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.
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.