I got 99 problems but my WiFi ain't one

I'm about to have a new front wall built and I'd like to future proof it for a possible Virgin Media fibre install sometime in the life of the wall.

There is an access box in the footway which has a coil of fibre tube in it. Does anyone know what a usual install is from there? Could I for example drill a hole in the back of the box and put some PVC pipe in the foundations of the wall so that if I get a Virgin service in the future it will be neat?

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Any merit to getting Virgin now so they can run the cable before the wall goes up?

I can't cancel my VDSL at the moment, I've heard poor things about their Internet service, I don't want more telly.

With all the WFH I considered it for diversity but too much money.

Fair dos. Just wondered if it's something you definitely planned on doing rather than a vague possibility.

If it was me I'd just forget about it and let Virgin sort it out in the future.

I might well do that but I've seen so many awful Virgin installs (cables running up the outside of walls, not attached to anything) and it seems fairly simple to do since the footings are being replaced an inch away from their box anyway.

The spot is also visible from where I'm sitting staring out the window not really paying attention to meetings.

I've got a building company coming in later this week to start work on digging trenches from the boundary to various points on our building so that Hyperoptic can lay some cables...I'll ask them what they suggest for your situation if you like!

If you don't mind that would be great.

If anyone wants better WiFi in a 2 bed flat or similar I've got a first gen Google Wifi which is surplus to requirements, happy to take £50 for it

Big connection for crypto mining?

Nah, just got sick of BT's bullshit in terms of refusing to fix our 1970s copper that gives our block of flats slow and intermittant broadband.

Eventually BT said they'd do the work but we'd have to pay them ~£75k. At that point we decided that we wanted nothing more to do with them and got Virgin and Hyperoptic to quote for cabling our building.

Hyperoptic have the best product out of the three and agreed to cable us up to our specs for a fraction of the BT price and even eventually agreed to go halves with us.

Just want better than 24Mb broadband that cuts out several times a day in 2021 :D

I mean seriously, we're a block of 70 flats. Can you imagine people being happy to pay over a grand each just to have their shitty slow broadband not cut out? 😂

Literally bought a single puck today for £70.

Bugger.

I need to convince my estates management co (all residents are members, but i think the director needs to be the one to initiate?) to get in touch with hyperoptic, all the houses on the estate only have 60s BT copper with no alternatives

Write the letter yourself, walk it over with a bottle of wine, ask him to sign it, post it yourself?

This has thread has somewhat become my de facto networking thread.

Using nmap, why can I only see MAC addresses for devices on the same subnet?

Do I need to add / remove a router firewall rule?

Using any tool you can only see devices on the same subnet.

The subnet is the address plus a mask, and only things within the masked range are available to be routed to.

i.e. if you have DHCP on 192.168.1.10/24 the /24 limits the routing table to 192.168.1.* so you can only see things on that subnet. (255.255.255.0 is a mask representing a /24, and more visually shows the 0 bit is the wildcard that you can route everything to and from).

This is networking stuff... and there is more... like you can have multiple routers all include differing subnet masks for the same address range... in these cases the most specific (smallest subnet) wins... which all shows why your netmask cannot be 0.0.0.0 as it is least specific and is kinda meaningless.

So... in your local network, the router manages the routing table and has knowledge of the netmask which defines the subnet, and that limits the routing within the router to that subnet. A client, whether via DHCP or static IP, belongs to the subnet from the routers perspective, and so will only see things within the subnet.

How I configure my network: I have a single netmask for my DHCP and static IPs, and I apply that to both the WiFi and wired network... this means my wired desktop can actually see my wireless ChromeCast and other interesting things like that. It's one logical network even though I actually have 2 physical networks (the LAN and WiFi), because what makes it one logical network is the shared subnet that spans it all.

Cool - thanks for the explanation. Which I think I understand.

This is networking stuff.

I'm rubbish at this stuff...

How does my Unifi controller see all of the MAC addresses of things then?

The controller sits on 192.168.1.1, as do the APs.

All of the clients are on different VLANs

For the controller to work it needs ubiquiti equipment on the network. The controller simply asks them. It can't get around networking limitations, but it can ask the things that are actually doing routing for their information from their routing tables, etc.

This is why if you mix in a non ubiquiti switch the network map is incomplete... It's using it's own protocol to ask these things.

I don't know what pieces you have... APs, edge router or equivalent... But the controller is asking those what they see.

I will say that I've tried to keep it simplistic... because obviously devices on different subnets can see each other. This is in fact how the internet works. It's achieved with routing tables, etc.

But on a local intranet and a simple routing table, it's best to just operate on the idea that subnets cannot see each other.

what pieces you have

Ubiquiti all the things - Edgerouter, Edgeswitches & Unifi APs

Thanks again!

An Edgerouter that’s aware of VLANs will route between those subnets/VLANs unless explicitly told not to via firewall rules.

If you can ping devices across your VLANs, then nmap will scrape them.

nmap 192.168.0.0/16 -sn

...will scan for all hosts across all subnets beginning with 192.168.x.x

Where would you expect the BT/openreach cable to come into your home? what does it look like? the termination at my house is on the first floor, and id rather it was somewhere downstairs, and use the existing termination point to run cat6 to for an AP

Depends if you have an underground cable or are fed from a pole.

underground i think. no poles on my estate

For underground somewhere on the front or slightly to the side you should have some kind of cable entry box. Typically look like these:

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