Sky broadband unlimited ordered. Any pointers?

[aaronjunited]

Ordered sky broadband unlimited and talk tonight, installation date is June 1st. I have no phone line at all in the property and it will be installed for free according to the salesperson. There is actually no cable coming into the house from the mast outside either, don't think the previous house owner wanted a phone line or anything to do with one at that time. OPENREACH should technically go outside and run a new line from the mast and into my house for the phone line to work. One question though, can anyone give me any pointers or advice on what to ask for when the engineer comes out, any thing i should ask him to do to stay ahead of any problems that may occur later on down the line. Which type of socket will he install? Hope you get my drift. Will update as things progress. Thanks in advance. Aaron.

[Scubbie]

The BTO Engineer should install an NTE5 Master socket. External NTE5 Sockets should no longer be fitted.

With the accessibility of FTTC/FTTP in your area, you may want to consider having the socket located near to a electrical socket so that should you upgrade to SHU or SFUP in the future, you can connect the BTO Modem to the mains within reach of the Master Socket.

I would also discourage the idea of locating the socket in a hallway. If you intend to connect to the router with an Ethernet cable to your TV, Sky+ HD STB, PS3, Xbox, Blu-Ray, Desktop PC, etc. then it might be better to have the socket in a more accessible room.

[aaronjunited]

Thanks for that scubbie, good advice also, shall remember that for when he comes.

Will the NTE5 socket have a bottom access plate?

[Scubbie]

The NTE5 has a small faceplate which can either be replaced for a filtered faceplate or it can be used on the vDSL faceplate. The pic below shows the small part removed, exposing the 'Test socket'.

[aaronjunited]

Thanks for that scubbie, understand it now.

[aaronjunited]

Installation date has now changed to Wednesday 6th.
Received letters confirming installation and details of connection.
Sky say my line could support between 7.0Mbps & 14.3Mbps.

They are starting my speed at 4Mb.

I received my router today It's a SAGEMCOM F@AST 2504, just wondering are these routers good, decent, or average?

I have one thing playing on my though, there is no phone line at all coming into my house. Every other house in my street has lines coming from a mast outside overhead and into the house. The line coming from the mast outside to my house is hanging from my house and has been snipped, apparently it has never entered the house. Obviously this has to be true as there is no main socket in the house and never has been, nor any sign of one.

I want to make sure the BTO engineer will be making sure he gets a cable running into my house without having to put anything on hold for a couple of days, ie - he comes and notices that he cant do something or doesn't have the correct equipment.
Maybe this is me just being paranoid.

Anyway, will update on the day the engineer comes.

[williammorris]

I have SUB at 7mbps and my router has been up since the day it was installed. Which has been over 5 months now.

[aaronjunited]

Broadband and phone line now installed

Can someone point me in the direction in terms of testing and keeping an eye on the stats?

Thanks.

Here is the first stats:

[aaronjunited]

Here is the stats connected to test socket on master socket, above stats where just connected to the socket normally.

System Up Time: 0:43:43

Port	Status	TxPkts	RxPkts	Collisions	Tx B/s	Rx B/s	Up Time
WAN	MER	341	19619	0	805	770	0:05:01
LAN	Up	3422	3425	0	25953	3689	0:43:43
WLAN	Up	29937	22015	0	478	0	0:43:22

ADSL Link	Downstream	Upstream
Connection Speed	4095 kbps	606 kbps
Line Attenuation	30.5 dB	18.1 dB
Noise Margin	17.4 dB	19.4 dB

[Scubbie]

They look fine for now. You are on ADSL2+ already and your line looks like it will be capable of supporting the full 20mb provided that you are using the Master Socket and short ADSL lead as previously mentioned.

There is a program (Router Stats Lite) which can monitor router connection speeds, but I don't think that it has been updated to work with the Sagem 2504N.