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[JamesK]

As the Cat 6 shorter length RJ11 lead had the effect of lowering my SNR, I replaced it with the original Huawei supplied RJ11 lead. As I left the modem powered off for 40 mins I took a photo inside the socket. I didn't realise there was another socket previously connected. The OR engineer must've disconnected it when I told him I only wanted the one master socket to be live.

I'm going to take a look at the grey box on the front of the house tomorrow.

[burakkucat]

Ah ha. That shows there is at least one other socket -- now no longer operating -- somewhere in the house.

Hopefully the contents of the external grey box will just show the other end of that white internal CW1308 cable joined to the service cable.

[JamesK]

I've never known a house to have so many phone sockets. There's one in every room, except bathrooms. So about 7 in total. It took the OR engineer a while to figure out how they were all connected.

[JamesK]

This morning I removed the grey box outside the house. The cabling was much more messy than I was expecting, so did my best to tidy it up before taking photos. I've put together a crude diagram of how everything was connected in case the photos still aren't clear (click all the images to enlarge them)

Cable 1 goes to the master socket where the modem is connected, the OR engineer taped it to the BT drop cable. Cable 2 feeds most of the other phone sockets in the house which are now disconnected.





I wasn't expecting the BT drop cable to have so many cables contained within it. Is it normal for there to be several white cables? I was expecting all the cables to be uniquely identifiable.

I was surprised to see the blue cables between cable 1 and 2 connected together. However, thinking back I'm sure the OR engineer thought I had more knowledge of BT cabling than I actually did. When he was here I was busy crimping CAT6 ethernet cables and punching down cables into ethernet wall plates. He did make a comment that he'd wired cable 2 up in such a way that if I wanted to re-instate the other phone sockets I'd just have to move specific cables across outside. As we'd only recently moved in, and the house was in chaos I didn't pay too much attention to what he was trying to show me outside the house.

Why are the white/orange and orange/white cables from Cable 1 connected to the BT drop cable? They aren't connected to anything in the master socket in the house. If they aren't needed I was surprised the OR engineer didn't disconnect them. The remainder of the cables in the BT drop cable aren't connected to anything (3 x white, 1, Green, 1 x Grey, 1 x Brown)

Does all the cabling look ok? Is there anything I should do to tidy it up or improve things?

Many Thanks... James

[waltergmw]

Hi James,

It looks as if you have a 10 pr feed into your property.
I'd guess at one stage more than one line was active and hence the blue pairs would have gone somewhere else in your birds-nest !

Assuming your connected green pair doesn't go anywhere else and not "daisy-chained" into any other sockets, then you have a reasonable configuration.
A simple test can be done by taking a corded phone around every socket to check there is no dial tone.
Probably only as a cosmetic exercise and assuming you definitely only have one phone number active, I might be tempted to separate the blue pairs by cutting away those two crimps.

If ever you need another live socket ensure that it is connected to the standard bottom half of the master socket front plate.

The grey box is called a BT66 box.

Kind regards,
Walter

[JamesK]

Thanks Walter.

The OR engineer mentioned that he thought a second phone line may have been active at some point in the past. There's definitely only one number active.

Would it not also be beneficial to cut the orange and white wire crimps off as well? These aren't connected in the master socket. Is it possible these unused lines could be causing noise on the active line? Attached picture to show wires I'd cut.

Is there anything else I should do inside the BT66 box to ensure any noise is kept to a minimum? Should the unused wires be bundled together with electrical tape?

[waltergmw]

Hi again James,

I couldn't see clearly enough where the orange pair was connected but if you're sure that there aren't any adjacent houses / flats using that pair you could cut the orange ones as well.
I've seen some tight-twist individual pairs but then just push them out of the way. You don't want to be creating a transformer effect.

Perhaps BS can comment, but unless there are horrendous amounts of REIN about I suggest it should not make too much difference provided every unused wire is definitely open cct.

Kind regards,
Walter

[burakkucat]

A few comments from The Cattery . . .

It is clear that you are provided with an underground feed, so you do not have an aerial 'drop cable' but a service feed. The service feed, the black cable, is actually a five pair cable (Walter has counted the wires but has failed to divide the result by two!) and it does appear that there were two separate lines installed at some time in the past. Regarding the ten wires in the service feed cable. Yes, five coloured wires and five white wires is quite correct. If you could see under the sheath you would discover that each coloured wire is twisted with one particular white wire, making a distinct pair. Hence it is important that a coloured wire is used with its corresponding white wire. Failure to do so results in a split pair (often referred to a split legs) which will be the source of poor xDSL performance of the circuit (and possible 'overhearing' with the telephony circuit).

Your proposal to remove the two pairs of crimps (linking the blue pairs of cables 1 & 2 and linking the orange pair of cable 1 to the orange/white pair of the service feed cable) makes perfect sense.

There is one thing that is not obvious to me. Behind the NTE5/A are two white CW1308 specification cables. One of them definitely carries the incoming pair from the service cable via its green pair. I assumed that the second white cable behind the NTE5/A was connected to the lower front faceplate and was the feed to the other extension sockets in the house. If my assumption is correct, then the second cable visible outside is not the second cable seen behind the NTE5/A! Possibly the second white CW1308 specification cable seen outside runs to another master socket somewhere in the house, from the time when a second line was also operative?

[JamesK]

Thanks for all the feedback on the wiring. It certainly helps me to have a good understanding of how everything is connected.

Cable 2 in the diagram goes directly to the original master socket located in the kitchen on the ground floor of the house. This is only about a metre from where the service cable is presented on the external wall. Most other extensions are wired off that master socket.

When the OR engineer arrived I said that I definitely didn't want the modem and router to be installed in the kitchen, and if possible wanted them to be installed on the top floor where a socket was present.

If memory serves, there was some confusion as the socket where the modem is connected now just looked like an extension socket, the same as the other rooms (except kitchen) and not a master socket. The OR engineer said the wiring suggested a 2nd line had been installed at one point, and that socket would've been a master socket for that line. Strangely one of the extensions coming the Cable 2/Kitchen master socket did have an NTE5/A faceplate on it. He quickly confirmed it was just an extension and had never been a master. I think the engineer came to the same conclusion as me that someone had been home bodging the wiring.

The other cable behind the NTE5/A in the picture will be connecting another phone extension. My guess will be the phone socket in the bedroom on the same top floor as this socket.

I felt it would be worthwhile to disconnect any wires not needed. Last night when I opened up the NTE5/A to take a picture I tidied the wiring up a bit so the photo would make sense. When I reconnected the modem picked up the D3 band for the first time (albeit with very high attenuation!). Stats attached. I wasn't sure if my wiring tidying had reduced noise somehow. I guess I could be wrong and it's a coincidence.

I'll disconnect the un-needed wires in the BT66 box tomorrow.

[Bald_Eagle1]

Hmmm.

Your attainable rate has decreased & your Hlog graph now doesn't look quite right - a small dip in the D1 band along with a slightly wider gap in D1 bitloading & a spike in the D3 Hlog band.

D3 still looks too high an attenuation level to actually use any of it though.

[JamesK]

Any suggestions on what I should do next with this? I'd had no problems at all until the unexplained BT fault I received a text message about while on holiday.

[JamesK]

Would there be any benefit in having the modem connected to the master socket which is about a metre from where the service feed is presented and then running CAT5/6 ethernet to the router location? Probably about 15/20m from the service feed presentation point.

Would reducing the amount of CW1308 cable to a minimum provide connection speed benefits? Or is the 15/20m of CW1308 currently running to near the router from the service feed point not going to be the major cause of speed issues?

I'm only talking hypothetically here as it would require re-wiring the sockets again, and would probably be a total nightmare getting ethernet chased down to where I need it.

[burakkucat]

Would there be any benefit in having the modem connected to the master socket which is about a metre from where the service feed is presented and then running CAT5/6 ethernet to the router location? Probably about 15/20m from the service feed presentation point.

Quite honestly, it will probably not be worth the effort.

Would reducing the amount of CW1308 cable to a minimum provide connection speed benefits?

Highly unlikely.

Or is the 15/20m of CW1308 currently running to near the router from the service feed point not going to be the major cause of speed issues?

The current configuration looks good enough, to me. 

[JamesK]

I decided to leave my connection for a while, and sourced a new ECI modem from eBay in the hope that matching the kit would help matters. In the time it's been connected I had two DLM forced resyncs on the line. These had the effect of reducing the profile to 23.5mb and now to 19.36mb.

At this point I documented everything I had and contacted BT. This was the most painful experience ever. They insisted the HomeHub was re-connected, the modem re-set. They wanted me to re-run the BT speedtest. Explaining that the profile being set to 19mbps would mean I would not see an increase didn't seem to register. I eventually gave up on the first agent and tried again. The second person was slightly more helpful and has agreed there's an issue. He was going to raise it with the "Network Fault Specialist" team, and I've received some e-mails acknowledging that a fault has been raised.

When doing the tests for BT I used the opportunity to re-connect the HG612 modem so I can start getting stats again. Attached are the latest.

[JamesK]

the final two are attached.

The agent who I spoke said the following about the nature of the fault:

"A hard network fault has been found and so this case will be sent to suppl"

Didn't make a lot of sense to me.