Bad telephone wiring in house?

We had BT Infinity installed approx 1 week ago and so far the speeds aren't as expected. Currently getting around 22mb download, 3mb upload. Expected speeds via the DSL checker are a lot higher. I understand that I'm going through the line sync process but something tells me I'm not going to get faster than what I have as it's been the same from day one.

So I'm wondering if my current phone line setup is to blame. This is my current setup:
The line from the pole outside comes into the loft and into what looks like a master socket. (This is where we had our old ADSL talktalk router for so many years as we were told this was the master socket) Obviously not an ideal place for the router to be in the loft so told Talktalk who eventually sent out a BT engineer to check it out. The engineer came round, did a bit of fiddling in the loft and said he 'bypassed' the socket in the loft to join the outside line to the internal wiring in the house. He had then created a new 'Openreach' master socket in my bedroom (which was originally a small standard socket). As Talktalk saw this as not their fault, I got a bill for 'moving the master socket' so in the hope that my speeds would get better I went along with it. Speeds were only very slightly improved but never great so I finally opted to move away from Talktalk ADSL and go with BT Infinity FTTC. My homehub 5 is now connected to the revised Openreach master socket in my bedroom (where the previous router was) however my speeds as advised above are nowhere near as expected.

So to summarise, a few years back when the BT engineer originally bypassed the original socket in the loft to join the external wiring onto my existing house wiring, is this where I am possibly losing valuable speed? What would be the best way round this?

I also have another two phone extensions (small sockets) in the house which a house phone (with a filter) is connected to one and the other has nothing connected to it.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

First question ... Where are te extensions connected to? Are they into the front palte of te master? The back of te master, or wiring elsewhere?

Can you remove the bottom half of the front plate of the BT Master socket and plug your HH in there and see what results that gives you. And can you get a set of line stats - attenuation, SNR and sync speeds for both up and down.

Does your master socket look like the one on the left or the one on the right

If its the one on the right if you remove the lower half of the front to arrive at
Do the other phone sockets in the property stop working? If yes then the wiring is probably correct. If not then there is a wiring issue to be resolved.
If the other phones stop working, try the modem in the test socket that you can now see and if connection speeds are better investing in an VDSL2 faceplate will help.

As somebody else has pointed out, to baseline the performance you need to see what sync speed you can achieve when all the extensions are disconnected and the easiest way to do this is to remove the front plate and plug via the test socket underneath. Then you can see what the maximum achievable sync speed is. If the extensions are causing problems, then it's relatively easy to fix them.

There is, though, an "however". I'm assuming that all the extensions are wired correctly to the back of the faceplate. If there is any extension wiring that is not connected that way (or, maybe, still to a junction box in the loft), then this might not work.

If all the extensions go back into the loft, it's not unknown (to save work) to do a "back-feed" to a junction box in the loft to avoid a lot of rewiring of extensions. Hopefully that would have been done properly (by wiring to the faceplate), but it's not guaranteed.

One test to do is, after removing the faceplate, check if you have dial-tone on any extension sockets. Of course you need to test all extensions - unused ones included. All can act as antenna for picking up interference.

Another point is that you'll want the actual line stats. Assuming you have an HH5, that means accessing the router via its IP address, hitting the "troubleshooting" tab and then, after logging in to the admin userid, going to the "helpdesk". The most useful stats are the data rate, maximum data rate, line attenuation and signal attenuation.

The line attenuation will give people some idea of what sync speed you might expect.

Thanks for the quick responses and very helpful information everyone. I'm away from home now until this weekend so will check out everything upon my return.

Answers that I do know:
The master socket in the loft is the larger socket, out of the two. I plugged the router into it but it would not connect - I assume then the line from outside has then been connected straight to the internal house wiring. I did not try the test socket but will at the weekend.

The Openreach master socket in the bedroom is also a larger socket. I have not tried the test socket but will again at the weekend.

The extension sockets are smaller sockets. How these are wired up, i.e. if they go to a junction box I do not know, however I'll look around the house to try and find out where they meet.

Thanks for all assistance so far. Will take photos as well of the setup to make things as clear as possible.

Oh, and when the front plate was taken off the master socket in the loft, the phone from the extension was still working....

Ignore the one in the loft at the moment. Doing something there may be necessary, but it's the bedroom one you need to check at first.

Was your Infinity a self-install? Most are these days. With a dangly filter and HomeHub in the bedroom?

Certainly was a self install, mainly to save myself £50.... although I wonder now if it may have been worth paying for the engineer install with the hope that they may have sorted out the wiring? Or would they have just done what I did and plug it into the master socket in the bedroom, check there is a connection and be on their way?

It would have depended on it being an Openreach engineer, (good), or an Kelly's/Quinn's contractor. They tend to ignore the wiring and then you have to get an OR one out to fix it. That can be difficult.

OK - that's probably good as it means it is bypassed. It's the one in the bedroom that matters. I'm guessing that all the extension wiring goes back to the loft in which case there's a lot of wire to cause interference. In its way, that's good as there's lots of potential for improvement.

Using the test socket in the bedroom master is the secret and checking it cuts off all the extensions if the front plate is removed. If it does, then improvements are relatively easy. If not, then it's trickier...

It should go line - master - extensions
The idea is the test socket bypasses your extensions. Does it?
If so - easy fix.

I believe for simplicity the engineers MAY HAVE done the following:
Line - all extensions (with one of the extensions a master socket).
So the extensions are not going via the master.
If this is the case, it would explain your slowdowns / be a pain to fix.

Ok, so I've managed to get inside the sockets in my house and find out the following:

I started by taking the faceplate off the master socket in the bedroom and plugged the HH5 into the test socket..... I was immediately presented by 32mb DL and 5.8mb UL - a lot better than what I was getting before (22mb DL, 3mb UL) when the faceplate was plugged in. When I plug the faceplate back in, I immediately get the slower speeds. Perhaps you may know what is causing the problem from my photos and description below. They are labelled up accordingly:

Phone sockets in house

You will see the first socket in the loft (a couple of photos, and I was very careful!), this is where the BT engineer 'bypassed' this socket and connected the outside BT line to my internal wiring which then goes down to the master socket in the bedroom.

Then the master socket in the bedroom is where the HH5 is connected. When I take the faceplate off, the extension socket (where the telephone is connected to) is suddenly disconnected (so far so good) and my speeds jump up, as mentioned above. You can see the faceplate has the downstairs extension. When the faceplate goes back in, slow speeds come back.

Lastly there are the photos of the downstairs connection where the telephone socket is. I did mention before that there was another extension socket - this has been completely disconnected, i.e. nothing connected at either end so can disregard this.

Interestingly (and this is the first time I have actually noticed) when listening to a dial tone on the telephone, the amount of interference I can hear from the line, i.e. if there is anyone walking through the house or if I knock on the wall, I can hear noises on the line.

Hopefully with the above description and photos, someone may know whats going on.

Thanks,

If good at the test socket, then fitting a VDSL faceplate such as this one at £9 + p&p on amazon should isolate the effects of the extension wiring from the VDSL signal.

No wiring changes needed the faceplate just slips in-between the existing small faceplate and the back part, pictures at http://www.coolwebhome.co.uk/faceplate/ should make things clearer.

It sounds like a classic case of noise being introduced due to all that extension wiring and a filter will pretty well sort that out. What would also be interesting is the stats from the modem (which, if you have an HH5 you can get to be going to the admin page, go to troubleshooting and log onto the admin account to get to the helpdesk page). Of particular interest are the attenuation (up/down), the noise margin and the maximum and actual data connection speeds. If you had a lot of noise on the line due to the extensions you may have interleaving turned on (which will cost speed) and a few other things. Also, due to the way the line has been profiled in might take a little while before everything is optimised properly.

That said, the upstream rate is rather low and I wouldn't be surprise if your cabinet isn't something like 800m away. The attenuation figures will give a clue.

As Mr. Saffron says, the first thing is to get one of those filters.

Thanks for the advice. Ordered a VDSL faceplate as recommended. Will update with results when delivered and fitted.

Here are the line stats: (line is surprisingly sync'd this evening at a slightly faster than usual rate with faceplate plugged in).

Also, distance to cabinet is approx 480 metres.

1. Product name: BT Home Hub
2. Serial number:
3. Firmware version: Software version 4.7.5.1.83.8.204.1.11 (Type A) Last updated 04/09/15
4. Board version: BT Hub 5A
5. DSL uptime: 0 days, 02:06:57
6. Data rate: 3958 / 28475
7. Maximum data rate: 4224 / 33083
8. Noise margin: 6.3 / 6.0
9. Line attenuation: 33.2 / 22.1
10. Signal attenuation: 31.9 / 19.6

If you compare these stats with mine, then you clearly have a slightly longer line (or at least one with a bit more attenuation), but it's less that 1dB downstream and 2dB up. I think you've got potential there for closer to 40mbps sync speed with a faceplate. One thing I do notice is a fairly big difference (downstream) between the maximum data rate and the the actual. That's often a symptom of interleaving being on, perhaps because of lots of errors on the line. You may find after a while with a filter installed that this might disappear. As it is, I'm getting more than twice your downstream rate with less than 1dB attenuation.

6. Data rate: 9753 / 58594
7. Maximum data rate: 9902 / 58106
8. Noise margin: 6.4 / 5.8
9. Line attenuation: 30.5 / 21.5
10. Signal attenuation: 30.3 / 20.3

Just wanted to let you know, the VDSL faceplate came in, fitted to original master socket and now getting speeds of around 34mb DL, and 6mb UL so much better than before and i'm very pleased.

Thanks for MrSaffron and others for all advice and help, very much appreciated. Posted the same problem on the BT forums.... still waiting for a reply so I know where to come to next time!

Have another slight issue about 5ghz and 2.4ghz wireless but will open up a new thread about this.

Thanks again and have a nice day

That's good to hear .

By "original master socket", do you mean the bedroom one, or have you somehow reverted to the loft one?

Sorry, I should have confirmed. I left the socket in the loft as behind the panel was merely just the external line wired into the existing house wiring (as per my original photos) which then goes into the master socket in the bedroom so I put the VDSL faceplate onto that.

Would it be worth having the external wire that goes straight into the loft, moved to go to a better position in the house (i.e. The hallway) for optimum performance? Or leave things as they are for now?

Probably very little difference, and possibly costing well over £100 if done officially.