Is it worth me getting a filtered faceplate?

Hi everyone,

I am considering getting an XTE-2005 but I am not sure if it is worth it. I have one phone (master) socket in my house, and there are no extensions running off it whatsoever. I have one DECT phone connected to it, filtered through a "normal" ADSL filter. My current router is also filtered through this router. If I decide I need more phones, I'll get a set of DECT phones that only connect to the single master socket, so I do not intend wiring anything in at any time in the future.

I recently had to move the socket due to building work, and I observed that there only appeared to be two wires connected to the master socket from the outside. If I recall correctly, the two wires that were connected were connected to "A" and "B".

I have no symptoms of a bad line - in fact, I get 16 meg on my Sky Broadband Max connection and dropouts are very very rare (i.e., I don't remember having any!). I am about to switch to O2, who have a maximum speed of 20 meg, and I want to make sure I have the very best possible connection speed. Will a filtered face plate help with this? I have read some things that indicate it will *not* help in my situation, and won't provide a speed improvement, but I'd like to check with the knowledgable people here before I make my decision.



Thanks,

James

Edited by deleted (Tue 05-Jul-11 15:26:20)

Without extensions the potential gains of a faceplate are minimal as the main advantage of a faceplate over plug-in filters is that you are filtering out the ADSL signal before it enters extension wiring.

A simple test that anyone considering a faceplate can do is remove the faceplate from the master socket and connect your modem/router direct to the test socket without any phone equipment connected. This will give you the maximum possible performance that the line is capable of, if you don't see any improvement then there is nothing you can do to improve it any further other than perhaps a slightly better router that can be tweaked for you line.

In brief, considering your current set-up, there will only be a cosmetic gain by fitting an XTE-2005.

At a personal level I would install an NTE-2000 or modified NTE-2000, as I dislike plug-in, dangley microfilters.

Edited by burakkucat (Tue 05-Jul-11 16:14:59)

From a nearness of appearance point of view a filtered faceplate looks a lot better and is less likely to be disturbed when cleaning. The only point that I would make as a retired electronics "bod" is that the ADSLNation faceplate uses active as well as passive components e.g. it has transistors in it. I bought a faceplate filter from Clarity which is the same as the BT supplied one and uses only passive components e.g. capacitors, inductors and resistors etc.
In my experience passive components are more reliable than active ones and likely to last longer when connected to a drop-wire strung up in the air and subject to interference from storms.
Just a thought.
Towdgeezer

I have a setup just like yours and decided to try an ADSL Nation XTE-2005 and high-quality ADSL cable to see if I could improve things.

After several closely-spaced tests, to cater for the normal variation of a bit between consecutive sync's, and a repeat set a second day, I found some of my accumulated dangly filters consistently out-performed the ADSL Nation stuff. The ADSL cable made no difference at all to router-included ones, and the XTE-2005 cause 200-300kbps lower sync, at around 6500kbps.

They are in their packaging in a drawer, as not worth the hassle of returning them.

Edited by RobertoS (Tue 05-Jul-11 19:59:44)

What I found very recently was replacing a dying BT DECT phone (I forget the name for now but is was at least 15 years old), with a new BT Graphite 2100 turned my day-time straight-line noise margin graph into an absolutely regular 0.1dB sawtooth.

Um, I must admit that I don't know what that means? Did it get worse, or better?

0.1dB seems very small, but "sawtooth" sounds a bit up/down which I can't imagine is good?

James

Thanks to everyone for the replies,

It does sound like it's not really worth it in my situation.

Thanks again,

James

Rising and falling 0.1dB is tiny, so largely irrelevant, but it is not good. Other DECT phones have been known to be far worse - cheap power supplies probably. (The bulky bit in the mains plug).

Noise margin - read the page on my website.

Got those phones here. Never noticed anything but I've never been looking. Might monitor the situation now you've got me interested.