On 11/19/23 16:54, Sean Donelan wrote:
Of course, every local carrier will be different, what are the current
preferences for pre-wiring a customer demarc (NID, the box that hangs on
the outside of the house, whatever the service provider calls it now)?
1. Nothing - telco/cable will do whatever the heck they want and wreck
the outside of the house anyway
This is pretty much the norm around me. If I can get with a builder
prior to the walls getting closed up, I will hand them a spool I/O fiber
for them to run from whatever they call the inside service point to the
outside demarc for me, and they usually don't screw it up.
2. Smurf tube from demarc to central distribution point with an interior
power outlet near the demarc
This certainly works well.
3. ANSI TIA-570 prewire (2 x CAT 6, 2 x RG 6) from demarc to central
distribution point (low-voltage contractors don't use UV-rated cable for
the demarc, and the jacket is trash in a few years)
This is almost pointless in the world of FTTH with indoor ONTs being
preferred and even basically required for XGSPON (outdoor ONTs for
XGSPON are uncommon and expensive). It'll make the local cable MSO
happy, though, since they have RF ready to go. It'll make the local
fiber provider scratch their heads and try to decide if it's worth using
an outdoor ONT or just ignoring the pre-wire and starting from scratch.
This is doubly true of there's no outlet near the pre-wire outside the
home. How the heck am I going to power my outdoor ONT to use that CAT6
without one? Reverse-power outdoor ONTs are even rarer and even more
expensive.
In the past, I found if I made the pre-wire look nice and easy for the
field technician, they usually made the extra effort to keep their work
clean and tidy.
Most installations are contractors, and they get paid by the job with an
add-on schedule that nobody's willing to pay for, so they're going to
have a roughly set amount of effort they're willing to put into a job.
If you've done 90% of the work for them, then that effort can be put
into making it tidy. If they have to do everything from scratch, see
your point (1).
Due to the use of indoor ONTs, lack of fiber pre-wire, and combined with
customers wanting hand-holding up to and including managing their "in
home WiFi", the "point of demarcation" has become really nebulous. In
practice, the real demarc for many resi customers is their 802.11 SSID.
