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The cabinet is a bit cleverer than a bullet, but the task there is still a join for each fibre. These connections have often been made when a section first gets its core fibre, so later houses to be connected would not have to wait for splicing at the cabinet, it’s just a simple short wire (a patch lead) that must be plugged in.
The cabinet itself is a large filing cabinet. It has air-conditioning. It has a battery back-up for the broadband system.
Cabinet base being installed.
The specification is available from B4RN. It is slightly different if it is going to be a 2 or 3 door cabinet.
There are big ducts descending from the base to a nearby chamber. The chamber only has to be somewhere close, its position can vary a bit. The cabinet needs an electricity supply.
An important thing about the chamber is that it needs to be somewhere that definitely can't flood - so the plinth may have to be built up a bit.
The cabinet contains two types of flat module things.
One type is a Patch Tray. This contains the other end of everyone's fibre. The fibre in your router backplate is a continuous strand to this box. This box simply puts a connector on the end, just like your backplate box does. A new tray is needed for every 48 houses.
The other box is a Switch. A switch has a socket (called an Optic) for each house, but somehow enables the data from lots of connections to be channelled down into a few fibres.
These lump together in a unit called a Stack, you can connect 192 houses with one stack. 2 stacks fit in a 2-door cabinet and 3 in a 3-door. Thus a 2-door cabinet can supply 384 houses, a 3-door cabinet can supply 576 houses.
And the door on the right hand end leads to the power back-up. There is also a router and a telephone.
The cabinet when it arrives. This is a 2-door cabinet.
In 2 years it could look like this - awesome. A slight hum and many lights.
Trays
Trays
That's what an empty tray looks like, it's got the same sort of plates as the white ones that are inside the bullets
And that's a completed tray.
And that's it in the cabinet. Patching is the simple matter of putting a yellow cable between the correct 2 holes.
Another completed tray
The business end of a switch. The yellow cable is the connection to the next village.
The horse-box trailer at the cabinet
Alistair and Joe working on one of the cabinet trays
The top 2 boxes are Trays, the bottom 2 are Switches
Patching at the cabinet is the act of connecting a wire from one of those round holes on the top rows to one of those squarish holes in the bottom rows.
Left Allen Valleys get their cabinet
Right Preparing a 'tray' for a cabinet.
Joe and Rob are in the B4RN caravan splicing. Joe is demonstrating how an individual fibre is cleaned, then given a perfect cut before being spliced to another fibre.
At 0.52 in the video you can just see the display lining up two white shapes - those are the fibre ends
These are patch leads (the connectors for the cabinet. The cabinet usually has a lot of spare leads available in a pile like this in the cabinet. They come in different lengths.
This is momentous for your village. Even though it might be a year before anyone goes live, the process has begun.
Sedbergh cabinet arrives
The cabinet base is a fairly simple arrangement. A concrete plinth for the green box containing 2 or 3 large ducts which come up into the cabinet and feed back to a nearby 5-ring chamber, plus an electricity supply. So it's fiddling around with the ducts that's the hardest bit.
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