My Sky Mid was plugged directly into my master socket using an ADSL Nation XTE-2005 Master Faceplate but my Sky went really flaky over the last 5 days and after quite a few calls and swapping out micro filters it looks pretty conclusive that the filter in the faceplate is faulty. In a way this might be a good thing because it gave me what I hope is a good idea.
All my voice services are off a multi-handset DECT system which was also plugged into the ADSL Nation faceplate but two wired extensions are useful for me (one to the living room for my Sky+ box and another to my office in case I ever want to send a fax via my PC or use dialup internet if I have a prolonged broadband outage). I had already removed the ring wire from all extensions.
My hopefully-bright idea was as follows. Right now I have the ADSL Nation faceplate removed from the master socket so that the test socket is exposed and I have a regular BT microfilter plugged in so that I can connect my ADSL modem to the ADSL port and my DECT phone to the voice port and this all works fine but my extensions are dead of course.
What I was thinking as why not keep this arrangement permanently but, instead of plugging my DECT phone (base station) directly into the voice port then get a three-way one of these (
Maplin > 2, 3 or 4-Way Telephone Adaptors). I then take the extension wires going to my living room and office and, instead of the bare wire ends designed to fit into a faceplate, I fit regular phone jacks to each one and then I can just plug the extensions into the other two ports on the Maplin splitter.
This seems to me to have two advantages. All the extension wiring is after the filter so there would be no leakage back into the ADSL signal. From this perspective it is the same as the filtered faceplate (isn't it?) but I could go further because I have one of those fancy surge-protecting mains extension/plugboards that also has a surge filter in it designed to protect the BT line from surges. I could feed the voice output from the microfilter into the input port of the surge filter and put the Maplin splitter on the output side of the filter so that any noise from extensions isn't even going straight into the voice port of the micro-filter, it is actually decoupled by the surge protector filter before even touching the microfilter so there is double isolation from any antenna noise picked up on the extension wiring.
The other advantage is that the connections to the extensions are exposed so to add or remove an extension is as simple as plugging or unplugging it from the Maplin splitter and there would be much more space to clearly tie labels around which cable went to which extension because the wiring is all a lot less tight and fragile that the bare extension wiring that comes into the back of faceplates.
The big disadvantage is that this is all hardly discrete but since my master socket is hidden behind an access panel in a hallway cupboard then for my setup it can look as ugly as it likes and take up (within reason) as much space as it likes.
I see no reason why this wouldn't work and give state-of-the-art isolation of the extensions from the ADSL signal. Am I missing anything?
- Julian
. All you are doing is creating the same circuit as a filter faceplate, but using a poor filter! If your faceplate filter is playing up, return it for a replacment.
Linear Mode
