new mk4 faceplate

has anyone got a new mk4 faceplate and a new master socket? if so has it impacted your speed at all and given it a bump?

yes have the new NTE5C + mk4 it has improved the upstream errored seconds that's all I can see just a slight increase in upstream and slight decrease on the downstream that's about it

Hi

Yes, made no difference at all in my case. Plus it is obviously much more cheaply made than the previous master socket although the VDSL faceplate seems much the same in terms of the build quality the master socket doesn't. They don't even solder the components together in the master socket, they are just pushed into holes in a cheap base metal.

It's basically made as cheaply as possible, I wouldn't seek one out. Newer isn't always better.

See the tear down https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jD67a-ZC7VY

Regards

Phil

Edited by deleted (Tue 28-Feb-17 08:36:38)

Agreed, I have a Mk3 at home, and got a Mk4 for the MIL's recently installed FTTC, and the Mk4 is total junk. Replacing a circa-1985 master socket and elcheapo filter with the Mk4 made no difference.

thanks for the responses guys, il keep the mk3 then.

What a piece of cheap junk. What would have made more sense to me at least is have ditched the faceplate filter and have the socket present the ADSL and phone with connections for hardwiring. resulting in something that is standard depth for something screwed into a backbox.

I guess at least the type 4 is slimmer than the monstrosity that is the previous interstitial filter.

I think they went that route due to it would be cheaper to make and also due to lower the resistance between all the contacts.

Going by all the videos I have seen those metal parts are about 0.5mm (i.e. 500um) thick whereas the thickness of copper on most circuit boards are either 35um or 70um thick.

But overall I think this might be a bad move of BT going this route, I say this due to all the components are held in by plastic and there is no solder joints at all.

TBH I would of combined all of the faceplates into the one faceplate, that way BT would of saved money by having them made in bulk.

Paul

Those component connections are basically IDC (without the "I" = Insulation), similar in concept to the multitude of wiring connections of recent decades, both the IDCs connecting the D-Line in and any on-going wiring within the various NTEs of recent years; and also the so-called "gel crimps".

I suspect the metal may be steel, so as to press or cut in to the component wire, so the conductivity may be worse than the copper on the earlier PCB versions.

However, probably like most, I would prefer to see those component connections soldered.

Hi

The resistance thing isn't the reason for the wide metal tracks. The signal has traveled hundreds of metres in thin copper wire, will travel through normal sized tracks on the VDSL filter and through very fine wires on the common mode filter, a cm or 2 of oversized metal tracks makes zero difference to anything. The tracks don't carry any current to speak off anyway so large tracks are not required. What do you think they are using inside a VDSL modem to carry the signal?

The tracks are that wide because it's a cheap base metal and it needs some rigidity to allow it be machined and stamped and inserted into the cheap plastic box.

Regards

Phil

Agreed generally; and the greater widths will reduce the distorting effects of punching from sheet.

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The slight roughness observable on the cut edges of punched or guillotined sheet metal, will also help retain the component wires, as well as removing any dirt thus making a very good joint.

Many years back, I designed and had manufactured a pre-forming machine for early semi-conductor diodes, OA81s, that incidentally and unintentionally had a similar roughening and cleaning effect on their cadmium-plated steel wires.

Apart from bending and cutting the wires to length as part of a single operation, it finished with forming a small "v-crimp" in each of the wires, which slightly roughened the bends particularly.

That roughness in turn, scrape-cleaned the thru-plated holes in the PCBs, so that subsequent soldering was much more successful.

Prior to that, there could be diode losses of 60% to 80% in extreme cases.

After the introduction of the machine, these reduced to less than 1%.

As many of the PCBs used up to 100 diodes, the cost reduction achieved was large.

Sorry for replying so late but I came across this thread when googling the subject for myself. I'm about 4km from our exchange and enjoy (!) approx. 2Mb down and 0.6Mb up. A new second line was recently installed with a new socket and MK 4 BT filtered faceplate. The speeds were more like 0.8Mb down and 0.6Mb up with lots of background hiss on the phone and my download SNR often dropping to zero momentarily.

BT came and went a couple of times, changing the faceplate for another new one but with no fault found. The technical support at my provider suggested plugging an old filter into the master socket and this immediately increased my download speed to over 2Mb and my upload to just over 0.6Mb.

The odds of two differently sourced Mk4 filtered faceplates each being faulty are pretty long (I bought the 1st from Ebay myself). I suspect they are simply not very good, especially on long and difficult lines.

I hope I've added to the debate!

Edited by deleted (Sat 18-Mar-17 10:36:12)

Completely agree Nobby, they are poorly/cheaply made rubbish.

Your tale only adds to what I suspected to be true already, and sadly makes me wonder how pants the SFI engineers were not to have picked this up on the first visit.

Zarjaz, would you say that upgrading my MK3 to 4 is a waste of time?

Yes.

Can I also ask what modem/hub you are using? There are some around which perform very well on longer lines - now you have the faceplate/filter issue resolved, and may give you a little extra speed. 2Mb at 4km is on te low side - I sorted out friends to give them a little over 1.2Mbps on a 9km line by choosing the right modem

I'm using a Billion 7800DXL at the moment, it does a very good job of holding onto the connection even with a very low SNR. There's at least 1km of aluminium wire within my EO line so I suspect 2Mb+ is my lot for now.

I don't know what sort of black magic you practice to get 1.2Mbs on a 9km line but it's obviously powerful stuff!!

Low SNR margin and near perfect quality cabling all the way, a very rare occurrence.

If you fancy gambling £5-10 try and get an unused BT Business 2Wire 2700-HGV (not a 2701) and see what that does.

The 9km line could on a good day get almost 1.5Mbps! However it is now on an FTTC connection with somewhere in the 1.5 to 2.0 Mbps

Sorry, did you just say you get 1.5 - 2.0 Mbps on a FTTC connection? Please explain why you upgraded?

In reply to a post by MHC:

If you fancy gambling £5-10 try and get an unused BT Business 2Wire 2700-HGV (not a 2701) and see what that does.

I've just ordered one from Ebay for just under a tenner. I'll unlock and test it when it arrives and post here. Thanks for the tip.

In reply to a post by WilliamGrimsley:

Sorry, did you just say you get 1.5 - 2.0 Mbps on a FTTC connection? Please explain why you upgraded?

No, I said friend, whose connection I sorted out, get that.

Why upgrade - 30% improvement in download, a 50% improvement in upload and stability are three reasons. It may not sound much for someone on 40, 50, 60 Mbps however it allows him to work from home.

Oh right.

VDSL is more unstable than ADSL at those speeds.

Edited by deleted (Sat 18-Mar-17 15:07:53)

Not from what we are seeing - loss of sync is a rare occurrence whereas before it was very common. There is also a lot less chance of loss of service due to the cable routing.

Interesting, maybe I read that from a source in the early days of VDSL. Though, isn't VDSL2 more suseptible to interference than ADSL?

Interference yes, and also the drop off ... 3km of VDSL certainly performs better than 9km of ADSL and is annoying as the house to exchange is just over 0.5km straight line!

It is worth trying it out.

Mine was sync'd with a 3dB margin and as the noise levels varied during the day that would slowly dip and at one point I recorded it, still in sync and giving near full speed for the line with a margin of -0.7 yes minus. Once sync'd they do hold on to the line.

In reply to a post by arronlowley:

has anyone got a new mk4 faceplate and a new master socket? if so has it impacted your speed at all and given it a bump?

I had mine installed about 4 months ago with my new line. Had no problems. Solid 80/20 on a little 8800NL ever since.

I believe their was a policy introduced that if an Openreach visit to the property was required then one of the steps they had to take was to replace the current NTE5 master socket with the NTE5C master socket version. Happened to us, as we had the MK2 which was then upgraded to the NTE5c with the MK4 faceplate

Seems to be able to keep a long ADSL line (G.DMT, approx. 1.5Mbps sync) connection up for around 25-30+ days.

Not for us. When I had fibre installed last November, the Kelly Engineer just fitted a Mk3 faceplate on what must be a 29 year old NTE5.

Just wondered if you had any luck with the 2700? Did it improve things or not?