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.