'s being undergrounded, which should be mostly done in a
couple of hundred years.


SF likely will not exist in a couple of years...
I was just reading that California is going to sue five big oil and gas companies for heating up earth:
ExxonMobil,BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and Shell.

They should be grateful to those companies that made California liveable and the industry and jobs they created,
The complete insane climate idiots that infected politics using CO2 witch hunts means the end of civilization.

Electing greenie morons will change, as people sit hungry in the cold
and dark in their dead Teslas.

SF will exist for a long time. Lots of people will always want to live
here.

Sure Su[p]perman will come to the rescue when the Andreas fault is triggered?

 

[John Larkin]

On Sun, 17 Sep 2023 15:37:50 +0100, Martin Brown
<\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/09/2023 16:24, Don Y wrote:
On 9/16/2023 3:51 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
On 15/09/2023 16:39, Don Y wrote:
On 9/15/2023 3:21 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
We must surely have a lot more rain than in the US and yet our phone
lines generally do hold up for ADSL unless it gets very very wet (as
in flooding). Being on the wrong side of the beck doesn\'t help.

Are your lines fed from above (e.g., flying off telephone poles)?
Or, do they travel below grade, surfacing just before entering the
subscriber\'s premises?

Modern build is usually the latter but where I am the cables travel
underground from the exchange to the village and then up onto poles
inside the village. We

.. *to* the village?  Are there so few subscribers there that the CO
isn\'t located *in* the village?  (\"village\" has different connotations,
depending on where it is used, here; some villages are the size of towns;
some towns the size of villages)

We live in Glen Park Village, roughly a square mile of houses and a
canyon. The combination of hills and major streets/freeways chops SF
up into distinct neighborhoods, which is cool. But that barely affects
public services or utilities.

It does affect the public water supply. A number of hilltop pumped
reservoirs store our drinking water for some downhill region, so a
distinct area can lose water. Fortunately, that\'s rare.

Grass grows on top the reservoirs so once in a while the city rents
goats.

 

[John Larkin]

On Sun, 17 Sep 2023 15:26:02 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid>
wrote:

On a sunny day (Sun, 17 Sep 2023 07:58:15 -0700) it happened John Larkin
jjlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> wrote in
4p4egilh7pg6fufr6sadpeerkprckvn32s@4ax.com>:

On Sun, 17 Sep 2023 05:04:57 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid
wrote:

On a sunny day (Sat, 16 Sep 2023 08:04:49 -0700) it happened John Larkin
jjlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> wrote in
crgbgilsv8kptrpigj9h5pnotddsq6liha@4ax.com>:

On Sat, 16 Sep 2023 04:29:00 -0700 (PDT), Lasse Langwadt Christensen
langwadt@fonz.dk> wrote:

lørdag den 16. september 2023 kl. 13.19.58 UTC+2 skrev John Larkin:
On Sat, 16 Sep 2023 11:51:56 +0100, Martin Brown
\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

On 15/09/2023 16:39, Don Y wrote:
On 9/15/2023 3:21 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
We must surely have a lot more rain than in the US and yet our phone
lines generally do hold up for ADSL unless it gets very very wet (as
in flooding). Being on the wrong side of the beck doesn\'t help.

Are your lines fed from above (e.g., flying off telephone poles)?
Or, do they travel below grade, surfacing just before entering the
subscriber\'s premises?

Modern build is usually the latter but where I am the cables travel
underground from the exchange to the village and then up onto poles
inside the village. We are a bit unusual in that our lines are archaic
\"Exchange Only\" lines with no cabinet between us and the exchange.

Electricity also comes in overhead on the same set of poles which makes
it difficult for the telco - they have to bring in a cherry picker to
work on their signal level cables at height because of the live wires!

Water frequently infiltrates our buried cables (including the 100+ pair
that runs the length of the street, below grade). So, a (rare!) rain
can leave you with a noisey line that resolves itself BEFORE the lineman
can get around to actually checking the line, in person.

That is pretty much the situation here except that it is a lot wetter
and the groundwater is mildly alkaline and so corrosive. In addition
tree branches can strip the insulation off the overhead cable runs which
makes it very noisy and can break conductors.

Connections to the premises wiring are done above ground in a
\"telephone network interface\" box: the utility\'s feed is
terminated in a pair (typically) of RJ11 jacks. The premises
wiring presents as one or more RJ11 plugs. So, a subscriber can
\"unplug\" their wiring from the network to allow the utility
to check THEIR wiring without the subscriber\'s impacting the test.

That is how modern installs are done with a so called master socket so
you can isolate the house wiring and plug into the test socket. You are
supposed to do this before reporting a fault. My master POTS socket is
\"conveniently\" located at the far end of the loft where the old copper
cable enters the house. The new fibre install comes from a different
pole and has a splice box at ground level with a fibre up to my office.

Prehistoric ones were little more than a 4 way terminal block with a
Bakelite soap bar shaped cover over the top.

They connector housings do fail from time to time but they seem to
last 5 or 10 years before they fail badly again. I\'m not sure how they
protect wet wires from corrosion though. There are places near me with
hybrid copper meets aluminium phone wiring which partially rectifies
ADSL. So bad that some don\'t even get 256kbps. Peer to peer microwave
has been claiming these dead zones for some time - farmers need it.

Our problem is with the hundreds of feet of 100(?) pair cable
that feeds the neighborhood from the main junction box at the entrance to
the subdivision. Lots of places for a partial short or line imbalance
to present.

It is almost invariably the wet corroded joints that cause trouble or
rodents chewing off the insulation. Ours are incredibly fragile now and
any disturbance from working on a fault tends to break something else.

It got so bad at one point that they had to ship in additional POTS
engineers from outside the county to get on top of pending repairs.

I haven\'t been able to find a picture of our underground configuration
(it is quite rare now) but this one of a normal passive BT cabinet isn\'t
too dissimilar if you image no supporting structure and the whole lot of
multicoloured knitting stuffed randomly into a double width manhole.

https://www.reddit.com/r/cablegore/comments/333ek9/inside_a_bt_telephone_cabinet/

There may be a slight difference in texture which is what seems to
guide their choice of exactly what to nibble. We solved our problems
on radio telescope cable runs by flooding the ducts with dry nitrogen.

Various \"burrowing creatures\" are more of a problem with the
AC mains (which are also below grade). Part of the service
procedure for each of the ground-mounted transformers is to
fill the exposed earth *inside* the enclosure with mortar
and wet it to form a bit of a crust to discourage the critters
from gaining entry to the high voltage wiring (fried critters!).

Packrats tend to enjoy feasting on the wire in automobiles,
accessing that from the underside.

Apparently pine martens are keen on BMW brake hose and wiring insulation
(and they are now moving into my area of the UK).

https://www.englishforum.ch/daily-life/261913-pine-martens-brake-pipes.html


I collect pictures of disgusting wiring.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/rdbz4ayuw0w60ch1f4dot/h?rlkey=k14c22nkj1leclay7itlpk28z&dl=0

looks like artwork made by craftsmen compared to the stuff you see from India

San Francico has stunning views that are usually ruined by hideous
wiring. It\'s being undergrounded, which should be mostly done in a
couple of hundred years.


SF likely will not exist in a couple of years...
I was just reading that California is going to sue five big oil and gas companies for heating up earth:
ExxonMobil,BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and Shell.

They should be grateful to those companies that made California liveable and the industry and jobs they created,
The complete insane climate idiots that infected politics using CO2 witch hunts means the end of civilization.

Electing greenie morons will change, as people sit hungry in the cold
and dark in their dead Teslas.

SF will exist for a long time. Lots of people will always want to live
here.

Sure Su[p]perman will come to the rescue when the Andreas fault is triggered?

Sure, we\'ll have another big one eventually. Climate Change doesn\'t
cause earthquakes, although some idiots have claimed it does.

Since the 1989 quake, building codes here have impoved, both for new
construction and for older structures. Wood frame houses are required
to be reinforced against ground-floor-garage \"soft-story\" failure and
bricks must be reinforced. Our house was built in 1992, and it has a
steel frame concreted into bedrock, with plywood shear walls. Our real
concern would be a giant fire.

We spent a goodly part of a megbuck to harden our company building.

Current geology speculation suggests the big dangers are earthquake in
southern California and a massive tsunami in Washington and Oregon.

A big quake in mid/eastern USA, like the one in 1811, would be
ghastly. Too many unreinforced brick and stone structures.

England has lots of stone structures but doesn\'t get serious quakes,
but many places in europe do both.

 

[whit3rd]

On Sunday, September 17, 2023 at 3:32:41 AM UTC-7, Jan Panteltje wrote:

On a sunny day (Sat, 16 Sep 2023 22:38:41 -0700 (PDT)) it happened whit3rd
whi...@gmail.com> wrote in
08d599b3-ab2b-4526...@googlegroups.com>:

On Saturday, September 16, 2023 at 10:05:07 PM UTC-7, Jan Panteltje=
wrote:

SF likely will not exist in a couple of years...
I was just reading that California is going to sue five big oil and gas companies for heating up earth:
ExxonMobil,BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and Shell.

They should be grateful to those companies ...

Gratitude for products, but not for byproducts. The purpose of suing is to get a court to
consider the issue of those byproducts having a large-scale pollution cost, that SHOULD
be accounted for in economic decisions, and paid for by the customers of
\'big oil and gas companies\'. If those bit companies add the cost of
pollution to their products\' costs, the suits will have satisfied California,
and reward the oil-and-gas folk a bit of repayment for their collection of the new tax...

The money losers, will be Jan Panteltje and associates. We\'re all his associates on
this forum, of course.

Well, from the POV from reality,

Oh, that\'s bad wording; reality is large, offers many points of view, not just one.
A lawsuit means there\'s at least two to be considered here.

let\'s just all those companies as from now stop supplying California
with oil, gas and ALL byproducts from oil, such as plastic, energy,
everything.

.... which will not terminate the suit, since damage is present and unremedied, not just
potential for the future

> The lynching of those political insane CO2 clowns would be...

a hate crime?

> There are too many lawyers in the US ...

Too few in China. Mexico has a hard time keeping judges,
and Russia hasn\'t been able to support a healthy number of real reporters.

One important historical reference for US history is Alexis de Toqueville\'s _Democracy_in_America_
which is basically the journalism of a foreign reporter (during the early years of post-revolution
reorganization, circa 1800). His foreign viewpoint meant that he wrote down ALL of
what was going on, didn\'t ignore the things \'everybody knows\'.
Most local newspapers didn\'t cover events and policies as thoroughly. Having that one
extra reporter meant that many practices weren\'t overlooked, and we can benefit from his
insights.

Maybe having too many lawyers is the right way to go; excess capacity opens up opportunities.