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[TWHH]

Hi there,

I am a completely ignorant when it comes to ADSL terminology, so please bear with me.

I am in a new house that has Cat5 cabling for the phone extensions. I was told by the builders that they are arranged in a 'daisy chain'.

I used to have my BT modem in the loft (where I had managed to get the builders to put a phone outlet and power point). I was getting about 4Mbs across wi-fi from my Mac two floors below. However I changed to a different wi-fi hub and the signal strength dropped. So I moved everything downstairs, plugged the modem into a different extension and hard wired everything.

Not sure if moving the set up is significant or not, but shortly after this speedtest.coo.uk was giving me speeds of less than 1Mbs.

I called BT and did their test. My IP profile was set at 1000 even though the DSL speed was over 3000. The Indian call centre sent out the engineer. From the Master Socket they pulled over 6000. I've replicated this, but my IP Profile is still set too low - at 2000. So far nobody at BT has accused me of using up too much bandwidth, so as far as I'm aware I'm not being throttled.

I want to avoid isolating the ADSL at the Master Socket with the Filtered Faceplate that they left me with as it will mean having messy wiring. So I have 2 questions:

1) According to the BT Shop website as my Master Socket has 'Openreach' on it I can't use an I-Plate. Is this right? If so is there an alternative?

2) Which colour wire should I disconnect from the extension wiring if I want to try an stop interference for the bell/ring wire? Is it the white wire with a thing orange stripe or the solid orange wire?

Many thanks

[oldfogy]

2) Which colour wire should I disconnect from the extension wiring if I want to try an stop interference for the bell/ring wire? Is it the white wire with a thing orange stripe or the solid orange wire?

Sorry I'm not going to be of much help to you but.

You need to find out the numbers that the cables are connected to.
(Whoever connected it originally may not have used a standard colour code)

"If" memory serves me right, No 2 & 5 are the main phone connections and number 3 is the bell ringer connections.
Try number 3, if it's the wrong one all that will happen is you get a dead line, so you can just reconnect it.

[roseway]

From your description it looks as though the house is fairly large and the extension wiring is quite long. So I suppose it's possible that the ring wire is picking up a lot of interference and reducing your connection speed so much. The iPlate would isolate the ring wiring from the ADSL and will probably make an improvement. I don't know what the BT shop meant by that comment, unless you have an old-fashioned (not NTE5) master socket, which doesn't seem likely. If your master socket looks like the pictures here then you can use an iPlate and will probably benefit from it.

The other possibility is that the builders wired up your house incorrectly, connecting the wiring directly into the back of the master socket. Extension wiring should be connected to the master socket faceplate, and if it isn't then the iPlate won't help. In this case, the proper course of action would be to get BT to correct the wiring, but this will of course cost money. You're not really allowed to touch the wiring at the back of the master socket, so the only 'legal' route is to get BT to do it.

If the extension wiring is correctly done, and you want to try the cheap option of disconnecting the ring wire, then you need to carefully remove any wires connected to pin 3 in the master socket faceplate. The only wires which are needed are those connected to pins 2 and 5, so if any of the other connectors have wires in them you could remove those too. Don't cut them, just pull them out carefully, in case you ever need to reconnect them.

[Ezzer]

If you have an nte marked openreach then the face plate will have a choke for the bell wire, so effectively it is an I-plate.

Try the router temporararly in the test socket of the nte and see what results you get then, if there is a difference thats when a full dsl face plate would come into the equation

[HPsauce]

I am in a new house that has Cat5 cabling for the phone extensions.

Can you clarify things a bit more please, e.g.

Is there a central "patch panel" that all the extensions come back to?
Where is the incoming BT line terminated and where is the BT Master Socket?
What type of sockets are they on the phone extensions? (e.g. BT, RJ45, RJ11 etc.)
How do you know it is Cat5 cable? (this is 8-core UTP)

[TWHH]

Hi,

Thanks for all your quick and informative responses.

The house I live in isn't huge - it's a 4 bed detached (so I shouldn't be picking up any interference from a neighbour's electrical cabling). It's a 2 storey + loft, which is where my modem and wireless router (Apple Time Machine) used to be stationed. Being a new house there are phone sockets everywhere:
Ma

• ster socket
  Study
  Living room x2 (for phone and then for TV/Sky)
  Master bedroom x2
  Bedroom 2
  Bedroom 3
  Bedroom 4
  Loft

I have since found out that as the previous poster commented the Master Socket with an Openreach includes and iPlate.

What is the consensus on whether an iPlate is as good as disconnecting the bell wire. Is it worth disconnecting the bell wire in the extenson sockets as well?

I have a confession to make. Don't groan too loudly... I remembered that we had plugged in a phone in the bedroom. Guess what? It didn't have a splitter. I unplugged the phone last night and on BT's speed tester sight this morning I got a DSL download of 4160 (but against a IP Profile of 1750!)

So I have managed to get the ~6600 from the Master to reduce to 'only' 4160, but that still seems like a big drop for a new house (assuming builders are aware of things like electromagnetic interference these days - well, if they're using Cat5 you'd think so...) where the wiring is more  likely to be of better quality.

I know this to be Cat5 cabling as the builders told me it was (hold on though  ). I also saw the house when it was at first fix and the bright yellow cabling was certainly not standard telephone extension cable. Their are 4 sets of coupled wires (so 8 individual wires). I can't see any kind of patch panel anywhere (would I be able to or would it be hidden behind the master socket? There does seem to be  lot of unconnected Cat5 wires in behind the Master Socket -  I don't want to poke around too much in there. Also, when BT's engineers came out they confirmed it was Cat 5 and they dodn;t make any comments about what they saw behind the Master Socket. The extension sockets are 'standard' BT phone sockets.

Not sure what is what is meant by 'where is the BT line terminated' but if this is the point where is enters the house, it comes up form the ground up the wall about 2 ft and in through the wall. This is all covered with a plastic shield about 21/2 inches wide. This is a new development so all the service are underground rather than via telegraph poles to each property. The Master socket is just the other side of a small coat cupboard (where all the meters are). It is fixed on the wall in the hallway. It is from this master socket that I can get a DSL rate of ~6600. BT also checked the line outside the house and said that was drawing a good speed. It definitely seems to be an issue with what happens after the Master Socket

Regarding one of the previous posts, BT installed the master socket, so anything behind that wasn't done by the builders. All they have done is the extension daisy chain (is a daisy chain the same as a 'star'?).

Any further thoughts would be very much welcomed - I really don't want to start stapling wiring through door framings and acros my skirting board.

Many thanks

[HPsauce]

Not sure what is what is meant by 'where is the BT line terminated' but if this is the point where is enters the house, it comes up form the ground up the wall about 2 ft and in through the wall.


 BT installed the master socket,

 (is a daisy chain the same as a 'star'?).

Sometimes the Master Socket is installed well away from the incoming line and any junction box on it. Yours sounds fine.

A daisy chain would be unusual, it is where the cable runs from one socket to the next then on to the next and so on.
A star would be where every socket has it's own single cable leading back to a central point.
There are 2 easy ways to tell:
1. Does every socket (except the end of the daisy chain) have 2 wires coming into it, like a ring-main power socket? No=star.
2. Is there just one cable or lots connected to the removeable faceplate (or a nearby junction box)? Lots = star.

You list a very large number of extension sockets, are they all "live"?

As for builders knowing about interference, don't make me laugh 

And yes, pulling out all superfluous connections everywhere is a very good idea - both at the sockets and any central point.
You only need 2 and 5 connected.

[TWHH]

A-ha, the plot thickens... Maybe.


Shortly after we moved in I had a power and TV point in the bedroom moved from shin height to further up the wall. I asked the sparky just to place one single power outlet and the TV point. A blank plate was left where the original phone point/TV/Sat was.

I've just taken that off and found 2 Cat5 cables with four of the wires twisted together and taped with electrical tape. I'm presuming these were cables feeding the Phone socket and then the second cable going to the next socket in the house..?

The other sockets I have locked at have one set of wires/cable 'entering' the extension, and then one set 'leaving' the socket, so it sounds like it is a star/daisy chain.

Could this be the cause of the signal drop? Is there anything, other than standard junction boxes, that I could use to better join the two cables together?

Thanks

[roseway]

Twisting wires together and covering with insulating tape isn't the best arrangement, but unless the work is very shoddy it's probably OK. Ideally it should be tidied up with a proper telephone junction box - you can get these in places like Homebase and B&Q.

I would just pull out all the wires in the master socket faceplate except those connected to pins 2 and 5, and see how it is after that. Pulling out the superfluous wires in the extension sockets won't hurt, but it won't make any difference either.

[HPsauce]

It sounds like a daisy-chain.
In itself that is not bad as effectively you just have a single phone cable. It's branching cables in a "star" that cause the most problems with broadband.
However, with that number of sockets you've got a lot of cabling, all of which will have the ring-wire connected and acting as a huge aerial picking up interference.

Disconnect everything, everywhere you can, except the cores on 2 and 5, including at the master socket.
(and don't forget the loft)
Just to be safe do it step by step and check the sockets still work as you go.

[HPsauce]

Pulling out the superfluous wires in the extension sockets won't hurt, but it won't make any difference either.

In my experience it can, because interference can be fed back from the ring wire via devices plugged in to the sockets.
If they have high-quality filters this shouldn't happen, but better safe than sorry and some cheap filters do just pass the ring-wire through. 

[waltergmw]

Hi TWHH,

1.  You've said you get better performance in the master socket

2.  Even Apple Macs can get wireless problems due to house construction, neighbours etc. etc.

I suggest placing the modem in the master socket and distributing the ethernet signal around the house using home plugs such as:-

http://www.netgear.com/Products/PowerlineNetworking/PowerlineEthernetAdapters.aspx

but ensure you buy from a UK supplier such as:-

http://www.ebuyer.com/

so you get ones with 13A fittings and not US or EU ones.

Kind regards,
Walter

[HPsauce]

It's a shame the builers just daisy-chained the cables.
Having used proper Cat5 they should have done a star setup back to a central point with multiple cores to each socket and a proper small patch-panel.
Then you could distribute your broadband service as a wired LAN to computers or wireless access points as convenient.

Wouldn't have cost significantly more to do it right at first fix stage. 

[TWHH]

OK, so we're making progress. Good progress.


I'm now getting ~5500 (just gone back to the test result and the page refreshed - arh). IP profile still stuck at 1750 - do I just have to sit and wait on that one?

I've removed all the wires except for those connecting to 2 & 5 on the master socket extension attachment. (Suggests the isolation properties of the Openreach Master Socket are not as good as disconnecting the wires!)

Realistically, is ~5500 now the best I can expect from a Master Socket that was achieving ~6600? If I can get the IP profile sorted out I'll kinda be happy with ~5Mbs broadband, but if I can squeeze anymore out I'll give it a go. So, is it worth doing any of the following:


1) Disconnect the bell wire from all the extension sockets
2) Tidy up the taped together wires with a junction box
3) (Not ever ever ever plug a phone straight into a socket without a splitter again) 


Apart from isolating at the Master Socket (and running a wire around the place - I have no power socket near the Master Socket so placing the modem here as previously suggested isn't an option unfortunately) is there anymore I could be doing/trying?

As an aside, is it possible to make a guess as to what sort of speed I could get when ADSL2 comes to my exchange with these results?

Thanks once again for all your help and suggestions - this is certainly a very helpful forum. Certainly more help then an Indian call centre and a visit from the Openreach boys!

[HPsauce]

IP profile still stuck at 1750 - do I just have to sit and wait on that one?

3 or 4 days probably.

As stated before I'd remove all but 2 and 5 everywhere.
And double-filter any DECT phone and Sky box.