Category: Technology

Hohenheim: Fruwithstraße and Egilofstraße from 53 onwards

Avatar photoHeinrich Griesenbach on

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

Avatar photoHeinrich Griesenbach on

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

Avatar photoHeinrich Griesenbach on

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

Avatar photoHeinrich Griesenbach on

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!

Avatar photoHeinrich Griesenbach on

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)

Geislingen better Hardware June 2021

Avatar photoHeinrich Griesenbach on

We will arrive at 4pm and start installing the hardware.

Today is the only possible day to do this kind of work, if it is inconvenient, sorry.

The dorms in the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Strasse will be offline twice for a maximum of 10 minutes each.

If just your room stays offline after that, contact us immediately over the contact form. We`ll stay in Geislingen for a while for cases like that.
(Give us a phone number and answer the call from the blocked number, that’s us!)