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[snadge]

can anyone tell me what is  RATS TAIL and the purpose of it?

see pic below, it has been used with a splitter and filter to separate the voice and dsl but still continue too carry them along the same extension cable to the router in other room? - what is the point of this and why cant a splitter be used in the other room?

[Ezzer]

From what I can make out you have some extention leads for your normal voice telephony (PSTN/POTS) all connected via the PSTN output of the filter, thats good.

you want as much of any internal wiring to be connected via a filter. The adsl output of the filter is unfiltered so it allows the dsl signal unhindered to go straight through.

the filtering is to obscure any electrical noise in the same frequency as dsl to make itself heard to the router & exchange.

The easyest dsl fault an engineer gets is where the router isn't syncing. Its plugged into a filter ok. But the filter in plugged into and extention lead, and at the other end of the extention lead its plugged into another filter. Into the PSTN output.

I would walk into a property, see an extention plugged into a filter. the router is at the other side of the room, obviously plugged into the other end of the extention via another filter. remove the filter by my feet and hey presto sync. Leaves some time to tweek what wiring there is there.

The look of your set-up is venerable. for your normal telephony. In the short term if thats your filter plugged directly into the NTE test socket and the router is plugged into the filters dsl out put with everything else through the pstn output, then you should be ok as far as DSl is concerned.
For the mid to long term I would look to do some snipping & reterminating via a SSFP face plate to tidy some of this up.

[Black Sheep]

Yes .......... and stop biting your nails !! 

[snadge]

ok, thats not my nails lol... its not my setup either, it someone else's.

so basically you mean electrical noise from the Phone? - because as you say in the above setup you have (from the filter and splitter) one pair carrying a phone signal (POTS/PSTN) and another pair carrying both 'unfiltered' Phone & DSL (but the phone signal in that pair is not used) both pairs and signals are carried all the way along into the living room where there is another bit of obscure wiring going on consisting of one of these "rats tails" (I think) , in this living room both the phone and router are fed... so whats the point of splitting them at the entry point?-  if any electrical noise is going to get into those cables it wont matter whats in which pair will it? because they are in the same cable they are both likely to be affected? I could understand if the modem was used at NTE-5 and phone in other room...but its not.

just cant make any sense of it (yes Iam a thicko..lol) 

the setup above still carries both signals along the same cable.

                                           (in same cable)
NTE-5 -> FILTER -> PSTN---->EXTENSION CABLE TO LIVING ROOM--->PHONE
                 |-----> DSL----->EXTENSION CABLE TO LIVING ROOM--->ROUTER

here you can see below in living room he has used another RATS TAIL (allowing router to be plugged in) and SPLITTER (allowing phone to be plugged in)

seems absolutely POINTLESS and MESSY ..lol

[burakkucat]

seems absolutely POINTLESS and MESSY

Agreed. It is! 

Should really be something like:

                          /---- xDSL service in one pair of cable -----------------------------------|
NTE5/A -- SSFP                                                                                          Pair of sockets, one RJ11 (or RJ45)
                         \                                                                                         and one 'BT' , in the 'living room'.
                           \---- PSTN (POTS) service in another pair of above cable -----|

But you knew that, anyway! 

[snadge]

@ B'Kat - phew! my brain was glowing there trying to make sense of it hehe, Reading back I understand now that Ezzer seems too think the modem is at the NTE-5, which it isnt. (which would have made sense of what he said to me)

this is someone on Sky Forums Iam trying to help who seems to be having Wifi (iPhone) connectivity problems and PS3 Gaming woes (pings from PS3 are high) - ive got him to test the router directly in the test socket at NTE-5 , connected to laptop via LNA with Wi-Fi off and his pings are spot on at 53ms (which is correct for a 5Mb sky LLu profile)... awaiting results from last lot of instructions.. I think he just has bad wifi reception and his 53ms pings are not good enough for his gaming and whatever is doing tests from his PS3 is giving even higher results..

...anyway...I wonder WHY this Engineer has set that it up like that?

[HPsauce]

The only other observation I'd have, not knowing exactly which cable is which, is that their appears to be some "flat" cable in there.

The extension cabling, especially that for the ADSL modem, really ought to be twisted pair, e.g. CW1308, if it's more than a metre long.

[Black Sheep]

The only other observation I'd have, not knowing exactly which cable is which, is that their appears to be some "flat" cable in there.

The extension cabling, especially that for the ADSL modem, really ought to be twisted pair, e.g. CW1308, if it's more than a metre long.

I agree with HP in that the pictures are only telling 1/8 of the story. We've no idea what goes where ?? What I will tell you is, no BT engineer I have met yet (and there's a few dodgy ones), would connect wires in this manner. Why would they ?? None of the stuff you show in the picture is BT/OR issue, so they wouldn't touch it with a barge pole.

[Black Sheep]

Whoops ..... hit 'post' too soon.

I can only imagine when you say 'Engineer', you mean the SKY engineer

[Ezzer]

The sight of those photos made me wince, I was trying to be polite but that is awfull 

Interference can come from the equipment plugged into the extention wiring, but more likely is the cabling itself will pick up interference. So you are trying to isolate as much wiring from the dsl signal as possible.

Having a long cable between the DSL output of the filter and the router increases the odds of that lenght of cable picking up a bit of something for the router to hear. So going for a better quality cable if you can for this link improves the odds in your favour. Which is what HPsauce

The main thing is to filter off what as much of any other wiring and equipment as possible. Looks like that has been done here.

Looking at the wiring they have the other issue is that it seems venerable to creating faults that will affect pstn and DSL regardless of filtering. Being able to visualy see the pairs is a bad sign. Its the outer most insulation thats supposed to take all the physical load of the cable.

Think of the acutual wires, only 0.5mm copper (a very soft metal). They should not be in a situation where they feel the full force of any twisting, pulling, compression. Loosing a bit of the outer insulation at one point will mean the wires will have all the physical loads concentrated at that point.

Usually when you see pictures like these you also get cabling run under carpet