BT 'master' socket -

[Taylortwocities]

Hi, and welcome


But I'm interested in your comment re wire 3. I thought that was just passed through on the home broadband/phone filter. Can you explain a little more.

Tks

 

[GeoffGrove]

Hi Taylor,

The bell circuit used to be used to make all other sockets in the house ring. The master contains a capacitor which makes it ring.
So 1 pair of wires is used for the line (dial tone and making calls, terminal 2 and 5) but this 1 bell wire acts as an aerial and picks up all kinds of things, slowing down the broadband.
Reverting to just the 1 pair keeps the line 'Balanced' which is why you don't need a phone line to be wired with screened cable. The twist in each pair in the cable means electromagnetic interference is canceled out.
The ADSL filter contains the capacitor so all phones will still ring - without the bell circuit.
Hope this helps everyone.

 

[bernardgreen]

The best way to improve ADSL is to separate ADSL from phone service at the Master Socket using a filtered front plate with an ADSL output ( the incoming line un-filtered ) and a phone service output ( the incoming line filtered to prevent ADSL signals affecting the phone service, )

This avoids the need for micro- filters at each phone.

More importantly ( for ADSL ) it prevents the phone wiring affecting the ADSL signal. One affect is reflections of the ADSL signal from stubs of cable in the phone wiring. A stub is a branch or spur to a phone socket. An ADSL signal that reaches the end of a cable where there is no ADSL load is reflected back and these reflections degrade the ADSL signal.

Using the filtered front plate allows the phone wiring to be as planned with bell service on wire 3 avoiding excessive capacity in the ring circuit which can increase the risk of ring trip. Ring trip is when the exchange considers the phone to have been answered when it has not been answered.

 

[kbdiy]

Hi Bernard,

So when you suggest separating the ADSL and phone service, what do you suggest using for the best physical connections?

 

[bernardgreen]

I fit an NTE 5 with filtered front plate at the location of the modem ( router )

he A B terminals of this ( my NTE 5 ) are connected by a pair to the unfiltered output from the existing BT ( OpenReach ) master socket. No filter there.

The router plugs into the ADSL socket on my NTE 5 and all phones are wired with two pair from the filtered output of that NTE 5

I use normal CW1308 telephone cable ( beware of poor quality so called "telephone cable" which does not have enough twists per metre ) and find it is perfectly adequate for ADSL. Using CAT 5 for ADSL from BT master and the modem ( router ) can degrade the ADSL signal due to impedance mismatch between phone cable and CAT 5 cable

 

[GeoffGrove]

Yes Bernard is absolutely right and even when the bell circuit is removed, a filtered front plate still makes further improvements and works very well.
I've tested speed with and without a plate in a few situations and it undoubtedly made a big difference each time.
I recommend fitting one too if your extension wiring is causing a drop in speed.

 

[fabgav]

Very edited to how I last read it lol

My orig question was with regards to extending the external 'dropwire'

Mainly, what wire can I use to extend it on the out-side ready to bring into house and a new master socket

 

[bernardgreen]

It would seem that Openreach failed to inspect the way their cable was terminated at you house to ensure it was properly terminated in a way that was suitable for BroadBand ( ADSL ) service. If this inspection was part of the agreement between OpenReach and the new ISP then OpenReach did not do everything they should have done.

You could try asking your new ISP to arrange at their expense for OpenReach to fit an NTE 5 to enable you to have full benefit of the service they ( the ISP ) are going to provide to you.

Explain that without an NTE 5 you cannot get the expected ( claimed ) downn load speeds. Also mention that OpenReach did not come out to site ( your house ) to ensure the installation was up to standard for good quality ADSL service.

 

[GeoffGrove]

Hi Fabgav,
You need to purchase on ebay some dropwire as it's known. That's the black cable BT use from the pole to your first master socket (assuming you are fed overhead). It's a good weatherproof external black cable and is the only thing that BT would run (other than a coloured leadin cable).
Don't use normal white internal cable outside as it will degrade with UV and crack up after a while.
It has 4 cores, orange and white form the main pair, with green and black being the second pair for an additional line. You just need 2 wires for your line to work.
Hope it all goes well for you, if you need pictures of the colour codes see telephoneextensionsocket dot com for some pictures. If you need to terminate the wires in the bladed type IDC connectors use the correct tool or you will damage the socket.

 

[fabgav]

great info Geoff thanks.

The cables I have are black thick cable from pole to house which is on a tensioner thing, then 2 cables go into 2 separate jellies and coming from them is a 2 wire tick grey cable running down the outside and into the house as per picture of first photo.

So what is this grey stuff?

 

[GeoffGrove]

That Grey stuff is an older version of dropwire. It's like solid core speaker cable. Your broadband will work fine down it - in fact it's suprising just what your poor telephone line goes through to get to your house! Joint boxes full of water, aluminium cable, etc etc
When you strip the black dropwire BE CAREFUL.
It has 3 yellow (or red) steel support wires in it to prevent it from stretching as it spans to the pole. These are VERY SHARP. AVOID TOUCHING THE ENDS as it's like a syringe needle. Cut these back to 1cm, bend over and wrap insulating tape round them and the cable sheath to keep out of your way. Then using the jelly crimps join the 2 cables colour to colour, 4 crimps.
Terminate your master socket A and B connections on the Orange White, and forget the earth connection if it's present. This is not req.
All should work fine!

 

[bernardgreen]

The photos show the old figure 8 type of drop wire.

This is invariably jointed using screw terminals as the metal, which for reasons of strength is not pure copper, is too hard for reliable IDC connections. Also the thickness of the insulation requires a large aperture in the crimp leading to possible mis-alignment of wire to forks.

 

[SimonH2]

jj4091 - all those links are to new 5 wire cable.

my drop wire is two wire, and a lot thicker than one of those cables.
So i dont see how this would work

5 pair actually.
Most of the network runs on multipair cable - they just don't use the spares. Standard dropwire now has two or three pairs as I guess they've found it's easier (= cheaper overall) to put spare pairs in and not use them than to need extra pairs where someone wants more than one service. Though people having multiple lines has reduced somewhat these days when nearly everyone has a mobile.

Typically they'd just connect the blue pair, and the rest would be spare.