---
title: "Fibre to the Node (FTTN) and your home or office cabling"
description: "nbn can be quick to blame customer cabling for slow speeds and dropouts on Fibre to the Node — but can the cabling in your house really cause such a problem? In short, yes."
url: "https://dev.www.lightningip.com.au/insights/your-homes-cabling"
canonical: "https://dev.www.lightningip.com.au/insights/your-homes-cabling"
updated: "2019-06-07"
---

# Fibre to the Node (FTTN) and your home or office cabling

nbn can be quick to blame customer cabling for slow speeds and dropouts on Fibre to the Node — but can the cabling in your house really cause such a problem? In short, yes.

## Is my premises cabling really causing slow speeds?

nbn can be quick to conclude that customer cabling is the culprit for slow speed issues and dropouts — but can the cabling in your house cause such a problem?

In short, yes.

Your internal cabling can make a significant difference to the stability and speed of your nbn Fibre to the Node service.

Let's take a trip back in time, to when our telephone network simply handled plain old telephone services (or POTS for short).

Generally, the wiring inside your home didn't really matter too much — as long as the wires were connected, you could hear the person on the other end.

There were two typical ways in which homes were cabled: "daisy-chained" or "star topology".

![Star topology home cabling diagram](https://cms.lightningip.com.au/assets/eb9dc2d6-4464-4436-95fc-ddfafcd4c70f)

![Daisy-chain home cabling diagram](https://cms.lightningip.com.au/assets/90e4d231-12a7-440f-9f3f-23d8241a05bc)

## So what difference does this cabling make?

The attainable data rates for the daisy-chain and star configurations are shown in the graph below. (The baseline data rates were measured at 86.7 Mbps downstream and 32.9 Mbps upstream.)

![Attainable FTTN data rates by cabling configuration](https://cms.lightningip.com.au/assets/b8ba7518-503f-4eb5-88a6-8e9793a341ca)

As you can see, star and/or daisy-chained cabling can significantly reduce your line's maximum attainable rate (maximum throughput speed).

In this particular study, the daisy-chain configuration saw a 47% reduction downstream and a 1% reduction upstream. In the star configuration, there was a 62% reduction downstream and a 23% reduction upstream.

## What can I do?

For the best performance on the nbn Fibre to the Node network, we recommend contacting a local licensed telecommunications cabler to have your home cabling remedied.

New and old homes can both benefit from premises cabling remediation, and nbn frequently requests that a customer's internal cabling be checked to help resolve a fault.