Network Cabling Horrors
Wiring old Boston brownstones for modern network access
I live in an old brownstone building in Boston that was contructed in the mid 1800’s. Brownstone homes were common in urban areas of the United States during the 19th-century in places like New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. My neighborhood (Back Bay) is almost entirely comprised of these building. They were originally single-family townhouses for the very wealthy residents of Boston, but are now carved up into multiple condos and apartments (my building has 16 units).
These are beatiful historic buildings, but they were built before the invention of the telephone… so obviusly there was no consideration for how to handle modern telco infrastructure. However, we still need our internet access! Unlike modern homes that hide network cables neatly inside their walls, we have nowhere to discretelly put them. The wires come in from under the street into a utility room, and are just run to every unit along the outside of the building. This leads to some pretty hilarious cabling jobs when the network technicians from various cable and internet providers come by to hook something up.
This next picture shows the the box where the different units are split from the the main lines. This picture was taken AFTER one technician reorganized the cables. Before that, there was a large nest about 3 feet in diameter that included several garbage bags?:
From there, they are snaked along the outside walls to each unit:
(notice the brick facade covering the original brownstone)
This one is my favorite. I guess the technician didn’t see where the other cables originated and needed a way to connect a unit from inside the the utility room. He just drilled a hole through the door frame and ran a separate cable up the wall to the 5th floor. He also didn’t bother to fasten it to the wall, so it just flaps in the wind and gets snagged every time someone opens the door (thanks Xfinity!):
Even with all this nonsense, we still have pretty reliable Internet and TV service in an old Victorian era building… so I can’t complain.