Help - Extending main BT telephone socket

[richholmes]

Hi All

I want to move the main BT socket in my house ie extend the cable that comes from outside the house and connects to the main/first BT socket.

Is this possible without degradation of signal? If so it would be great if you could specify what connecting/extending gear I need to do this.

Many thanks

Rich

 

[Space cat]

Strictly speaking that socket and the cable leading up to it belongs to BT so you shouldn't touch it. The 'official' way to do this - and in some ways the best - is to run 4-core cable to one or more slave sockets.

This is easy if you have the standard BT socket like this:

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/images/iplate/bt-master-socket-nte5-split-large.jpg

Take the two screws out and you'll find that the bottom plate is plugged into another socket inside the box. Everything behind that socket belongs to BT; the bit you have in your hand is yours to play with and you'll see that it has terminals to connect extension cable.

An example slave socket: http://www.screwfix.com/p/1g-surface-telephone-slave-socket/11039.

The cable: http://www.screwfix.com/p/telephone-cable-2-pair-4-core-100m/18134

Don't be tempted to use whatever random 4-core cable you have lying around. The solid cores in the proper stuff are designed to go into terminals in the boxes. Multi-stranded alarm cable might look similar but it won't make a reliable connection.

Will you degrade the signal? The analogue phone signal has come a very long way from the nearest exchange to your house so adding a few more metres of cable will not make any noticeable difference. Broadband is another matter. This should, ideally, be tapped off as near to the incoming cable as you can get and also excluded from the rest of your internal wiring. This is a good argument for leaving that socket alone so that you can replace the bottom plate with something like this:

http://www.adslnation.com/products/xte2005.php

 

[richholmes]

Thanks so much for a great and full answer!

Just a question on your last point regarding broadband and the xte2005 - So I gather you're saying that if i replace the nte5 split panel with the xte2005 it would be best to connect my router as close to that as possible.

Likely hood is that I'll want to keep my router next to my pc (both 10m away from nte5) so can I extend from the 2 cores that make up the adsl feed from the back of the xte2005 face plate and will that 10m length cause degredation issues?

Thanks again

Rich

 

[Space cat]

-- can I extend from the 2 cores that make up the adsl feed from the back of the xte2005 face plate and will that 10m length cause degredation issues?

The broadband signal is a high frequency analogue signal riding piggy-back on wires that were not originally designed to carry it. It is easily degraded, especially if it has to run through internal phone wiring with many side branches.

The ideal solution is to have a standalone modem-router close to the (filtered) master socket. The modem converts ADSL into the much more robust TCP-IP which the router can send all over the house with impunity. Most such modem-routers have multiple sockets and many include a wireless access point as well.

This arrangement is vastly superior to a USB broadband modem plugged into a PC a long way from the master socket. It takes all the processing load off the PC and most (maybe all) standalone routers give you a hardware firewall too. And if that isn't enough to convince you, a standalone modem-router allows multiple PCs to connect to the internet and (OS permitting) to each other.

 

[SimonH2]

If you get that filtered faceplate from ADSL Nation, then you can use one pair of the extension cabling to run the ADSl signal separately. Ideally you'd use 3 pair cable - use the blue and orange pairs for the phone extensions, and the green pair for the ADSL (but only run the green pair to one socket, and without any connections along the way).

You can either use a standard secondary socket and the ADSL filter that came with your router as an adapter, or use a dual BT secondary socket and a BT-RJ11 cable for the modem, or you can buy sockets with one BT socket (use the blue and orange pairs) and an RJ11* socket for the ADSL modem (use the green pair) on one plate. I know they exist, just can't find any right now Or you could just put a BT socket next to an RJ11 socket.

By running the unfiltered line on it's own pair (and without joints/branches), further degradation of the ADSL signal should be minimal.

* Actually it should be called something like a 6P4C modular connector/socket. "RJ" stands for "Registered Jack" and details the connector and wiring for various permutations of phone service - allowing concise and detailed instructions to be given to telephone technicians back in the days when Bell ran all the phones in the USA.