Home Wiring Question

Hi,

Does anyone know what this brown box is on my phoneline? The wire on the right comes directly from a telegraph pole outside, through hole in wall and into the brown box. The wire coming out left of brown box goes into the phone socket box.

http://img404.imageshack.us/img404/8100/dscf0858.jpg

Which of these would be the demarc point and would I be likely to see any improvement in speed if one or both where removed and replaced with a new socket seeing as they are both very old? The bell wire is already disconnected.

The brown box says "British Telecom" on the front and doesn't seem to have any other markings. The telephone socket just has a "T" with circle round it in the bottom right corner.

Thanks for any help.

I doubt that replacing those units will make any difference. There isn't much to wear out and it's not as if the connections are being continually flexed.

Could you post your router stats? See http://kitz.co.uk/adsl/frogstats.php

Bandwidth (Up/Down) [kbps/kbps]: 448 / 3,552
Output Power (Up/Down) [dBm]: 12.0 / 18.0
Line Attenuation (Up/Down) [dB]: 30.5 / 56.0
SN Margin (Up/Down) [dB]: 18.0 / 8.5

Demarcation point is the white master.

Why the master is so close to the junction is a little mystery - most BT Techs would have put the master where the junction box is. I would guess that at some time someone has moved the master to that point.

In reply to a post by Zoolander99:

Does anyone know what this brown box is on my phoneline?

Possibly one of these

In reply to a post by MHC:

Why the master is so close to the junction is a little mystery - most BT Techs would have put the master where the junction box is. I would guess that at some time someone has moved the master to that point.

More likely the person who replaced the old hard-wired phone point with a plug-in master wasn't a BT Tech...

Another possibility - but look at teh varnish and where the cable ran initially -to me it suggests the master was a lot further away. Even if it was a not-BT installation they would (I hope) have put the cable entry on the right.

In reply to a post by MHC:

Even if it was a not-BT installation they would (I hope) have put the cable entry on the right.

You have more faith in some of the DIY'ers around than I have

In reply to a post by billford:

In reply to a post by MHC:

Even if it was a not-BT installation they would (I hope) have put the cable entry on the right.

You have more faith in some of the DIY'ers around than I have

Maybe, I would have hoped they would have put the hole in the right side. But if it has been moved it does demonstrate the lack too - all they needed to do was rotate the back box!

Would I be likely to see any speed improvement if it was replaced with one of the newer sockets?

In reply to a post by MHC:

Demarcation point is the white master.

Why the master is so close to the junction is a little mystery - most BT Techs would have put the master where the junction box is. I would guess that at some time someone has moved the master to that point.

Just a thought. Might the 'white master' be an extension box, with the brown socket being the master? It doesn't look much like a master box (there was a link someone had with pictures of lots of old setups iirc).

That is an old style box - and they can be master. The brown certainly is not.

There are still masters available of that size - they start as secondaries and there is a small plug in master module. to convert them.

Very unlikely - but it would look nicer.

where the old phones used to be wired to, you are lucky you got Bt on yours, mine have GPO on and when I looked inside once I am amazied that my phone and broadband works.