A) It is odd because DSL will work on a single leg - voice requires both. You need to tidy up all of them - a fault or erroneous contact on the last one will feed back and affect the others. the cost of an extra faceplate is small - my local B&Q is clearing out the MK versions at £1 each!

B) You may get extra noise induced but that can only be evaluated after the router is moved. An extra 10m will only add a very small amount of attenuation - consider that the signal has already travelled 3000 to 5000 m. If you are scraping for extra speed then plan to leave it where it is and if you can, run a cat5e cable from the router to your PC.

C) ADSL is carried on 2 wires - a twisted pair which will present on 2 & 5. It can work in fault condition on just one, but that is not relevant. Orange - pin 3 is referred to as teh bell wire and carries the ringing signal which is generated in te master. Some phones require ringing to be fed separately whereas others can generate their own local ringing. Put it in, get everything check and then try it without.

D) You may be right - 1 incomer from te external master, then two extensions on each of the other two. You will need to find out which the incoming master is.

E) 3 pair telephone cable has three pairs twisted pairs Blue, Orange and Green. In each pair there is one with solid colour with white stripes and white with colour stripes - so they become Blue/White (or Blue) & White/Blue, Orange/White (or Orange) & White Orange, and Green/White (or Green) & White/Green - the first colour is the primary/major.

the Green pair are not used. Signal is carried on Blue pair (B/W & W/B) and Ringing on Orange (Or/W)

IDC connector location

1 Not Used
2 Blue/White
3 Orange/White
4 Not used (sometimes White/Orange is fitted) - for neatness and other reason which would complicate things here
5 White/Blue
6 Not Used

I said max of two per IDC but you will have to insert 3 - not nice but it should hold.



more

I haven't seen one of the new external NTEs but hopefully someone here has that may be able to answer this question:

As the OP only has 2 extension wires coming from the extension that the router is in could it be that some of the extensions are fed directly from a filtered leg on the external NTE? Do the external NTEs have filtered connectors and unfiltered connectors? If so then this box may be unfiltered and other extensions filtered?

The external NTE does NOT contain a DSL filter ad there is no provision for one to be fitted.

External NTE

OK, thanks for all the info.

Im going to have to have a little play with it all (and hopefully not break anything), so will post back in a few days when I have some results.

Do I really need to replace each IDC plate, or only if it looks like it wont connect properly now, as its been damaged by 'ramming the 3 twisted wires into it'?

I will also look at what is behind the other 'extension' sockets and report back if there is something that looks like a filter at each, whilst doing any tidying up at the same time.

Bought the IDC/Krone tool on amazon for £2.99 - not sure how long it will last though.

Unlikely to be a filter, as generally sockets with filters are obvious, i.e. have both phone and ADSL sockets.

The jaws that crimp the cable are probably pushed apart and will not cut the cable insulation any more. If this is a new build I would be chasing the builders over the cost of sorting this out, though for the price of a 3 or 4 faceplates then I'd not bother.

Krone tools even cheap ones should last for some time, unless you abuse them.

As Mr S says, the jaws will be pushed apart and no longer cut the insulation. And you will not be able to see it with the naked eye - the gap is tightly controlled so it will slice the insulation and just cut a very small way into the copper.

One wire at the bottom might be OK, but the second probably not.

In reply to a post by MHC:

The external NTE does NOT contain a DSL filter ad there is no provision for one to be fitted.

External NTE

Thanks MHC, as I said I wasn't sure how the new external NTEs were setup but thought I would raise the possibility...