Engineer installed socket

I hope this is the right forum for this one...

I have just migrated from Pipex to Be, and am getting good speed of around 15meg without yet having tried any tweaking. One thing which I wonder about more & more as time passes is that my phone socket is one of the old 'engineer installed' type, which was fitted by BT when I first went onto broadband about 7 years ago. This means I don't need to use a filter on my connection. The socket dates from the days before filters as we know them existed!

Willl this impair the quality of my signal in any way, and is there anything I should do about it? Should I be having a 'modern' socket fitted and start using filters like most people have to? Or should I leave well alone - if it aint broke don't fix it? Or am I worrying about nothing and should I just be grateful I don't need to mess about with filters on everything?

Edited by piewackit (Sat 03-Mar-07 08:33:16)

I changed mine from the ADSL V1.0 to an ADSL nation one and made no difference to my BE connection

Having an engineer installed socket (which will have an ADSL filtered face-plate), you actually have a better solution (as your ADSL signal is filtered and isolated from the voice frequencies, at the master socket).

The best, and often easiest, way to improve connection speeds, reduce noise, and increase stability, is to connect the router/modem at the master socket, using a filtered face-plate.
You have this already, so no need to worry.

The micro-filter solution (having a filter on every 'phone socket) results in the ADSL signal going all round the house, and being affected by the extra wiring and the noise/interference it drags in.
The only reason micro-filters were brought in, was to allow DIY install, so BT didn't have to come out to 40-50% of UK households.

Micro-filters are a compromise solution, a master socket with a filtered face-plate (the big lumpy thing on the front) is by far the best solution.
You already have the Rolls-Royce so don't try and change it in for a Vectra.

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it"

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The micro-filter solution (having a filter on every 'phone socket) results in the ADSL signal going all round the house, and being affected by the extra wiring and the noise/interference it drags in.
The only reason micro-filters were brought in, was to allow DIY install, so BT didn't have to come out to 40-50% of UK households.

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Surely having the filter at a standard (unfiltered) BT line-in faceplate; routing the ADSL direct to the modem; and all the phones off of the same 'phone out' on the filter (if that makes sense) is just as good? Works for me.

I think the blurb they put out about having to have a filter at the end of every extension was just a ruse to make you purchase load of filters.
As you say, all those extension cables (not isolated from the ADSL line) could certainly bring noise up in the evenings from MW radio sources.

Mike.

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Surely having the filter at a standard (unfiltered) BT line-in faceplate; routing the ADSL direct to the modem; and all the phones off of the same 'phone out' on the filter (if that makes sense) is just as good? Works for me.

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The faceplate filter is just a neater implementation of just that.

Thanks for the response people. I will leave well alone!

I've always wondered about replacing my existing master socket with one of those special jobs with a built in filter, and have my extension going to the upstairs socket wired (10ft up the outside wall) wired directly into the non-filtered side of the master socket (my routers the only thing plugged in upstairs)

This would mean I wouldn't need any microfilters in the house at all then.

Would this be better for noise margin?

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Thanks for the response people. I will leave well alone!

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If you have a problem, you do not need a new socket, merely a new faceplate. Two reasons might arise:

The original filter is no longer adequate for the demands of ADSLMax.

You want to run your router from an extension. The original face-plate filters and, until recently, the commercial ones, only allowed an unfiltered connection at the master socket. Now most third party faceplates have connectors for an unfiltered extension. The telephone socket on the front and all other extensions are filtered. Obviously, if you need a telephone at the same place as the router you will need to filter that line. I usually install either a single RJ11 connection (unfiltered) which enables the router to be plugged in but is unlikely to used by the layman to connect a telephone or an extension faceplate which has an RJ11 for the router and a filtered BT socket for the telephone.

In either case, most currently available filtered faceplates will suffice, and they all sit on the bottom half of the same master socket on which the original BT installation took place.

"This would mean I wouldn't need any microfilters in the house at all then. "
Yes.
"Would this be better for noise margin? "
Possibly. If your margin improves using the test socket it is quite likely a filtered faceplate will help.