Problems with BT drop link wiring

[boba]

I have an older house with an older-type BT master socket in the hall and a BT slave in the bedroom. My line syncs at around 3500k but I get very poor download rates due to noise which I think is due to the house wiring.

The drop link comes from a telegraph pole into the attic and goes down to somewhere under the floor (it's a bungalow). It seems to split there because there is only 1 set of wires in the master socket like so:
pin 2 - blue
pin 3 white/blue
pin 5 - orange
and there is a green/white one not used.

The wiring is the same in both the master and the extension.
What this seems to mean is that using the master socket makes no difference because the drop link doesn't go there directly.

Is there anything I can do to improve things?

[Brian69]

Hi Boba.
You have,what was a very common wiring set-up. It works fine for voice telephones but not for broad band.
What you can do about this yourself depends on how you feel about a bit of re-wiring, in essence there will be a joint box in the attic, and you need to move the master there, fit a faceplate filter, and run a line to where you want the router.
If you feel you are up to this, then post back for more info.


If you feel that this is beyond you, then you can try removing the ring wire from the master socket. All you have to do is dissconnect the wire that connects to "3" at the master socket (the one in the hall) This may well help improve speed and stabilty.

[boba]

Thanks for that Brian69. Wiring isn't a problem for me.

There isn't a 'joint-box' (I can imagine what that is) in the loft. The black armoured cable (not sure about that but it does seem quite stiff) from the telegraph pole comes in at the top of the eaves, runs down a truss and disappears down through one of the partition walls so I suppose the joint-box is either inside the partition or more likely under the floor (where it's VERY hard to get to). The black cable drops down quite a long way from where the master socket is so the joint-box could be anywhere!

I suppose the idea is to break the cable, put a new master somewhere handy and continue the wiring from there to wherever it goes just now then change the current master for a slave?

Not sure what wires to expect inside the black cable and how to connect though.......

[Brian69]

Yes you've got it. As you say the box could be anywhere!!
If you want to have a go hears how. Please be away that you are not suppose to work on BT's cables, and if you mess this up, you will face a big bill from them, so don't blame me!!.
Right having got that out of the way, do this

(1) You will need a NTE-5 master socket and a filter faceplate (ADSL Nation)

(2) You will need to cut the cable and fit the new master, the cable should contain four wires, Black, Green, Orange, and White.

(3) Connect the Orange and White of the incomming side To A and B of the new master and check for a dial tone at the test socket, If there is not one, then disconnect Orange and white and connect Green and black.

(4) On the faceplate fliter, connect the same colours of the other half of the cable to "2" and "5"

(5) with it all plugged in your phones should now be working, but you will have no Broadband.

(6) You can run a new line from A and B on the faceplate filter, to where you want the router and connect to a RJ11 wallplate. all should now be well.


Forgot to mention. Inside the cable you will a yellow steel wire, this is the catinary wire and is used to carry the weight of the suspended cable
You will notice that There is no connection to ring line at the filter. This is because you already have it with you exsisting master, and as this is on the down side of the filter will cause no problems.

[boba]

Thanks Brian69, I'll let you know how I get on once I've got the filter faceplate.

Boba

[Brian69]

Don't for get you also need a NTE-5 master socket and a couple of insertion tools

[ricopico]

Thread is a little old now, but I have done this myself.

If you hunt around ebay, you can get NTE-5 box's with BT piper man on the front of them, this way if you ever get a BT man snooping around the connection box, they shouldnt think anything is wrong, as NTE-5 with BT piper on front are only 'available' from bt instalations.

[boba]

And so finally I've got round to it. Acquired a BT-logo NTE-5, snipped the incoming cable and terminated it in the loft. Replaced the faceplate with a decent adsl splitter and ran separate wiring - adsl to my study, filtered to the old existing wiring.

Result is that my sync rate has gone up to around 4500 but the main thing is that I'm no longer getting the earlier sporadic noise problems which hammered my transfer speeds.

Result!

[Brian69]

Well done. Now for the icing on the cake, find your original master, and remove the out of service resistor and the over-volt protector. (just clip them off the board) Leave the ring cap alone (it's the biggest component).
The reason for doing this is not to do with BB, but should your line ever be tested, two out of service resistors across it can lead to misleading results.