Telephone through Cat5.

Hello all,

Thanks in advance for taking the time to look at this post.

I recently bought and moved in to a new build apartment, but I have been having troubles with my extension wiring.

If I plug my router in the main phone jack, master or normal faceplate I receive a connection of about 11mb. However if I hook up the extensions behind the faceplate even with no devices connected to them my connection will drop and resync around 3.5mb slower...

This hasn't been an issue up until now really as I haven't bothered with the extensions.
However today I had Sky installed and although I don't need to have it hooked up to the phoneline all the time, it'd be nice to be able to have it setup properly as I may use the iPhone app to set remote recording.

So my thoughts were to Cat5... However then I thought it may be a bit of a faff... So...
Would RJ11 to RJ45 adapters and a set of homeplugs work?

Would love to hear any other suggestions also,

Many thanks

In reply to a post by Arran83:

So my thoughts were to Cat5

Probably overkill, really.

In reply to a post by Arran83:

Would RJ11 to RJ45 adapters and a set of homeplugs work?

No, you can only use these to extend network connections. Think of it as an active 10\100Mbps port on each end, not a patch-panel-style bit of cable with a socket on.

In reply to a post by Arran83:

Would love to hear any other suggestions also,

I would use a filtered faceplate. This gives you a couple of options,

1) Put the router at the master socket location, and filter all the extension wiring. (you could then use homeplugs to attach other network kit to the router)

2) Put the router where you want, run a dedicated telephone cable from the faceplate to the router's location, and filter all the other extensions. The ADSLNation ones definitely include all the connections to allow this, I'm 90% sure the other common ones also do.

Either of these should give you the result you are after, just depends where you prefer the router to be.

There's also a fair chance, as it's a newbuild with builder-installed phone extensions, that they have mucked up the wiring, either using the wrong pairs in the wire, or using the wrong type of cable.

http://www.wppltd.demon.co.uk/WPP/Wiring/UK_telephon...

each of the extensions should have a filter on it, even with no equipment connected.

as others have said a filtered faceplate is good (and removes the above requirement)

and cat 5 does make good phone wire, but if putting one in, I suggest, put a couple in to give you a network socket near the tv too.

otherwise you could us a dect extension like
(first one I found)
http://www.xtendedplay.co.uk/rtx-wireless-phone-jack...
but see notes about sky boxes in the link.

Remote recording is set over the satellite link - no phone line required.

Sky never "Phone in" to a Sky box.

But it can phone out with PPV information, to make sure you get billed for watching the boxing or whatever. It also dials out if you are doing diagnostics on the box

It's certainly used to be part of the contract terms that you have it connected to the phone, though how strictly that's enforced is anyone's guess.

Thanks for your replies so far...

I found out last night the remote record thing works as you say without the need to have the box hooked up to a phoneline.

It would be nice to have it all hooked though...

I have actually got one of the ADSLNATION filtered faceplates but that had an adverse effect on my sync as well, which surprised me. Tried a number of different filters too, and for some reason the one i currently have plugged in does a much better job than any of the others...

So you say, even without equipment plugged in, I should have a filter hanging out or have filtered faceplates? I may look in to some filtered faceplates for the extensions then, and hope it sorts things out...

In reply to a post by Arran83:

I have actually got one of the ADSLNATION filtered faceplates but that had an adverse effect on my sync as well...

Are you *sure* you followed the instructions correctly? Your post suggests you don't quite understand how it should be wired up.

If you wire it correctly, you can wind up with *all* your existing extensions filtered and the router connected to the faceplate, or, if you wish, have a single, dedicated adsl extension socket to where you want the router to be.

Using only one faceplate.

I initially tried the adslnation plate without hooking any of the extensions hooked up and it dropped my sync a fair bit... Is this something I should keep in place for a while and will gradually improve or should I see an instant improvement or at least around about the same sync as I was getting with the BT plate?

I couldn't have got that bit wrong as it was only a case of replacing the front plates...
It baffled me as I had read a lot about how good they are...

Oh and sorry I meant I had tried a number of different filters on the standard BT plate, not on the adslnation plate. Sorry that wasn't clear

Edited by deleted (Thu 25-Nov-10 19:52:57)

In that case I'd suggest contacting ADSLNation and speaking to them about it, might be a faulty 'plate. Usually these are superior to plug-in filters.

Filters are not required on extensions that have nothing plugged into them.