Six master sockets on one line

Is this a record?

I went to a new customer on Wednesday and they've been having lots of problems with their internet. The person who did all their IT support had changed the router several times but to no avail. I took a quick look and noticed that the router was plugged into a non BT telephone socket. Suspicious, I unscrewed it and found it was a master socket with a single pair of wires coming in. That set alarm bells ringing. Where was the NTE5?

Four other similar but unused sockets were around the office walls - all of which identified as the same phone number. All with a single pair connected and all master sockets.

These had to be joined up in a star to another point somewhere and eventually I found a nightmare of an NTE5 hidden in a cupboard, overflowing with cables and with lots of outgoing connections jelly crimped. Whoever did it had stripped and twisted wires together before putting them in the jelly crimp which meant the connections were loose.

I disconnected all extraneous wires except for the incoming drop wire and traced which wire went where. The six different master sockets on the same circuit increased the capacitance hugely (equivalent to a longer line) and also put in place extra 26A surge protectors (which interfere with broadband).

I replaced the remote master socket the router was connected to with a secondary line jack. The router currently fitted has very poor stats (Netgear D7000) so I couldn't see the increase in attainable but the download speed went from 32Mbps to 38Mbps being limited by the service. It should be able get about 60 on a faster service as the office next door manages that.

Fortunately, they were two weeks out of a two year BT Business Broadband contract so we'll be moving to Zen's 80Mbps service which includes a static IP address at no extra cost. That means I'll be able to run Thinkbroadband's Broadband Quality Monitor to see if there are further line issues now the internal wiring has been sorted.

This is in an office that was completely redeveloped and rewired just three years ago.

When I work out how to get ethernet from where the master socket is to where the computers are we'll be able to put the router directly into the master socket, which should help even more.

Has anyone else had a similar experience?

Yep, if you look at these things for a living you'd be amazed how many times 'have a go heroes' have naffed things up. It really ISN'T complicated, and yet as you have seen, they balls it up.

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

'have a go heroes'

Hey! I resemble that remark

I would say 50% of my friends have a bad setup. I've given up giving out advice, sometimes I find it amazing how bad some people can do things.

It gets worse. With the router plugged directly in the master socket's test socket, upstream is below the low estimate for impacted and a third of what the office next door gets (I manage their systems too).

The reason? Some clown wired from the external DP to the master socket with copper clad steel cable. I thought the cable coming into the master socket didn't look like CW1128 or CW1308.

In reply to a post by caffn8me:

It gets worse. With the router plugged directly in the master socket's test socket, upstream is below the low estimate for impacted and a third of what the office next door gets (I manage their systems too).

The reason? Some clown wired from the external DP to the master socket with copper clad steel cable. I thought the cable coming into the master socket didn't look like CW1128 or CW1308.

Are you sure? Copper Clad Aluminium maybe but steel? I've never come across that.


Unless it was the strain cores in some external dropwire.

Edited by MHC (Sun 31-Jul-16 09:33:21)

I'm with MHC there, never come across telephony cables of that ilk either.

https://www.edwardes.co.uk/en/products/3-pair-ccs-co...

I don't know for sure; but if steel with copper plating, could it be Army Field Telephone wire?

General robustness etc in rough, "uncontrolled" conditions.


Also-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper-clad_steel

Edited by deleted (Sun 31-Jul-16 13:54:22)

As I said, never come across it for general comms. For earthing and in some fixed co-ax applications yes... And at te price RobertoS found it - cheaper to use full copper anyway!

And in a Krone type DC, it probably would not perform too well and be susceptible to corrosion.

That was 3-pair. 2-pair is 17ppm inc. Vat.

Definitely copper clad steel. Examined under high magnification after scraping the copper off and it was very strongly attracted to a magnet.

RobertoS has a link to the stuff. The whole office has been wired with it internally too.

I put a tone on the line and checked it was still magnetic where the cable from the master socket comes out of the building to the distribution point.

To give you an idea how bad it is for DSL, when I moved the router from an extension socket to the master socket (which probably cut out about ten metres of cable) the upstream sync went from 5488kbps to 7816kbps. There is a lot more than ten metres of this wretched stuff between the master socket and the DP.

The error rate is stupidly high on upstream and VOIP calls frequently drop.

The office next door has an upstream sync of 18998kbps with an attainable of 21571 - and totally reliable VOIP.

Edited by caffn8me (Sun 31-Jul-16 23:10:35)

No, I'm intimately acquainted with D10 - four copper cores and three steel.

This has single cores colour coded in the usual telephone cable way.

From TLC, CCS 4 pair (which this is) is about 2/3 the price of the equivalent CW1308.

The fix is going to cost thousands.

In reply to a post by MHC:

And in a Krone type DC, it probably would not perform too well and be susceptible to corrosion.

The amount of copper actually in contact with the IDC terminal will be negligible. To make matters worse, it's terminated outside so is susceptible to damp.

Before I worked out what the problem was, Zen ran line tests on this circuit and the one next door (terraced mews buildings). This one was showing 600m longer.

As TLC "do" retail, any chance of their being challenged under Trades Descriptions for their description of this excrement as "telephone cable" ???

No, because it's perfectly fine for voice.

In reply to a post by caffn8me:

No, because it's perfectly fine for voice.

Until the joint corrodes!

I suspect it's still ok for voice with some corrosion. The bandwidth needed for voice is only about 3kHz. TLC does also describe it as for; 'Domestic and Small Office Extensions'.

The information on this thread reply are extensive! Very good and very useful, if i ever have a similar situation i know where im heading!

Edited by deleted (Tue 02-Aug-16 14:11:18)

I hope you never have to deal with such an incompetent installation. The wiring was done only three years ago and it has to be replaced already. It would probably have cost less than £40 extra to do it properly the first time round.

Didn't you say earlier fixing it was going to cost thousands?

if so, surely the business that installed it is liable? They could hardly claim these days that broadband access would not be a requirement.

But how come the incoming cable is not OR/Kelly's/Quinn's supplied and fit for purpose? Nobody else should be touching that.

Yes, it's going to cost thousands. I'm not sure it's going to be possible to find out who did the wiring. I believe it was done before the current business moved in.

One of the problems is that a lot of electricians, even qualified ones, don't really understand DSL.

You're right that only BT approved contractors should be anywhere near the cable from the DP to the master socket but a lot of builders ignore that. I'm not sure how it works with new builds but this is Victorian anyway.

Edited by caffn8me (Tue 02-Aug-16 16:48:19)

Yes, it's going to cost thousands.

Me and Bob could do it for less

A colleague managed to buy some a few years back from our local electrical wholesaler for a telephone extension. It was the usual CW1408 colours and I only realised that it was Copper Covered Steel when I discovered that it was magnetic. That ruled out aluminium or indeed copper.

Cheers!

They generally use Kevlar coated fibre nowadays