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)