Broadband Connection

Hi

Can anyone help, I�ve been told my broadband connection should come from the master phone socket rather than an extension socket, as it helps with signal strength.
There is no master socket just a BT cable in the hallway by the front door of my house, needless to say I shan�t be putting my computer hub in the hallway so it is near where the BT cable is.

What type of cable would I need to run from the BT cable to my hub, also would I need to run another cable from it for my telephone??

At the moment I�m with Virgin Media but should I decide to change from them in the future I would like to at least having any cabling in position ready.

The cables will be run under the floor boards and may come into contact with power and lighting cables.
The reason I want to put the cables in now is because the house will be having new carpets and decorating.
The distance from the BT cable by the door to my hub is 24 feet.

Thanks to anyone who can help.

Run cat5 cable between the two points, leaving a coil of maybe a couple of 100mm coming up through the floor boards at either end.

And keep it well away from all power cables?

Yep, that too Bob.

In reply to a post by trooper744:

The cables will be run under the floor boards and may come into contact with power and lighting cables.

Do not run the Cat5 close alongside power and lighting cables.

When current is running they generate a circular magnetic field round themselves, which can seriously upset DSL. A few inches away should be fine.

If they must cross, as near to at right-angles as possible is best.

In reply to a post by trooper744:

Hi

Can anyone help, I�ve been told my broadband connection should come from the master phone socket rather than an extension socket, as it helps with signal strength..

That may be true, but the difference in signal strength by adding 8 metres will be miniscule considering the distance it has already travelled. And then doing as you are considering, putting a cable from the master to a remote location, will be doing exactly what you are trying not to do! So, what do you gain?

I�ve just realised, we haven't directly answered your phone question. As long as the installer of the phone line wires it straight through, and you are meaning ADSLx or FTTC, then only the one cable is needed.

If it would be FTTP then it�s a completely different type of installation and the existing BT wiring possibly redundant depending on whether you required a copper or VOIP type connection for the phone. Considerable disruption of some kind would be inevitable with either option on FTTP.

Edited by RobertoS (Wed 26-Sep-18 12:26:43)

I would strongly suggest installing your router as close to the master socket and then running cat cables to your computers.

I knowe you have said you don't want to, but for what reason?

Hi Guys

Thank you all for your valued replies,


MHC I�m certainly no expert on what cables should or shouldn�t be used for the application I may need it for.
When I said it may affect the signal strength, it�s only something I�d read, so thought it best to come this forum and find out.
I don�t do gaming of any sort so as you said I doubt I will be able to tell the difference, so thank you for telling that it�s one thing less for me to bother about

Richarddawson
The set up I have at present is, my computer tower is wired to the hub and likewise for my printer so I certainly wouldn�t want to run those cables all the way from the router (hub) in the hallway to my study upstairs at the back of the house and I don�t want to connect them wirelessly.

Now promise you won�t laugh; my wife has got an old laptop which she sometimes uses to connect to the internet and as I�m hopeless when it comes to computers I got my son to set it up wirelessly for me.
What can I say, it kept dropping out and I had to keep asking him to set it up again and again but it still kept dropping out, in the end he said it needed a booster in the room where the laptop was.
We put a booster in, ok it worked for a while but then it started dropping out again.
By this time I�d had enough so I went on e-bay and rightly or wrongly bought some cat 6a cable complete with the connectors on each end, stuck one end into the hub and ran under the floor to downstairs connected it to the laptop and bingo it doesn�t drop out any more.
As you can see the laptop, tower and printer are all hard wired to the hub, that�s why I don�t want it in the hallway

RobertoS
If you read my reply to Richarddawso you�ll know you�ve blown me away, ADSLx, FTTC, FTTP, VOIP.
I�d have to scan the internet in the hope I can find out what you are talking about, can you run that by me again please only imagine your talking to someone that hasn�t a clue what all these type cables are, as I said to Richard I bought cat 6a cable for the laptop, it was just a complete gamble if it was the correct cable but it seems to have worked.

Again, this is only what I�ve read; but I understand there are shielded cables out there to buy which can help prevent electro magnetic currents from affecting broadband cables.
The master plan was to run a telephone cable and an ethernet cable from the master point in the hallway under the upstairs floor back to the study where the hub and telephone is.
I�m only putting the cables in place should I need to change providers.

At present the setup provided by Virgin is; I have is a telephone point in the lounge together with its base and another phone in the study which connects wirelessly to the one in the lounge, don�t ask me how it just does.
There is also a Virgin connector for my broadband again in the lounge all these cables come into the house underground, optic fibre I believe.
Ok back to the broadband cable in the lounge there is a plate on the wall and the nearest I can describe it is, it�s like looking at a TV coaxial outlet the data cable or ethernet cable screws into it from there it is buried into the wall up to the ceiling where it travels under the floor into the study at the back of the house and terminates at another plate on the wall much like the one in the lounge.
There is a cable which screws into this plate and the other end screws into the hub and this is what I am using to communicate with you guys.

So, in a nutshell what cables do you fellas think will be ok for my needs, that is for my telephone and also for my broadband??

If I use shielded ones for the computer side of things should I buy it with connectors already fitted to each end I don�t want some engineer sometime in the future saying I can�t fit connectors to that cable mate??

What sort of cable will I need for the telephone??

Do I buy the phone cable again with connectors already fitted??

What are the connectors called, only so I don�t go and buy the wrong thing???


Thank you once again fellas for your time and help

Trooper

Hi Guys

I think I�ve got it wrong about the connectors on the end of the cables as they will be terminated at the back of the face plates ie no connectors required.
I assuming whatever cable is used it will not be a problem to terminate, no doubt someone can put me right.

Without actually seeing what BT cable points are in the house already its difficult to say for sure...

If you are having a BT phone line activated then it will usually include a engineer visit and they will within a reasonable set of rules locate the master socket at place you ask, though things like running it from the hallway up the stairs and into a room upstairs may stretch things. Having some CAT5e Ethernet cable in place with the spare length as suggested will often mean they will happily use that.

On the distance is everything and you don't want a lot of cabling, while true, the effect of 5 to 10m of good cable that rather than cheap aluminium (and if buying CAT5E ensure it is copper and not CCA) is minimal, unless you are going to worry about getting 36 Mbps rather than 37.5 Mbps. On the interference aspect so long as twisted pair cabling is used some proximity to mains wiring where it cannot be avoided should be OK too, i.e. best practice has been quoted at you.

A single run of cat5E will carry both the phone and broadband and you can then split them out using the usual connectors/filters at the final destination and is better than running a 'broadband' and a 'phone' cable.

Ignore all the coax cable and Virgin Media stuff the Openreach installers won't touch it.

Accepting you don't know all the acronyms I posted, (they are the various ways you can get broadband on the BT Openreach network), it does matter that we check one thing. The FTTP type is a completely different kind of setup and your work could well be irrelevant.

Please could you go to the BT Wholesale checker and on that page choose the Address option. Your current phone number won't work and the Postcode option is no use to you either.

If you can upload a screenshot of the results somewhere (remove your address from it but include the rest of the line above the table) then give us a link to it would be brilliant. That will tell us what options you are likely to have. We don't need the text below the table.

Edited by RobertoS (Thu 27-Sep-18 11:46:28)

Hello Roberto

I was just about to take the advice already given on the forum and use cat 5e, but if you don't mind doing a further check before I buy some that would be great.

I'll fit it as Zarjaz suggested leaving a coil of spare at each end just in case some extra cable is needed.

https://www.freephotoupload.com/images/2018/09/27/BT...
https://www.freephotoupload.com/images/2018/09/27/Ca...

Just to recap a single length of CAT 5e is all I will need to do both the telephone and broadband because it has 4 pairs of wires.
The cable in my image is an all copper one so I assume that will do the job.


Thanks again Trooper

The incoming phone line has just 2 wires, 1 pair

You can use the Cat5e to extend that pair to where ever in the home and fit the master socket there, then you connect the microfilter that gives you a phone socket and a DSL socket. A few metres of CAT5e will make little different to the speed, the problems arise when you start adding extension sockets

Worst case scenario and engineer only installs the master in the hall, then connect the cat5e to the extension connectors (and never plug any phones in at the master socket) and at the end install a socket like https://amzn.to/2OVpVY3 which has the filter for phone and a DSL socket built in

That's great. Those VDSL lines are the important ones and will use your planned wiring. The figures shown are the connection speed range you would expect if you ordered a fibre connection. They will help you decide between BT-style fibre and your existing VM service.

Two other points. First, do BT telephone lines there come from poles, or are they underground all the way to inside the house? If they come from a pole and yours were removed then there is a chance you could have the entry point somewhere else. If yours are still there they would normally be used.

Second, you are not forced to buy your non-VM broadband from BT Retail. The lines are provided by Openreach to over a hundred other providers including Sky and TalkTalk, and BT Wholesale supply BT Retail and most of those others with the broadband.

So you can choose between BT Retail, (currently called BT Consumer I think), Sky, TalkTalk, TalkTalk resellers who provide a higher standard product than TalkTalk Retail, and those hundred or so using BT Wholesale.

There is a "Which ISP" forum on this site . And on the Main Site a list of providers and a search facility.

Good luck .

Hello again Roberto

The BT telephone line comes from a post, as far as the figures shown concerning the connection speeds, I really don�t know how much difference the speed would make to me.

Let me put you right in the picture, I�ve been with VM for about 13 years and NTL before that who VM took over, the package I was on with VM was Vivid 200, telephone and TV.
If my wife and I watch TV provided by 6 broadcasting companies that�s as many as we watch.
We don�t watch things like the discovery and history channels, likewise the sports channels, in other words all the TV viewing we do could be watched using Freeview.

I don�t do gaming over the internet either my eyeballs wouldn't keep up with it , but having said that our bill with VM was going to go up to £50 per month so I contacted VM and told them I didn�t need TV in the package and someone there worked a price out for me without TV which came to £55 per month, yes that�s right dearer than with TV in the package balmy or what.

After being in contact with their customer leaving department the deal didn�t seem much better, so I thought it was time for a move.
I must admit other providers speeds seemed much slower but then I got to thinking is it something I could live with given I�m only really using the internet for browsing.
In fact, I�d contacted BT and made arrangements for an engineer to call and make the connections, date all set, when out of the blue I got another phone call from VM, but this time with a better price which will be without the TV in the bundle and a drop to Vivid 100.

I can live with that speed, more than likely I could probably get away with 50mps which is what seems to be on offer from other providers I�ve contacted.

I will stay with VM for now, but as I said some time back in the posting we will be
re-carpeting the house so what better time to put a cable in, it just means I can always go with another provider and don�t have to rip carpets up because I don�t want cables clipped along skirting boards and up door architraves.

All this technology, that�s the problem when one comes from the era when the nearest thing you could get to a calculator was logarithm�s and antilogarithm's or if you were really clever a slide rule.

Again, Roberto I am so very grateful for your time and help, I guess as a silver surfer I�m still trying to keep up with the speed of change.

Trooper

In reply to a post by trooper744:

All this technology, that�s the problem when one comes from the era when the nearest thing you could get to a calculator was logarithm�s and antilogarithm's or if you were really clever a slide rule.

Again, Roberto I am so very grateful for your time and help, I guess as a silver surfer I�m still trying to keep up with the speed of change.

Thanks for that . Just one thing.
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I'm 74.

No offence was meant by my last comment about coming from the era of slide rules, I was referring to myself at 75.

I�m that bad I still don�t know how to get to any replies I get on this forum, I�m having to do it through my e-mail alerts.

MrSaffron

Thank you for the link I�ve made a note of it for future reference.