As mentioned elsewhere, I’m having problems with our gite internet connection, which is a normal landline (not fibre) and an Orange livebox. The technician finally came out this afternoon and was young, superior and fairly dismissive about how terrible our set-up is. I agree it’s not great, but has worked up until now giving 3mb which has been enough for our guests to be able to access the internet and for our Smart TV to be able to play Netflix and the like.
Preparing our gite for this summer, I’ve found that the livebox is either not finding the Orange network at all or is only giving us about 0.3mb according to the speed test on the TV - not enough for Netflix etc.
The superior young technician thought he had fixed it and while he was there, we did briefly get 1.6 mb (not ideal, but just enough). By this evening it had gone again.
So I am reluctant to continue to battle with Orange and was wondering if there is any alternative solution I could put in place for our guests? Basically it needs to be something that gives them access to the internet and enables them to use the Smart TV for internet channels.
If there is, I’d be so grateful for some suggestions / details. Please note I am an absolute numpty when it comes to anything like this and I will need sentences consisting of entirely layman’s words of (mainly) one syllable each. Thank you.
Is it possible for Orange, or similar to run a Cat7 cable from the router in the house to the Gite ? so its hard wired as opposed to wireless ?
did he do a speed test at the house using a hard wired connection to the router ?
so, just to be clear - your connects wirelessly to the house ?
So, if your gite has a seperate landline from your house, i.e a completely different telephone cable to the exchange, then are you having similar problems, and do you get a similar low data rate of around 3 mbps at your house ? If not, then unless your gite is a long way from your home you should get similar performance as long as all the connections between the property and the cable are of good quality.
The gite is 80m from our house and has a separate telephone line. Whatever we do, that separation needs to continue as we are likely to sell the house.
The house has fibre and we get rates of 800mb. The cottage is ADSL and was getting 3mb, which was enough for a reasonable internet connection. (When the cottage becomes our home we will install fibre at that point but not now.)
The technician confirmed he was getting 3mb from the gite livebox while he was there (but the connection dropped again soon after he left).
We are hoping to have building works done on the gite this year to make it our future home. There is a shed on the other side of the drive we plan to restore. If we install fibre at the cottage we will need to install two telegraph poles to carry the line (not cheap) and this will be better done once the works are finished. And no, we don’t want to bury the fibre line - we’ve had experience of water pipes being cut, electricity cable being cut and telephone line being cut when the original works were being done when we first arrived - we prefer to see where our telephone line is going and to keep it well away from water pipes and electricity wires.
I’m looking for a short term solution, so the copper wire thing is not an issue.
With your mobile phone in hand, how many bars and what kind (4G or 5G) of signal connection do you get when in the gîte ? You can also check out the address of the gîte on the Arcep website to see what the theoretically expected reception should be at the gîte. That would give you an idea of whether a small 4G/5G router box with a sim card might be an alternative solution.
The one potential downside with 4G/5G router boxes provided by operators is that the contracts often have limited data usage per month, but that might be sufficient for the service you wish to provide to your gîte guests. I’ve stayed at a few places in the UK where such boxes were being proposed, where no fibre broadband was available.
So. How does the existing copper telephone line get to the gite ? Is it that the separation of land will mean that the existing gite telephone line will go over the main houses land and therefore cannot be used after separation ? If that is so, I understand your issue. Another way to do this is to use something like two Ubiquiti Nanostations plus a wifi router or similar products which will connect the house internet connection to the gite and provide wireless access there. For this sort of thing, you will be best asking @billybutcher for advice. It should work well and be not too pricy. No laying cables either.
Edit: This will be a temporary solution until you move into the gite. Then when you seperate the properties, you can then have poles put up if that’s needed and have your own connection at the gite.
So how does the current ADSL line arrive? I assume underground as you wouldn’t need to add poles otherwise.
I understand your concern but my professional self would always get things underground if possible. There’s far less likelihood of damage in a storm, which is when comms might be at their most essential.
Our own 'phone line, now fibre, has been ripped down by tractors & trailers & damaged by my neighbour more times than I care to mention, whereas the final 130m of underground duct has had zero problems in 22 years.
OK, so you have fibre in the main house and a ‘telephone line’ - do you mean ADSL? - at the gite that is 80M away.
This is similar to what I have, in layout. I would go along with Badger’s suggestion above, after all you will be installing fibre one day, why not now? And as he points out little or no difference in rental.
Outside of doing this, I was going to suggest that you do what I have installed - an ethernet wire from the fibre livebox in the main house to a Google Home router at the gite. It can be an ordinary basic router, but the Google is more user friendly with its app, has more coverage, can be meshed for more coverage and gives the gite their own password, but it is more expensive.
My ethernet is dug in, but if you need just need a temporary solution, could you lay the cable on the ground between the two houses? A roll of Cat 5e cable is 36€ or thereabouts and a Google router is 60 odd.
Edit - I did not see your post re poles until I posted…
This is another way to extend your home internet to the gite, but I think a cable over the surface would not be acceptable for a gite because of the trip hazard. Doing it wirelessly avoids the hassle of burying a cable and is not that much more expensive.
I understand Badger, but there is a further issue for us about underground cabling which then comes into the house, which has to do with the water table.
Our land is on a slope which includes a huge field up behind our property which leads up to the ridge above. All the water from that field pours down through our land when it rains heavily. The gaine around any form of wiring - phone/fibre/electric - is not waterproof.
Our hall in the gite used to be regularly flooded out by the rainwater pouring out of the gaine like a fountain from around the electricity cable where it came into the house.
In the end we had to find and dig up the electricity cable on land above the cottage and then install a French drain to lead the water away from the gite. It worked fortunately. But does also explain why we are less than thrilled by this whole idea of “bury the cable”.
As ever, views & advice given in this forum are always subject to the caveat that one just does not know all the parameters, unless the original question/statement clearly discloses everything relevant, which is rare.
Excuse my ignorance, but can I try to explain back to you in layman’s terms what I think this might involve.
I buy 2 cheap nanostations (because the distance is only 80 meters) - one for the house, one for the cottage.
I connect the house one, via an ethernet cable to the livebox in the house which gives me 800mb “out flow” through the first nanostation
I place the second nanostation in the cottage which now will receive 800mb “inflow” (or thereabouts).
Now this is where I struggle - do I connect the second nanostation to the back of the Orange livebox in the gite hall via an ethernet cable? So now the gite livebox has 800mb or thereabouts of internet “debit”. And can I then just use the orange live box as at present with a home network connection into the back of the Smart TV in the lounge?
Apologies for the dumb question but would the Orange livebox connected to the nanostation have wifi? A lot of our guests link their phones etc to our gite wifi.
- but needs must when the devil drives as they say).