TL;DR

DSL

A bit more context

No, not really. Rather, the abandoned DSL infrastructure left on our property from ages ago. Before you rush to conclusions on the legality of this, let me explain:

Even more context

Background

In our neighborhood, power and telecom come in from the back of each property on a series of utility poles between the backyards. This has led to our neighborhood being one of the most prone to power outages in the area, but that’s a rant for another time. Back on topic, this means that our internet service travels from the telco patch panel on the utility pole out back, all the way to the center of our property, where it enters the house. Along the way, it passes by the detached garage. Now, I believe you can see where this is going.

A stroke of “genius.”

Long ago, we purchased our internet from AT&T on their DSL network. We had since upgraded to their fiber service, leaving the buried DSL cable behind. I’m not going to pretend I know how DSL works, but the idea is essentially delivering internet over the same types of wires that an old telephone service would use, or, a single pair of wires. The cable that AT&T used to send this service to our house actually contained 6 wire pairs. Ethernet only requires 4, and so, one day, I had the idea to try and run ethernet over this abandoned cable.

The process

First, I chatted with an AT&T support rep who assured me they did not care about that old DSL cable. After all, it’s not part of their broader infrastructure and was entirely on our property, serving (not anymore!) us. Then, I tracked the wire down to the utility pole, and started digging where it entered our property. I was able to unbury the wire up to the point where it passes by the garage. I then cut the cable right before it left our property, and rerouted the end into our garage. For an overview: the DSL cable initially ran from the utility pole to the house. It now ran from the garage (close by the utility pole!) to the house.

Success!

The builders of our house had the foresight to include multiple CAT5e runs from our crawlspace (where the internet service enters the house) to the network closet upstairs (where the switch is). I simply spliced one of these runs to the old DSL cable, utilizing 4 of its 6 pairs. I then installed a keystone on the other end of the buried cable, which was now inside the garage. After plugging in an old router flashed with OpenWRT, it managed to create a (mostly) gigabit connection with the router inside the house!

Reflecting on this

This is a hack

I probably got lucky. With longer runs, I doubt you could create a reliable ethernet link over decades old direct bury DSL line. Mine managed to work OK, but your results may vary. This also might be dangerous if your line isn’t properly grounded. I trusted that AT&T’s existing grounding setup would protect my precious electronics in the event of a lightning strike. But don’t count on this. This is why people create these sorts of links with fiber (fiber is really just a lot faster, but the lightning protection is also nice).

Why do this???

WiFi used to be a lot more important for me

When I did all of this, I was probably in 8th grade. I was often tasked with mowing our lawn and wanted to listen to music while doing so. I used Spotify at the time, and didn’t have premium, so I couldn’t offload songs. Why not use cellular? I wasn’t even supposed to have a phone with cellular at the time, but I had managed to find a cheap plan and my dad eventually caved. But it barely had any data. I couldn’t afford to use cellular to stream songs on Spotify while mowing the lawn. If I could somehow install an access point in the garage, it would give our backyard full wifi coverage, enabling uninterrupted listening whilst mowing the lawn.

Not a bad solution if you have 0 budget

Remember, I was a broke middle schooler. There was no way I could afford to extend internet to the garage the right way, either by digging a ditch and running my own fiber, or with a PTP wireless link. I tried this because it had virtually 0 downside if it failed (the cable was abandoned anyway), but it happened to work great!