Sky broadband issue, Advice please.

Hi, long post but please bear with me as I want to give as much detail as I can. For the past month or so i've been having problems with my broadband as far as it regularly disconnecting.

About a month ago we phoned up & the lady I spoke to on the phone said that she could see an external fault & that a BT engineer would come have a look within 3 days. So a few days later a BT open reach engineer arrived & plugged into the BT box on the wall outside our home & said he had detected a fault somewhere between there & the box thats just a bit down the road. He went & did some more checks & determined that the problem was at the top of the telephone pole & spend 10-15 minutes up there doing something & when he came down he said he had found a ground fault which he was confident he had fixed.

After he went my internet reconnected & all seemed fine for a while, My router's SNR was more stable than it had been for a while. However within an hour it started disconnecting again but given how i'd just been told the external fault was fixed I convinced myself that the fault was internal & decided to wait a few weeks so that I could buy all new cabling & equipment.

For the past 3 years I had been running a 20m DSL cable from the BT master socket (With an ADSL faceplate) in the hall to the router upstairs & all had been running well until recently, But I figured since it was a cheap cable I'd look at changing the setup & eventually decided to do away with that & run a new extension cable from the A+B connections on the master socket faceplate upto an ADSL extension socket which I brought from ADSL Nation as i'd heard very good things about there ADSL equipment. I also decided to buy a new DSL cable from them & some twisted pair phone cable to run the extension.

Over the past few weeks it seems i've been put on the line training or whatever its called & my speeds have dropped from 19meg down, 1.3meg up to 10meg down, 688k up) & Today the internet was really bad this morning & for the 1st time I noticed a lot of cracking appearing on the phone line, There had been a faint hiss for the past few weeks but now its a full blow hissing/cracking/popping. I took the faceplate off the master & plugged just the phone into the test & all was quiet.... Until I plugged the DSL cable in & the router began to connect to the line (Via an old microfilter) at which point the hissing etc... would return. I tested a few filters just to be sure it wasn't faulty & it was the same with all of them.
A few hours later the package with the new cables etc... arrived & I wired everything up according to the instructions & triple checked all the connections & wires were correct before plugging the faceplate back into the master socket. And just like before there was a lot of cracking, I again checked all the connections on my end & am confident that the extension wiring is good.


Now the obvious thing is to again contact Sky & report the problem which may again result in a BT engineer been sent out. However I've been told that if no fault is decetcted or if they decide its something down to you they will charge you for the visit & currently we just don't have the spare money to hand to risk that so I want to be completely sure its nothing my end, Hence why I'm posting this to see if there is any additional checks or anything I can do to be completely sure its something outside & that there are not going to be charged for a call out or something.

current router stats-
http://oi65.tinypic.com/i1grbc.jpg

For testing purposes, you really need to eliminate all internal wiring by connecting your modem-router directly to the test socket on the BT master socket.

Is the extension still wired to the A+B terminals? If so the disconnect it as it should be connected to the extension terminals on the faceplate.

In reply to a post by Ribble:

Is the extension still wired to the A+B terminals? If so the disconnect it as it should be connected to the extension terminals on the faceplate.

He does say A&B on the Master face plate so they should be disconnected when it is removed. Yes, it is confusing when the incoming line terminals are marked A&B.

In reply to a post by Ribble:

Is the extension still wired to the A+B terminals? If so the disconnect it as it should be connected to the extension terminals on the faceplate.

There wired to the A+B terminals on the faceplate as thats the unfiltered signal required for the ADSL extension socket we have.

Its a similar setup to this image with the A+B terminals on the faceplate going down to the ADSL extension-
http://www.teletechnics.co.uk/images/nte2000.png

While this isn't the faceplate I have mine is similar & came with similar instructions:
http://www.adslnation.com/downloads/docs/XTE-2005_Gu...

If you would like to extend the unfilterd
ADSL signal use the terminals labelled B & A.
Standard wiring colours and number to letter
conversion information is shown in the chart
overleaf

And this is the adsl extension socket i fitted yesterday-
http://www.adslnation.com/products/xtf.php

Edited by deleted (Sat 30-Apr-16 14:47:19)

Should not be touching A and B on the master.

Can you not place the router at the master socket and do away with all this messing around?

Also as stated please test with the original router rj11 cable, a filter, and plug into the test socket.

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

Should not be touching A and B on the master.

I'm not on about the A+B on the actual BT socket thats on the wall, There on the actual faceplate as in the image above & as I said the instructions specifically state there for us in the sort of setup I have.

If I plug my ADSL extension socket (That is also filtered) into the 2+5 as normal won't I just end up with the connection been double filtered or something?

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

Can you not place the router at the master socket and do away with all this messing around?

No, There's not only no power socket anywhere near the master but everything thats hooked upto the router wired (PC, games consoles) are in the upstairs bedroom.

I play online games a fair bit & have found using wifi results in lag so always prefer having everything hooked upto the router wired. Lived in this house for 12-13


When I get home i'll plug into the test socket & see what happens.

Edited by deleted (Sat 30-Apr-16 15:51:44)

Is your master a pre filtered master? Take some pics of it perhaps.

I would personally just try out in master test socket.

The original filter the ISP provided and all original cables use those, do not use anything of your own which you have purchased at a later date. Do this just for testing.

Can you confirm, when using the test socket is your DIY extension also disconnected?

Edited by ukhardy07 (Sat 30-Apr-16 15:58:51)

This sounds similar to an issue I had a year or so ago. However, it may be totally unrelated but for what it's worth:- I noted that the broadband dipped in windy or wet weather and several BT engineers later(with lots of testing and with various bits of equipment replaced, including the SKY hub) it was discovered that the cable from the telegraph pole to my house had weathered (it was 30 years old!) and when the wind blew or it rained then the internal cables 'shorted' thus causing the problem. The BT guy replaced the cable ad all was well thereafter. Hope this is of some use. Good luck!

OK had the modem plugged into the test socket with a microfilter & the cable that came with out & am having the same problems so seems its definitely an outside fault. Will have to get onto my ISP to get a BT engineer called out.