Faulty BT Line

[Harry Bloomfield]

Now, I'm no expert, but if the cable is coming from a pole about 50 feet away, and to that from a cabinet well up the street, would another 20 feet or so make the signal so much weaker?

No, it would probably make little difference, but...

Could you not have the cable dropped into your loft, with master and router located in the loft? From there you would be able to run cables to where ever suits and it would give you wifi coverage with a better spread throughout. Nothing to stop you running a CAT6, from there to a second repurposed old router, for even better coverage.

 

[KEEP SAFE]

Our line is still going faulty,mainly at night after 6pm and comes back on in the
early hours.
BT will not send anymore engineers out,saying if no fault found we'll be charged £80 per visit!
You couldn't make it up!

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

Our line is still going faulty,mainly at night after 6pm and comes back on in the
early hours.
BT will not send anymore engineers out,saying if no fault found we'll be charged £80 per visit!
You couldn't make it up!

Escalate it, in writing, with a list of all the visits and the number of times you have asked them to sort it. Ask them to install some line monitoring kit, just to confirm you have a fault. Do you have broadband on the line - how is that?

Have you tried alternative phones, plugged directly into the test socket in the Master?

 

[KEEP SAFE]

Broadband is unaffected and yes have tried alternative phones.
Have a ringback booked for tomorrow (Friday) so will suggest line monitoring.
If no joy we're off to Virgin.

 

[JBR]

No, it would probably make little difference, but...

Could you not have the cable dropped into your loft, with master and router located in the loft? From there you would be able to run cables to where ever suits and it would give you wifi coverage with a better spread throughout. Nothing to stop you running a CAT6, from there to a second repurposed old router, for even better coverage.

Thanks. That's a thought.
However, that part of the loft is difficult to access and is not boarded over. Presumably, if the visiting engineer put his foot through the ceiling they'd cover the cost of repairs and redecorating - maybe!
Even worse, if I went up there to install the router, the same problem might arise and, to make matters worse, going by the number of times I have to re-start the Virgin router(!), I may be visiting it quite frequently.
Is it not possible to run CAT6 cable directly from the master socket to a router downstairs? This is what I don't really understand about 'master sockets', that presumably you can't simply extend directly from them for some reason without a loss of signal.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

Thanks. That's a thought.
However, that part of the loft is difficult to access and is not boarded over. Presumably, if the visiting engineer put his foot through the ceiling they'd cover the cost of repairs and redecorating - maybe!

Could you not fix some boards down? You can buy narrow T&G boards specially made to fit through a hatch.

Is it not possible to run CAT6 cable directly from the master socket to a router downstairs? This is what I don't really understand about 'master sockets', that presumably you can't simply extend directly from them for some reason without a loss of signal.

Not really - the master needs to be close to your router. CAT6 is for the LAN side of the router and can easily be run 100yards without a problem.

As said before - My line comes in via my loft, to a Master and router in the loft. It never needs resetting, but being lazy, I have it powered via an RF remote control socket adaptor. I could just as easily simply go into the understairs cupboard and switch the loft power off. Nothing to stop you from installing a 13amp socket for a router in the loft, fed from the upstairs lighting circuit, proving you clearly mark is for router only.

 

[winston1]

Nothing to stop you from installing a 13amp socket for a router in the loft, fed from the upstairs lighting circuit, proving you clearly mark is for router only.

Except common sense. Bad practice to put a 13 amp socket on the lighting circuit.

Anyway modern electronics has no place in the loft which can get to in excess of 40 degrees C in a heat wave as we had recently.

 

[SUNRAY]

Thanks. That sounds encouraging. However, I'm not sure what effect the 'filtered front plate' would have on the signal, once you've gone beyond it. Perhaps that's what the engineer was referring to.

Not really - the master needs to be close to your router. CAT6 is for the LAN side of the router and can easily be run 100yards without a problem.

Bear in mind this is a phone line being discussed and the length of a phone line can be several miles.

The filter applied basically filters the telephone port and leves the modem port almost unaffected. Therefore the modem port is still pretty much a raw phone line and can be extended a long way without effect (assuming you are not on the limit of service).
I have the tools and materials so made a cable with cat5 or 6 with 6P4C plugs, arrowed red:

I happen to have the filter in the master socket (Just noticed the screws are missing) but the 'micro filter' supplied with the router is electrically the same thing.

The cable runs up inside the plasterboard wall to the loft, across to theother side of the house, down the wall to floor level, from the front to back of house, down to the router. Total length according to the cable markings 04421 to 04495 so 74 feet.

I have done the same thing in an emergency fix on a farm with a full 500m drum of FST (foil screened twisted pair normally used for audio circuits in AV installations), IIRC the speed dropped by about 10% but I never established if that was due to the remote locations long line or the cable/way it was extended. I'll add that this is something I get involved with with event works.

 

[JBR]

Thank you both.
I wondered about the master socket and its restrictions. Too much to expect Openreach to bring the cable down and along either through the house or on the outside wall so that the master socket is really where I'd like it.
Winston is quite correct: our loft does get like an oven in the hot weather!
Thanks also Sunray (just arrived). So it does sound NOT to be impossible!
I'll have to think about this further. I think I'd find it easier to run the extension from the modem socket down through the floorboards and along underneath the floors into the living room, where it can come up again into a new socket. Easier that than messing about with wall plaster, and I've been down into the bowels of the earth before!

Since our visit from Openreach, I've been looking at other options and found that Vodaphone provides 5G broadband ('5G Home Broadband'), which can be as fast or even faster than fast fibre.
Luckily, we appear to be within Vodaphone's local 5G area, so that sounds quite promising. I've yet to look into this further regarding reliability and pricing, but it seems that it could be a viable option.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

Bear in mind this is a phone line being discussed and the length of a phone line can be several miles.

Yes, I am well aware of that my own modem in the loft had to be extended and I too have the tools to do it. The OP likely does not, there his modem needs to be reasonably near his Master.

 

[Diver Fred]

Sky and BT are now part of the same organisation ,

No, no connection between the 2 competitors.

Open Reach are responsible for cabling , any faults are referred to Open Reach whoever the provider is , BT customers have priority over other providers with Open Reach . So if one is not with BT one has to wait in line .

A well quoted failacy. What does happen is the jobs are allocated on a strictly time of arrival into the queue and handed out to the field Tech's in the same order - which means it is very rare the Tech see's repeat or neighbouring jobs hence recurring jobs take even longer to solve.

Trying to contact Open Reach is mission impossible.

True.

 

[Diver Fred]

Thanks. That sounds encouraging. However, I'm not sure what effect the 'filtered front plate' would have on the signal, once you've gone beyond it. Perhaps that's what the engineer was referring to.

There is an 'unfiltered' connection point inside the filtered faceplate for entirely this reason.

 

[JBR]

There is an 'unfiltered' connection point inside the filtered faceplate for entirely this reason.

Thanks. Sunray mentioned that there could be (should be?) a separate (unfiltered) modem socket alongside the telephone socket on the faceplate, and I could extend from there without any loss of signal (or whatever it's called).

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

Thanks. Sunray mentioned that there could be (should be?) a separate (unfiltered) modem socket alongside the telephone socket on the faceplate, and I could extend from there without any loss of signal (or whatever it's called).

There is a line test socket behind the faceplate, that is unfiltered. Idea is - that you, or the engineer can plug a known good, basic phone in there to test the line directly. It means there are no extensions plugged in, so you or the engineer can work out whether a fault in internal to your system, or external and part of an Openreach issue to deal with. You should always carry out this test first, before reporting a fault, it may save you a callout fee.

An flexible extension can be plugged into that test socket, a filter added to the other end of the extension, that then allows the modem and a phone to be plugged into the filter.

 

[SUNRAY]

Thanks. Sunray mentioned that there could be (should be?) a separate (unfiltered) modem socket alongside the telephone socket on the faceplate, and I could extend from there without any loss of signal (or whatever it's called).

Just to clarify, the 'normal' master socket has just the one socket on the removable front plate to take the phone. The plate in my pic (Which I purchased) contains a filter. It does the same thing and is used in the same way as the filter supplied with the router.