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[rims]

Hello

First the flattery! This is an amazing site, full of fascinating information. Thankyou

Secondly an apology. Not sure if this belongs in this board or not.

If you'll indulge a newbie with what'll no doubt prove to be asinine questios, then may I ask some questions.

I have a BT Home Hub, on a line with the BT main box, and 3 other extensions, one as a spur (4 sockets in toto)

I'm 5 days into the 10 day settling period, with download rates varying wildly, currently between 200 kbs upto 1800 kbs tested, and am able to get slightly better connection rates on the NTE5 test socket (attenuation improves by 2dB)


1) "According to BT, the actual line rate supportable will be determined during the first 10 days of use, after which time the highest stable rate possible will be set".  Lots of experimentation means that I've had lots of resets etc, not to mention that we're in the wild countryside here, with overhead lines and lousy weather of late, so I've paid for it the past couple of days with real download rates in the region of 200Kbps. Does the BT statement mean I'm stuck with whatever is set after those first 10 days?

2) My extension wiring is all 4 wire, and not really amenable to re-cabling. If I use the modified ADSL filter Adaptor for the BT NTE5 (the one with 6 connectors) can I use the ring and spare wires (the two orange striped ones to 3 and 4) as internal filtered adsl lines to one or more of the extensions using modular sockets? I'm not sure if they're a twisted pair, seems unlikely uless that's standard phone cabling.

There then won't be a ring signal to any of the extensions, so

a) do modern digial phones need the ring wire anyway? I've noticed my old DECT base station only has two connectors on the cable, so I assume the ring line isn't needed.
b) I know you can have upto two master sockets, which would allow me to reinstate the ring on at least one of the extensions. Does that capacitor/resistor combo degrade/attenuate the signal at all (would I lose some of the benefit of re-jigging it all in the first place!)? And how would I reinstate the ring on the other extensions without additional cabling?

Thanks for the help

[soms]

Yes I expect you could use the orange pair for dedicated ADSL if you liked, especially if connecting to one of your first extensions.

The orange pair is twisted, but in regular telephone cable the twisting isn't very substantial as you have noticed.

With regards to the ring, I have noticed the same thing recently, all my phones seem to have two contacts on their connection cable and produce their own ring signal internally rather than picking it up off the ring wire. Also remember ADSL microfilters produce a ring signal as well so if you have any difficult phones you could just plug it into one of your microfilters, be it on ADSL or not.

It isn't abnormal to use the pairs for different uses, just make sure you make it obvious what it going on, e.g. connect the orange pair from your ADSL filter to your dedicated socket, but do not leave the other orange cables connected to your other sockets, so it is obvious that they are working as another speech pair from your master.

*EDIT*

With regards to a second master socket, you could always use a master faceplate and cut out the test resistor and surge capacitor, leaving the ring capacitor behind. I think it is the test resistor that messes up line testing if you have lots of them!

That provides a way of reinstating the ring signal if you wish to do so.

[roseway]

It's not really a good idea to use the second pair for the ADSL connection. What you have to understand is that the ADSL side is not filtered; only the telephone side is filtered. So if you connect the spare pair to the ADSL side of the filter you won't be much better off than you were before you fitted the filtered faceplate - you'll still have a length of ordinary telephone extension cable picking up interference. If you want to extend the ADSL connection then you should really use good quality Cat5 (or similar) cable.

Modern phones don't generally need the ring connection as they generate their own ring signal electronically. In any event, if you don't fit a filtered faceplate but continue to use plug-in filters then you don't need the ring wire anyway, because the filters contain their own ring capacitors.

So if it's not practical for you to fit a filtered faceplate, then my advice would be to  disconnect the second pair of wires at the master socket, leaving only pins 2 and 5 connected (normally the blue pair of wires).

Eric

[rims]

Thankyou both

I guess the answer is to try it. If it works and the extension works well then I can try the modified master socket. Is it obvious which capacitor is the ring?

With regard to the BT policy - am I going to be stuck with the speed that evolved over the first 10 days, or is it a continuously dynamic process throughout the contract?

Cheers

[kitz]

Hi

>> am I going to be stuck with the speed that evolved over the first 10 days, or is it a continuously dynamic process throughout the contract

Your line is continually monitored through your lifetime on max by the Dynamic Line Management.  It does however take 3 full days of syncing at higher speeds before you will see the increase.

[rims]

Thank you. That's reassuring. I'm now at  the dizzy speed of 400!

Rims

[soms]

Yes the ring capacitor is very obvious - it is large, usually bright yellow in colour and usually situated at the top of the PCB found in most telephone sockets.

I have hand-drawn a diagram of my home wiring. I don't mnd people criticising it or praising it - it works for me either way and since doing it the ADSL has been far better off in all respects.

Phone Wiring (408Kb JPG)

[rims]

Thank you, that's very helpful.

Sadly the extension I need to use is a two floors an the other side of the stairwell to the main BT box, so rewiring would be a bigger job than I'm prepared for. However using the orange pair was an attractive idea. It'll be relatively easy/cheap to try, so I'll give it a go soon before resigning myself to new cables "sometime maybe"