It was probably just that the noise margin is higher in the daylight hours so attainable rate is higher. I find my attainable varies quite a lot.

Interesting though!

You're not the only one. In practice I'm getting an extra 2Mbs down with a 5M Cat5e with RJ11 heads though I bought mine. Not sure I'd be very good at doing it myself!

I'm not convinced. Like I say, it's never ventured from the low end of 88k for me.

As for making your own RJ11 CAT5 cables, it's easy :-

Pick a pair to go in the center two, and a pair to go in the outer (although kind of irrelevant as the modem only uses the inner pair AFAIK).

Pull the sheathing back and cut the two unused pairs a few centimeters back, align your two remaining pairs, trim to length, put a RJ11 plug on and crimp.

It's a bit more faff than putting an RJ45 plug on, as they aren't really designed to go on CAT5, but easy enough!

Edited by mikehiow (Thu 25-Apr-13 09:38:52)

I gained about 5 Mbps on the attainable (up from 83Mbps - 88Mbps) by replacing the flat cable with the same length of Cat 5.

It does kind of assume you have access to a crimp tool though. For a one off it is probably cheaper to buy ready made.

In reply to a post by ian72:

It does kind of assume you have access to a crimp tool though.

Doesn't everyone have a crimp tool I do

Agreed, a 2M cable can be had off eBay for £1.99, free delivery.

In reply to a post by greenglide:

Doesn't everyone have a crimp tool I do

Likewise, but I'm lazy

I have crimped an RJ11 straight onto the end of the BT overhead dropwire where it enters my house (I don't use the telephone) for max sync.

Edited by deleted (Thu 25-Apr-13 10:16:18)

You can buy a crimp tool on eBay for less than £5 - every geek should have one.

I use mine for work, but I've had the same one since before I was of working age and it's been invaluable. Whether it's running a cable through holes you could not fit a connector, making funky length cables or hacking up cables to run my home phone/VDSL over structured cabling in my house - I'd have spent a fortune without it.