Poor Quality Extension Wiring Affecting Fibre Speeds?

I have a NTE5 master socket, put in by BT a couple of years ago. There is an extension cable attached to it which is quite low quality (it was put in years ago before broadband was common). Can this affect the speed I get over fibre, despite the phone signal being split off by the master socket?

I currently have BT Infinity 2 but I have been getting speeds under 40Mbps - though in the past it has been between 60 and 70.

Apologies if this has been posted in the wrong part of the forum...

Is this extension cable on the voice side after the filter? If it is then yes, it may have a small effect. If it is in the VDSL circuit then the effect could be large.

Disconnect everything by removing the face plate and then connect you hub/modem direct to the test socket. What are the results from there? And what are the basic line stats?

Thanks for the quick reply. The extension is connected to the terminals inside the front of the faceplate, if that makes sense. I've always assumed that is the voice side - but perhaps I'm wrong?

The reason I raised the question was because we had a BT engineer out this morning, who said the extension could be causing the low speeds, and I thought I could use a second opinion! He did say that the line speed had been capped to maintain its stability, which I presume explains why, when I used the BT Wholesale speed test, it said the line was only capable of around 36Mbps.

Yesterday, I did try the test you suggested - plugging the hub straight into the test socket, but it made no noticeable difference. Though would it if the line speed was being capped?

Pardon my ignorance, but what do the 'basic line stats' comprise? I've never really had to worry about anything other than the speed in the past!

Thanks again!

Make sure that the Extension is disconnected when you access the Test Socket on the NTE Master Socket.

The Extension should be silent, no Dial Tone etc, when you are accessing/using the Test Socket.

In reply to a post by calopez:

Thanks for the quick reply. The extension is connected to the terminals inside the front of the faceplate, if that makes sense. I've always assumed that is the voice side - but perhaps I'm wrong?

Provided the terminals are numbered 2,3,5 and that it is a filtered faceplate then yes, that is the voice side. As already mentioned, when you test, ensure that the extension is totally silent with no dial tone.

Do some speed tests here and provide links to the results. And access your hub/modem to get the Attenuation, Sync speed, max attainable and SNR figures for the line.

When I did the test on Sunday, I removed the faceplate and plugged the hub into the socket behind it - so the extension was completely isolated. It made no difference to the speed (and I tried both the tbb speed test and BT wholesale).

I'll do some more tests as suggested, but that'll have to wait until I'm home this evening!

Got home this evening to find the engineer had replaced the 'old' socket with a new NTE5C / VDSL MK4. Somewhat miffed as (a) the faceplate is loose and (b) the extension cable now appears to wired in before the broadband is split off. If so, that would seem to be a retrograde step if your extension wiring might be a bit dodgy. But perhaps I'm mistaken?

Anyway, on checking the speeds, they are much better - just under 60Mbps, which is much more like it. Tried it a few minutes ago and this is the result:
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results.html...

Two points to note: firstly, my wife is currently watching Monty Don on YouTube (don't dare interrupt that ) and this is using wireless with the extension connected.

I don't think that's too bad, under the circumstances. The question is, though, will it last?

Stats from the HH5 (these seem to be the most relevant ones I can find - are there others?):

6. Data rate: 19999 / 62548
7. Maximum data rate: 22619 / 72270
8. Noise margin: 7.0 / 6.0
9. Line attenuation: 18.8 / 15.3
10. Signal attenuation: 18.6 / 15.4

The BT Wholesale tester says 'IP Profile for your line is - 60.54 Mbps'.

The NTE5C is different to the NTE5A in that the externsions connect to the back plate (this is to stop customers accidentally removing extensions from the old IDC connections on the front half plate).

When you remove the front half plate on the new NTE5C look into the connection it just bridges the top pins with the bottom pins so in essence it still disconnects the extensions for testing purposes. When fitting the VDSL MK4 SSFP it still filters the signals before sending the PSTN onto the extensions.

You currently have the best setup

Thanks for the explanation. So, in other words, when you remove the VDSL MK4 SSFP to reveal the test socket, the extension is actually disconnected?

That's reassuring.

As I said, I was getting decent - if not spectacular - speeds yesterday. I will be satisfied if they stay that way, but in the past they have always seemed to decline over the weeks and days after an engineer has called, so I will keep an eye on things for now.

Is it reasonable to think that, given yesterday's reasonable speeds with the extension connected, the extension isn't responsible for subsequent slowdowns?

That's correct, you can check this by pinching the front of the MK4 frontplate removing it and plugging a phone in the extension, you shouldn't have dial tone.

It all depends on what the engineer did, if the extensions were star wired into the back of the NTE and the engineer removed this then that could have been an issue which would have resolved the speed issues. Did the engineer do anything externally?

I'd say to leave it all connected now so not to disturb DLM and your speeds should be stable going forward.