Unusual house wiring: How best adapt for Broadband

I am trying to help another neighbour obtain broadband on a long difficult line.

This post asks for advice on how best to modernise the ancient phone wiring inside the house.
(Another post asks what we should expect from BT as the service is set up and how best to work with BT's processes in dealing with the difficulties I foresee.)

I apologise for a long, detailed post but I would appreciate any help from a phone wiring expert as we try to decide how best to adapt it and what to ask BT to do.

This old house has a classic 1980s phone configuration and is in some ways a bit of a muddle. It is likely that the wires was set up in the late '80s / early '90s.
We are going to have difficulties getting broadband to work to the house anyway with this long line and clearly I don't want the internal wiring to make matters worse.
One answer may be: "Scrap the lot and start again with modern equipment." But I don't want to jump to that conclusion unnecessarily, because I don't want to be recommending more expenditure than is necessary.

The BT line enters the house upstairs and there is a little white junction box. Out of that box there are two other cables: one goes back out the window and down to the kitchen window below. The second runs across the room to a master box. This master box is a fairly modern one with a removable lower half to the face plate and looks as if it would take an I-plate. It has the old T symbol on it; what clues as to date does that give us? There is a phone plugged in here. and there is also a cable which runs out onto the landing and to an old style (yes, still rental!) bell halfway down the stairs.

The line down to the kitchen runs to what looks like a slave box into which a phone is plugged. There is then a cable out of the back of that slave box to a security system control unit.

A key question in my mind concerns that master box upstairs: How likely is it that it is providing all that we expect of a master box today when supporting broadband?
At first one thinks it may not be because the line down to the kitchen branches off at the entry point junction box before the master box.
But: I have looked at the arrangement of the wiring in the entry point junction box and in the back of the master box and i wonder if it has all been arranged such that the signal travels first to the master box and then back to the entry point junction box and thence downstairs.
Is that plausible or likely?

I have a more list of what cables are in each of the connectors in the junction box and the master box and will provide them if anyone is willing to give an opinion.
But for the moment i will stop at this point.

Thanks for reading this far!

I am luckier than you with my distance from the exchange, but when first hooked up to my '8Mb' service from O2 I was only getting 1.3Mbps, barely better than my old 1Mbps service.

Looking into my house wiring, it turned out to be a complete dog's breakfast, with an ancient brown junction box where the BT line first enters the house, with two branches leaving. One branch led to a daisy-chain of three extension sockets, the other branch to the house 'main' socket and the extension in the loft daisy-chained off that.

I disconnected everything and connected a piece of telephone wire directly from the brown junction box (I didn't need to touch BT's wires) to my router. The rate immediately jumped to 3.7Mbps - more than three times faster than previously, and it didn't drop when I plugged my cordless phone into the microfilter.

Fiddling around subsequently (eg trying a long ethernet cable and having the router next to the socket), the speed rose to 4.6Mbps at its peak. I have since fiddled a lot more, trying different cables, connectors, microfilters (I have a shed full of junk to try out) and not made any more gains. I am waiting for an adsl faceplate to get the best possible filtering).

So, in short, I would recommend that you plan to do your tests with all the ancient wiring disconnected, to establish what is the maximum possible rate your line can handle.

Thanks.
The house in question is not mine and so I cannot play around as much as I also did when cleaning up the wiring in my own old house. I simplified my own configuration and, with an i-plate fiitted, can now synch at 4400 kbps., much better than previously.
But, with a neighbour's house, wiith a marginal line, and with an older non-technical person, one must tread more carefully, step by step. I may not be available if and when problems arise.

Why not just try it first? You seem to be anticipating problems that may not materialise.

Late 80s is hardly antique! I'm using broadband on a long line from that era, with no problems whatsoever.

Admittedly, it doesn't sound quite as eccentric as your neighbour's set-up, but I didn't need any special adaptations to the telephone wiring at all.

" have looked at the arrangement of the wiring in the entry point junction box and in the back of the master box and i wonder if it has all been arranged such that the signal travels first to the master box and then back to the entry point junction box and thence downstairs.
Is that plausible or likely?"
Its quite plausable, and if it isnt wired that way then that is what may be suggested if they wanted to keep everything in situ and obtain the best setup for ADSL.
The bell maybe an issue and it may be necessary to remove it and the wiring serving.
Cant comment further without pics or wiring description. .

Getting the best from ADSL is childishly simple...

Choose the router most folks with your chosen ISP recommend (usually but not always based on a Broadcom chipset)
Position the router next to the master socket and use a good quality filtered faceplate.
If there is no NTE5 have BT fit one.
Run ethernet to all PCs. Alternately use HomePlug or WiFi.

Job done unless you have some faulty electrical kit which causes interference. If so replace it or get it repaired.

In reply to a post by kwikbreaks:

Getting the best from ADSL is childishly simple...

It may not be if the phone line to the kitchen is "live", wired before the master, but it might only be wiring for a second line. It's also possible that the original wireman has used spair pairs on the cable to feed an extension back from the master. The OP will have to call in BT to get the outside bell removed, because it's their property, and if he treats the BT man very nicely (a nice cuppa and a bacon sandwich), he may well tidy up the other wiring if he has time.

Maybe I should have read all the details (I didn't) but if there is a mess the best bet is still to get a new master fitted and junk the existing wiring.

well to start with i would remove the lower 1/2 of the master socket and than make sure that all the other phone sockets are dead if so the wiring is almost as it should be and best to put your router there.