Author: Heinrich Griesenbach

Hohenheim: Fruwithstraße and Egilofstraße from 53 onwards

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As part of the cleanup work that the Network Working Group in Hohenheim is finally able to tackle, I plan to publish some events on our blog.

Here’s a short text explaining why we’re worried about the cabling in the mentioned dormitories, since only a few have looked at the cables in their rooms.

I’ll compare the cables from the dormitories in the Hibuka building in the French Quarter in Tuebingen, where I lived extensively. There, we had cables for the doorbell at the front door (2 wires), cable for the telephone connection TAE (6 wires), cable connection (2 wires TV, 2 wires radio), and a double network socket (two cables with 8 wires each).

Why two network cables for one room? If one cable is damaged, the other can be used as a replacement, and you don’t have to lay a new cable from the room to the basement.

The TERA cabling is much more economical. Over a single cable with 8 wires, two wires are used for TV, two for the combination of doorbell and telephone. This leaves 4 wires to establish a 100 Mbit network connection.

If one wire is damaged, the internet network access is gone.

If one wire of the network cable is damaged in the French Quarter, there will only be 100 Mbit instead of 1000 Mbit or we switch to the spare cable.

Given the fact that TERA cables are only manufactured on demand and this type of cabling seems to be very rare, I assume that the savings in installation costs compared to the risks in operation have not prevailed.

From a purely network perspective, we have only half a network cable, without any reserves in the mentioned dormitories.

Nothing will change without construction activity. But building is not within the scope of our volunteer working group.

If there is a cable, we will make the best internet access possible for you.

Even though we can’t do much at the moment, please inform us about any possibly defective network connections and other problems. If only your apartment knows about a problem, nothing will improve.

Thanks for your interest,
Heinrich from the Netz-AK (short for Netzwerk Arbeitskreis = Network Work-group)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TERA

Upgrade Schwerzstrasse 1

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We need to make some unplanned changes to our hardware in your basement.

We can start working from 6 PM in Hohenheim.

Your internet will be down while we work, but we’ll finish by 10 PM. After that, all rooms will be back online, and the speed will be increased to 1 GBit from the previous 100 MBit. You can check the speed by running our speedtest.

 

Speed test

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We have set up an internal test for you some time ago. At netz-ak.de/speedtest, you can see how much your connection in your dorm room can handle.
We hope that all devices connected to our network via cable have a ping of less than 5 and an insignificant jitter.

A high jitter of over 5 indicates that the device from which you are measuring is connected via Wi-Fi and may be affected by what we call the 2.4 GHz problem.

Both download and upload should be just below the respective maximum of your building, i.e. 100 MBit/s or 1 GBit/s (1000 MBit/s). You can find out how fast the connections in your dormitory are under the expandable map on the  facts and figures page.

Currently, none of the dormitories are reaching the limit of their connection.

Pestalozzistraße 67 – Netz-AK

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Good morning!

Yesterday, 07. of March 2023, we were able to complete the wiring at about 20 o’clock.

We had started around 18:30. So if during that time “the internet was gone”, it was because there was no cable connected at our end.

Starting from the upper floors, you should have come back online when plugged in. We finished at 8pm.

In your rooms the left, oddly labelled network socket should work now.

Until yesterday, some rooms were unsystematically missing its wiring and we didn’t know which room was connected where.

Normally we announce maintenance work longer in advance, but this time it was urgent.

Please contact us if you have any problems!

Your volunteers of the Netz-AK (short for Netzwerk Arbeitskreis = Network Work-group)

A warm welcome to the Pestalozzistraße 67!

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The dormitory will be opened today and as far as we know it will go online over our network.

Unfortunately this morning we still don’t know when that will be and are waiting for the go of the StuWe technicians.

However, you are right next to the university with plenty of internet and the other dorms are all online, too.

Get to know your new neighbours, the internet will reach you soon.

As soon as the network is at your house, it works like everywhere else: You plug in your own router and create your own little network with WiFi.

Please use our tutorials and don’t buy too expensive devices (never over 40€!), but also nothing outdated to save 5 €.

Just read the tutorials!  😉

See you around
your volunteers of the Netz-AK (short for Netzwerk Arbeitskreis = Network Work-group)

Partial outage Egilolfstraße 49 & 51 2022-12-28

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Today we exchanged a damaged network switch in Hohenheim. The outage affected around 24 connections. During replacement, the connected houses in Chausseefeld and Welfenstraße were also briefly offline.

Unfortunately another device failed during restart. We can only exchange this device tomorrow on December 29th, 2022. Until then around 24 connections will be offline in Egilolfstraße.

Hohenheim 2022-12-11

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On Sunday we will be doing some work in Hohenheim.

You could be offline for at max 30/45 minutes at a time, but no longer.

Please contact us, if you have problems, we’ll wait “only” one hour in Hohenheim after we finished working.

Work will be between 11am and 5 pm on Sunday 11th of December.

Update Sunday 3 pm: Egilofstrasse shoud be up and running now. If you are still offline, reboot router and if that does not help, contact us!

Why I wouldn’t buy a FritzBox for my dorm room

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A FritzBox has a bundle of functions that are helpful for a family home or an office.

You don’t need the following functions:

  • VDSL modem
  • landline telephones, faxes, fancy door bells
  • mesh, repeater and power line functions

For all of that you are paying when you are buying a FritzBox.
That’s why they are more expensive that simple Wi-Fi router and do not improve your internet speed.

A simple router with 5 GHz Wifi costs about 35€, which is half the price of a used FritzBox 4040.

Setting up a simple Wi-Fi router is easier than setting up a FritzBox with all the functions you can and will not use in our dorm.

Egilolfstraße 45 Sept 2022

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Since 22.09.2022 the following rooms are offline.

Room: 201, 202, 203, 204, 215, 216, 217, 218, 219, 220, 221, 222, 223, 224, 225, 226, 227, 228, 229

The Netz-AK has no keys to the building and can not help you.

We did inform the Studierendenwerk.

edv@sw-tuebingen-hohenheim.de

Update 29.09.2022:
Together with the Hohenheim IT we could fix the problem, but the hardware has to be replaced soon.
We have access to the buildings again.

Update 05.10.2022:
There was a power out this night and some more ports were damaged. The hardware will be replaced soon.