Ring Wire Question

Afternoon guys,

Can you help me, I have been looking into removing the ring wire as per some guides on the internet but they all differ somewhat to how our master socket is setup.

Once I remove the first 2 screws and the front plate comes off, there is no wiring at all on this panel. If i remove the further 2 screws, I can see the wire coming in from the outside of the house, this wire is screwed onto some points on the PCB of this panel. Only wires 2 and 5 are connected thus the ring wire is already removed.

Is this all correct because pictures I have seen show wires connected to the front panel?

Also can you advise on somethign else, at my girlfriends house, we have recently bought some new handsets, removing the old ones. Since doing this the broadband cant maintain a connection, the router is a DG834GT with custom firmware, so the SNR is manually changed to 50% to get a better connection (which has always been stable previously) but now I have had to set this to 100% to maintain a connection at a much lower rate. Do you think it might be worth checking all the wiring over as there are numerous extensions in the house.

Thanks

Edited by deleted (Fri 06-Aug-10 12:50:00)

Here's the method linked to from Mr Saffron's site. Can't help further I'm afraid:

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/faq/sections/radsl.htm...

do you have any hard wired extensions ? That's what is wired off the back of the lower faceplate.

At girlfriend's house sounds like you bought some DECT phones with a dodgy power supply or did you also replace the base station ? if changing the phones led to connection problems I would remove them and see if it returns to normal.

If you can answer these two questions it will help a lot with answering you clearly,

Do you have any telephone sockets other than the master?

Do any of them work with the front part of the master removed? (the bit you say has no wires connected)

Ta.

On your second question, disconnect and switch off everything that is connected to the line, and put the router into the test socket (the one you can see when you remove the front part of the master.) See how it goes then - if it's much better, yes, start investigating the wiring and hte other devices.

Personally, I would recommend using a filtered faceplate whenever possible, but that can depend on your actual setup.

Cheers for the help everyone, I'm next over at the girlfriends tonight so will take a look, i'll check the master socket and see if the ring wire is connected too, so is it best doing it at the back of the master socket like it is on mine?

Yes in our house we have only the one master socket and then we have an external extension lead just going to the other end of the room for the phone.

Cheers for the advice.

Any extensions should be connected to the back of the removable face plate. The idea being that when you use the TEST Socket ALL of your internal phone wiring is disconnected so that you can see where any problem might be!

You only need to connect wires to terminals 2 and 5.

You shouldn't touch the wires on the back of the Master Socket as this is BT's 'territory'.

Re your problems since putting in new phones.... may seem like a dumb question... but you did remember to use a filter on each one right?

In reply to a post by Adam86:

Yes in our house we have only the one master socket and then we have an external extension lead just going to the other end of the room for the phone.

Then it's easy - the only ring wire you have is contained in that plug-in extension.

These are, however, horrible things - the cable is flat, not twisted, so it is quite happy to pick up a load of noise.

Do you connect your router via this extension cable? If you do, don't!

In reply to a post by GeeTee:

Re your problems since putting in new phones.... may seem like a dumb question... but you did remember to use a filter on each one right?

Yes they are.

Unplugged the new handsets, still get a poor SNR, there was one occassion it did go back up but it was for no reason at all, went around the girlfriends house checking all extensions and making sure only 2 and 5 were connected but it didnt make a difference. No difference in test socket either, just seems odd with the timing. Havent got any other RJ11 cables lying around incase its the router, all the extensions have a splitter. I do however have a Cisco 837 i've borrowed from work so going to try and do some testing with that.

And at my home the router is plugged into the master socket so doesnt go near the extension at all.

At your girlfriends, make sure all extensions are dead with the faceplate removed.

(you could also carefully remove the rest of the master and check that the cable connections are clean and tight, but doing so is illegal, so I can't possibly suggest it)

Then go with a known-good router and cable, see how it goes. Don't forget that going nuts with disconnecting and reconnecting can appear to be an unstable line by the exchange kit and raise your noise margin

At yours, as long as the filter is at the master socket, with the router and extension cable into that, then that's the right layout. If it was me I'd use a filtered faceplate and hardwire the extension socket.

Ok here is a summary of what I have done at my girlfriends over the weekend, initially I unplugged the new handset base and unplugged it from the splitter. The line stats didnt improve. I then started with the extension socket in her room and only left wires 2 and 5 connected, no improvement. I then went into the other room where there was another extension, this extension is fed from the master socket in the lounge, and the wire for the upstairs socket is also on this faceplace, I did the same thing and disconnected all the wires leaving 2 and 5 connected. No improvement. Lastly I went into the lounge where the master socket is, disconnected all cables except 2 and 5, no improvement again. Amongst resetting the router over the course of this hour or so time, the SNR did go back up to about 7.5DB and connected at 4096 like previously but there was no reason for this at all. So I think we can now rule out the new phones, but the weird thing I dont understand is why is this now a problem I plugged the router into the master socket and it was the same, I was a little naughty and did check the wiring was all fine at the back of the faceplate, which it was.

There is a couple of other things though, but I dont think they are causing the problem as like I say everything was fine till the new handsets came. In the hallway there is one of those old fashioned bell ringers for people hard of hearing so they know the phone is ringing, i dont know how you would disconnect this but I dont think that is a problem. The cable outside enters the house just next to the main door, there is a little white box, it just has wiring inside, looks fine to me though.

May it be worth giving the connection several days to see if anything improves and if it doesnt, contact Sky? another thing which seems odd, is that their upload rate is very low, 415kbps.

Here are the line stats, SNR currently at 100%:

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 3092 kbps 415 kbps
Line Attenuation 54.0 db 33.7 db
Noise Margin 7.4 db 10.4 db

Here are my line stats just to compare (my SNR margin is manually set at 1% and my connection is just as stable as when it is set at 100% lol):

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 3936 kbps 768 kbps
Line Attenuation 57.0 db 31.5 db
Noise Margin 6.3 db 13.0 db

In reply to a post by Adam86:

Ok here is a summary of what I have done at my girlfriends over the weekend, initially I unplugged the new handset base and unplugged it from the splitter. The line stats didnt improve. I then started with the extension socket in her room and only left wires 2 and 5 connected, no improvement. I then went into the other room where there was another extension, this extension is fed from the master socket in the lounge, and the wire for the upstairs socket is also on this faceplace, I did the same thing and disconnected all the wires leaving 2 and 5 connected. No improvement. Lastly I went into the lounge where the master socket is, disconnected all cables except 2 and 5, no improvement again. Amongst resetting the router over the course of this hour or so time, the SNR did go back up to about 7.5DB and connected at 4096 like previously but there was no reason for this at all. So I think we can now rule out the new phones, but the weird thing I dont understand is why is this now a problem I plugged the router into the master socket and it was the same, I was a little naughty and did check the wiring was all fine at the back of the faceplate, which it was.

There is a couple of other things though, but I dont think they are causing the problem as like I say everything was fine till the new handsets came. In the hallway there is one of those old fashioned bell ringers for people hard of hearing so they know the phone is ringing, i dont know how you would disconnect this but I dont think that is a problem. The cable outside enters the house just next to the main door, there is a little white box, it just has wiring inside, looks fine to me though.

May it be worth giving the connection several days to see if anything improves and if it doesnt, contact Sky? another thing which seems odd, is that their upload rate is very low, 415kbps.

Here are the line stats, SNR currently at 100%:

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 3092 kbps 415 kbps
Line Attenuation 54.0 db 33.7 db
Noise Margin 7.4 db 10.4 db

Here are my line stats just to compare (my SNR margin is manually set at 1% and my connection is just as stable as when it is set at 100% lol):

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 3936 kbps 768 kbps
Line Attenuation 57.0 db 31.5 db
Noise Margin 6.3 db 13.0 db

Bumping the above, can anyone help?

Also my girlfriends parents have said that they dont want the device in the hallway connected anymore, I dont know what the proper name is for it, but its a white box with 2 screws and a bell is underneath it which makes it so old people can hear the phone ringing.

Is this BT property or can it be safelyt removed?

Dont know where we lie with this line as it is Sky Talk and Sky Broadband.

Ringers and especially external ringers (workshops, large properties etc) used to be a speciality of BT.

Going back to GPO days and before the liberation of the introduction of the socket these would be BT supplied and therefore rented equipment.
If it does date to that time and is BT property it might show up on the phone bill in which case getting it removed would be a saving to boot.

If the wires can't be traced back to an extension or the user side of the master socket then it sounds like a BT engineer might be needed to keep things legal and above board.

can anyone help?

Did you try the test socket ?

In reply to a post by yarwell:

can anyone help?

Did you try the test socket ?

Yes, SNR is still 7.4, much lower than previously, was about 13/14 before.

Think I will call Sky Broadband tonight and ask them to look into, when we called them about 3 weeks ago to be put onto the unlimited package the chap on the phone did some line diags and said it should be able to get 6mbps and that he would reconfigure it, so I'm wondering if thats kicked in and caused more trouble than its worth.

Definatley something not right somewhere cause upload should be higher than 415kbps shouldnt it?

the snr isn't a useful indicator on a variable rate service unless you also quote the sync speed

The bell is something I would try and get removed unless it's really needed. Does it still ring if you remove the front part of the NTE?

In reply to a post by yarwell:

the snr isn't a useful indicator on a variable rate service unless you also quote the sync speed

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 3174 kbps 415 kbps

These are the current speeds, before it used to connect at a higher rate with a higher SNR.

In reply to a post by shtu:

The bell is something I would try and get removed unless it's really needed. Does it still ring if you remove the front part of the NTE?

Didnt think of that! I'll try tonight if I get a chance when I go around.