Modem/Router plug in via phone-like wire to master socket?

Just looking through the home hub 5 box and booklet, I see that the hub still connects to the socket with a phone-like connecter?

I thought it used an ethernet cable to plug from the home hub to a special ethernet connecter on the master socket?

In reply to a post by bowdon:

Just looking through the home hub 5 box and booklet, I see that the hub still connects to the socket with a phone-like connecter?

I thought it used an ethernet cable to plug from the home hub to a special ethernet connecter on the master socket?

You thought wrong

That's why we still have modems. The master socket is carrying a signal from the telephone network. We still need a modulator/demodulator in order to convert from digital to analogue and vice versa.

Edited by Andrue (Sun 25-May-14 16:50:45)

In reply to a post by bowdon:

I thought it used an ethernet cable to plug from the home hub to a special ethernet connecter on the master socket?

The NTE5 is largely a dumb mechanical object, it doesn't turn anything into Ethernet, and the signal coming into the customer's property most certainly isn't Ethernet when it gets there. The most complicated piece of electronics is a simple low pass filter to remove the VDSL frequencies from the signal going to the analogue phones in your home. This is much like the filters every DIY store has carried for the past decade or so, except better made and guaranteed for the VDSL frequency range.

What confuses people is that the socket used is narrower than the "Type 600" socket provided for plugging in a conventional analogue telephone, largely to provide a visual clue as to which socket is for what and so it looks more like the sockets they're familiar with in home or office networks. But that's not what it is, don't try to plug a pre-made network cable in because it won't fit.

You could argue for using Category 5e unshielded twisted pair cable (what you might call "Ethernet cable") to connect the Home Hub to that socket anyway, just wiring the appropriate connectors onto each end - much as people have been known to replace all their internal telephone extension cables with Cat 5e cable. But the resulting improvement in signal quality would probably be too small to detect unless you for some reason are running that short cable past the back of a fridge or some similarly EMF-hostile environment. If you want to, go ahead, Cat 5e is very cheap (because widely used) and it can't hurt to do this if you get the wiring right. But it's no surprise that BT decided not to spring for the fancier cable.

Early ADSL subscribers got these split NTE5 designs too, before ADSL was self-install and micro-filters were as common as bottle caps, I remember being very excited by what seemed to be an Ethernet socket, and then rather disappointed when I realised it was only done that way to reduce the chance of me plugging it in wrong.

I did thread cat 5e cable from the upstairs bedroom to downstairs near the master socket.

I was thinking I could just plug that in to the master socket and have the router upstairs. Though now it looks like I'll have to have it downstairs and use the cat 5e cable to go upstairs to a switch that will serve my computers.

I guess I should have threaded a long phone cable downstairs instead of the cat 5e cable if I had wanted the hub upstairs. Oh well.. as long as it works I guess thats ok.

At the moment I have a long phone extention wire (its actually wrapped up for most of it) serving my adsl2+ connection, so I guess any improvement on that setup will be beneficial too lol.

A long phone cable, even CW1308, would not have been a good idea. If you put appropriate connectors on that Cat 5 then that will be equivalent to the Openreach Data extension cable/home wiring solution.

Best is of course to have the modem downstairs. If you got an HG612 (Type 3B I think), off eBay you could use that then use the Cat 5 for the Ethernet link to the router upstairs.

Apparently the data socket on the NTE5 is an RJ45 socket. As long as the pin assignments are the same at both ends then you should be able to use the cat5 plugged into that socket - not sure about plugging it in to the router at the other end though as I think the router VDSL socket is an RJ11.

I got the installation done today, Kelly's came.. it was an afternoon slot but they asked to come early. It was all done in about 20 to 30 minutes.

I had him put the home hub 5 (BT Infinity) near the master socket, and use the cat 5 ethernet cable I had installed going upstairs. He plugged that in, then upstairs plugged it in to the laptop. It started off at 52mb download and between 9 and 13mb's upload. Now a bit later its up to 78.12Mbps down / 19.53Mbps up.

I ended up unplugging the cable from the laptop and putting it in a netgear swtich, then having a ethernet going to another switch in my room and an ethernet cable in that room for the laptop. Then at the second netgear switch I have my main PC, second PC, and PS4 connected. So far all is going well.

Though my on-going contant ring fault on the phone line is still going on. I thought it might have gone when I changed ISP's.

In reply to a post by bowdon:

Though my on-going contant ring fault on the phone line is still going on. I thought it might have gone when I changed ISP's.

That'll probably be a fault with the line card in the exchange causing that. Unless you move to an LLU supplier, it will remain until you report a fault with it.

Even then, it'll pass a line test so you'll have a hard time convincing your provider that it needs an engineer.

In reply to a post by troublegum:

That'll probably be a fault with the line card in the exchange causing that. Unless you move to an LLU supplier, it will remain until you report a fault with it.

Even then, it'll pass a line test so you'll have a hard time convincing your provider that it needs an engineer.

It needs reporting as a voice fault, with no mention whatsoever of broadband.

If the line and broadband are bundled that still applies. If the line and broadband are different suppliers it should be reported to the line supplier, still with no mention of broadband.