3 NTE5 Q's - Earth, surge protection, bell wire

[frayedwire]

I've taken an interest lately in my telephone cabling, done a load of research the last couple of days, and ripped out some old redundant cabling. I plan to do a bit more work to my cables here because we're quite far from the exchange (3.43km in a *straight* line according to samknows.com) and our connection isn't great.

so here are the questions:

1) Earth wire
we have an old NTE5a which i believe has a BT Type 21A type surge protector, the one where you have an earth wire, i.e. there are connectors A, B and 'E'! The cable going into the NTE5 has a grey sheath and three wires - blue, green, and orange. The cable connects to an old GPO BT30 at the other end. An old black drop cable comes in through the window, and splits in two to connect to the GPO BT30.
Now, the E wire in the NTE5 isn't actually connected, and the was an additional white cable with a single solid copper core that came in and connected to the GPO BT30 for it, however that was just dangling outside not connected to anything so i ripped it out!

Now that i've explained the layout (hope you got that), the question here is - is it a bad thing to not have an earth wire for this particular NTE5, surely it should have one?
Would BT/openreach consider it not up to standard and replace the NTE5 with a newer one for free? If it's not something that they'd do for free, would it be worth doing myself if i could snatch one off ebay (i'm aware that we're not supposed to do it ourselves, but i know i could do it).

btw, could anyone tell me what types either of the cables mentioned are, i'd really like to know!? i can post a pic later if you need it!

2) I'm planning on getting an NTE-2005/XTE-2005.
currently the wiring i've got from the NTE5 is a bit of a mess and this could help fix that. There's one problem i have with this though which i'll explain in a minute, first let me give you the layout:
NTE5 -> long cheap phone cable -> shorter male-to-male cheap cable -> phone socket on belkin surge protector -> adsl microfilter -> cable to router, cable to phone/fax machine.
The problem is that the surge protector built into the NTE5, mentioned in question 1 does not protect from lightning strikes, something that fried an old laptop of mine years ago. With one of these new faceplates on the NTE5, how am i supposed to apply surge protection to the phone line??? There's the phone/fax machine, the router (self bought, not the free ISP supplied one), and potentially all devices on the lan to worry about...
or should i not really need to be worried?

3) The bell wire, yes that question again!
I've read a lot about it, i understand why it can be helpful to remove it, etc, there's one aspect of it i didn't find a clear answer to though; If you have a basic old NTE5 without the bell wire filter, nor an i-plate or fancy faceplate; if you have extensions, disconnecting IPC 3 on the back of the faceplate will do the same job, however won't that just be for the extensions... what about the main socket on the front of the faceplate? What if i have no extensions, just the socket on the front of the faceplate... Can the bell wire not be fixed on that connection because you can't take the faceplate apart to get to it, or am i missing the point and the bell wire isn't used on the main front socket?

i also have a few rewiring/equipment q's, but i think i'll save them for a new thread tomorrow

thanks in advance to anyone who can help answer my questions

[RUNITDIRECT]

so here are the questions:

1) Earth wire
we have an old NTE5a which i believe has a BT Type 21A type surge protector, the one where you have an earth wire, i.e. there are connectors A, B and 'E'! The cable going into the NTE5 has a grey sheath and three wires - blue, green, and orange. The cable connects to an old GPO BT30 at the other end. An old black drop cable comes in through the window, and splits in two to connect to the GPO BT30.
Now, the E wire in the NTE5 isn't actually connected, and the was an additional white cable with a single solid copper core that came in and connected to the GPO BT30 for it, however that was just dangling outside not connected to anything so i ripped it out!

Now that i've explained the layout (hope you got that), the question here is - is it a bad thing to not have an earth wire for this particular NTE5, surely it should have one?
Would BT/openreach consider it not up to standard and replace the NTE5 with a newer one for free? If it's not something that they'd do for free, would it be worth doing myself if i could snatch one off ebay (i'm aware that we're not supposed to do it ourselves, but i know i could do it). No, earth wire in a domestic environment is of no use (TBH it's of no use in commercial installs-a lightning strike usually blows the lot!). The latest NTE5's have no provision for earth.
btw, could anyone tell me what types either of the cables mentioned are, i'd really like to know!? i can post a pic later if you need it!

2) I'm planning on getting an NTE-2005/XTE-2005.
currently the wiring i've got from the NTE5 is a bit of a mess and this could help fix that. There's one problem i have with this though which i'll explain in a minute, first let me give you the layout:
NTE5 -> long cheap phone cable -> shorter male-to-male cheap cable -> phone socket on belkin surge protector -> adsl microfilter -> cable to router, cable to phone/fax machine.
The problem is that the surge protector built into the NTE5, mentioned in question 1 does not protect from lightning strikes, something that fried an old laptop of mine years ago. With one of these new faceplates on the NTE5, how am i supposed to apply surge protection to the phone line??? There's the phone/fax machine, the router (self bought, not the free ISP supplied one), and potentially all devices on the lan to worry about...
or should i not really need to be worried? You can get ADSL surge protectors, we don't sell them as, IMO, they are pointless, as above a lightning strike will usually blow the lot anyway! They say lighning never strikes twice, tell that to our customer in Coventry! (two PBX's in two sucessive summers).
3) The bell wire, yes that question again!
I've read a lot about it, i understand why it can be helpful to remove it, etc, there's one aspect of it i didn't find a clear answer to though; If you have a basic old NTE5 without the bell wire filter, nor an i-plate or fancy faceplate; if you have extensions, disconnecting IPC 3 on the back of the faceplate will do the same job, however won't that just be for the extensions... what about the main socket on the front of the faceplate? What if i have no extensions, just the socket on the front of the faceplate... Can the bell wire not be fixed on that connection because you can't take the faceplate apart to get to it, or am i missing the point and the bell wire isn't used on the main front socket? You are, the bell wire ONLY comes into play ON EXTENSIONS. The main socket(NYE5 or NTE5 with ADSL faceplate) has no bell wire-the capacitor provides the ring signal.
i also have a few rewiring/equipment q's, but i think i'll save them for a new thread tomorrow

thanks in advance to anyone who can help answer my questions

Hopefully the above helps a little? Fire back any questions!

[Isitme]

NTE5 -> long cheap phone cable -> shorter male-to-male cheap cable -> phone socket on belkin surge protector -> adsl microfilter -> cable to router, cable to phone/fax machine.

This is doing your connection no good, I could almost guarantee that you speed will just about double with the router plugged straight into the Phone socket.

A surge protector will not protect against a lightning strike. Just think about it, do you really think an appliance costing a few pounds is going to stop a lightning strike of maybe a million volts. I don't think so. Its main purpose is to send any sudden overvoltage spikes in the electric supply to earth, thus protecting your appliances. The only real protection against a lightning strike is to unplug the appliances during a thunder storm..

[frayedwire]

ok, i'll forget about surge protection. i'll just get an XTE-2005, and a pro+ cable for the router connection.

I've done some more reading into the bell wire, and now understand it a lot more. I presume that to irradicate the problem fully, if you had a NTE5 -> extension lead -> microfilter setup, you would need to make sure that the extension lead is 6P2C not 6P4C...

[RUNITDIRECT]

If you aee planning on running an extension to the router then only connect two wires to A & B on the faceplate, if this is for a modem ONLY use one of these :-NTE2000 ADSL Extension Kit, 10M

If it for a telephone as well then use CW1308 cable and terminate to one of these at the other end :-BT Socket, Master, ADSL Filtered With RJ45/RJ11

The bell wire ONLY comes into play on extension wiring, if you have extensions elsewhere for telephones then these would terminate to 2,3 & 5 on the faceplate. As this is isolated from the ADSL signal it can not interfere with it.

If you are using a plug in extenstion it can be RJ11 or RJ12 FULLY wired-it makes ZERO difference, the ADSL signal is only presented on the centre pair-there is NO BELL WIRE on this socket!

[frayedwire]

Right, wire 3 on the back of the faceplate is just to transport a signal between the master and extension sockets. But, are you telling me that this signal doesn't actually leave the sockets via the front of the faceplates to go to the phones? I.e. the old phones never needed to receive the signal, only the socket they were connected to...

[RUNITDIRECT]

The BT socket on the front of the faceplate has the ring voltage on pin 3, this is generated locally via the inbuilt capacitor-the extension wiring off the REAR of the faceplate has pin 3 isolated from the ADSL signal. You ONLY get problems when when the ring wire is travelling down the same cable as the ADSL signal.

[frayedwire]

i think i understand!
sorry to be a pain, but just to be absolutely sure...

So, no extensions, a single NTE5 master with standard faceplate, plain old BT cable (Male-Female) plugged into the front socket, ADSL microfilter plugged into that, phone and ADSL modem plugged into that.
Both ADSL and phone signals are traveling from the NTE5 down the cable (plugged into the front socket), and into the microfilter. The NTE5 has a capacitor that is sending the bell signal out of pin 3 and down wire 3 of this cable, correct? (assuming the cable is 6P4C and therefore has a wire 3 hooked up to the jacks for it to travel down) and therefore there is a "bell wire" problem with this setup, correct? solvable by using a 6P2C cable.

[RUNITDIRECT]

Yes as you have an extension! Hard wired or plugged into the front-it is still an extension!

[AlexS]

Regarding lightning protection, I agree there's nothing that's going to stop a direct hit, however a few years ago I was given a couple of these when I was still on dial up :
BOWTHORPE|TA-F1000|TELECOMS SURGE+NOISE FILTER PROTECT | CPC
Apparently there was a thunderstorm whilst I was away, with lightning seen by my relatives ( who live a few streets away ) only a few miles away.
When I returned all my telecom equipment that had been plugged in, worked fine but I noticed the red LED on top of this device no longer lit when the line was active.
( and the line sounded noisy ).
Swapping out the device, line became quiet and LED lit to show use again.
It appeared the device had protected my kit during the storm, even though there was no direct hit.
My Brother-in-law on the next street was also away, had no such device fitted and got the fax component of his all-in-one ans-machine/fax/printer device fried !
I wouldn't recommend spending more than about £10 on such a device, like the Belkin units I now use :
Belkin : MasterCube™
However I believe that sometimes such devices can be of use...