Position of modem and master socket

About to go from conventional Broadband to FTTC.

My question is does the fibre modem need to be next to the master socket ? Or can it be on the end of a phone extension cable ?

Reason I ask is my existing layout is: Master socket with 12m phone extension cable to the Modem router. If the fibre modem needs to be near master socket, with ethernet cable to the new fibre router, I need to spend £160 ish on repositining the master socket.

Hope this makes sence, and I have not got the fibre theory round my neck !
Thanks.

The modem does not need to be close to the master, however it is a better place to locate it. The less internal wiring, the better it can be with less potential for noise pickup.

Moving the master is slightly better although it means you will have meters of internal wiring still.

Leave the master in position and install the modem at that point. Then run Cat5e cable from there to the location of your router - the Ethernet signals are less prone to interference. This assumes you have a separate modem and router supplied to you - which ISP?

What is your estimate, using your phone number in this checker, and which ISP/package are you thinking of? Not all still provide the separate modem.

Is that a plug-in phone extension cable, of possibly dubious quality, or a CW1308 twisted pair one to IDC connectors inside the master socket assembly?

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Is that a plug-in phone extension cable, of possibly dubious quality, or a CW1308 twisted pair one to IDC connectors inside the master socket assembly?

Think of the majority who haven't a clue as to what your statement means!

They may have heard of google. My questions about it are reasonably important.

How would you have phrased them?

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

What is your estimate, using your phone number in this checker, and which ISP/package are you thinking of? Not all still provide the separate modem.

Is that a plug-in phone extension cable, of possibly dubious quality, or a CW1308 twisted pair one to IDC connectors inside the master socket assembly?

Thanks for your questions this does help with decisions to be made, answers are as follows:

Results of the checker: FTTC clean 73-56mbps. impacted 65-38mbps.
Planning to go for Zen fibre 2 unlimited up to 76mbps.

Re the phone extension cable, sorry to say this but its a standard extension with plugs, therefore I presume dubious quality, this may be causing some of our intermittant loss of broadband.

The preferred plan is to resite the master socket to within 4m of the wireless router (center of the house). Decision is now where to put the fibre modem and hence cable type between master socket location and centere of the house.

Re the plug-in extension, that is normally bad news on ADSLx, and potentially disastrous on FTTC as VDSL2 is far more sensitive than ADSLx. For a start, nearly all contain a ring wire, which can cost up to 2.5Mbps downstream sync. If there are also wired-in extensions in the house, they will also have ring wires unless you have dealt with them.

Take a look at this page, and also the Miscellaneous Nasties.

I believe Zen will be supplying the separate, (engineer installed) Openreach modem. You can order a data extension kit, (Openreach call it a Home Wiring Solution) which was certainly free for a few years and I think still is. If interested, you need to check with Zen. The standard version of that is an up to 30 metre run from the master socket, to provide a VDSL2 socket for the modem wherever you want. The main drawback is you have to put up with what may be a cable running where you don't want to see one.

This does have the disadvantage of adding some copper to your distance from the FTTC cabinet, but the effect should be small.

Instead, you could neatly pre-install some unconnected (good quality as some cheapo versions aren't twisted pair) CAT 5 from the master to the desired location, leaving plenty of spare at each end, and ask the engineer to use that for the purpose. Still order the kit as that allows for free relocation of the socket for the modem, and most (real Openreach) engineers will move the master instead if you wish, using that cable.

That sort of setup should, but no guarantee, give you the higher end of the "Clean" estimate. If is was a self-install and you used your existing wiring I would expect towards the bottom of the "Impacted" range.

In reply to a post by MHC:

Leave the master in position and install the modem at that point. Then run Cat5e cable from there to the location of your router - the Ethernet signals are less prone to interference. This assumes you have a separate modem and router supplied to you - which ISP?

^This is what I'd do. I've always found that having the modem as close to the master socket as possible, optimises my ADSL connections, even going as far as using the shortest cables between the master socket and modem as possible. It just makes sense to me to do the same with vDSL.

If you can't site the modem where the master socket is, personally I'd leave the master socket where it is and use CW1724 cable to wire a data extension socket to where you can mount the modem. Or run the cable un-terminated for the install engineer to install.
CW1724 is a BT issued cable with 2 twisted pairs that's constructed to be CAT5e compliant. So is arguably more suitable for the higher frequencies vDSL uses, than CW1308. It should also offer greater resistance to noise/ interference for the same reason.
It's the same cable ADSLNation use in their 'High Speed DSL' cables too.

Paul

Edited by deleted (Wed 26-Nov-14 21:20:28)