Broadband and phones

[sparkybird]

Hi all

My other half recently got us Broadband (he does seem to spend a lot of time on the internet..... ) Anyway, the provider (Tiscali) gave us these Z blocker DSL filters to plug in between the main phone sockets and the phone lines. We were told we had to do this on all phone sockets for broadband to work.

Two questions:

Is it possible to get phone sockets with these Z blocker things in them already as they are quite ugly and messing up my nice minimalist decor.

My upstairs phone (an extension) doesn't work when plugged into the new Z blocker but I do get a ring tone when it's plugged in normally. Any ideas?

Hope you can help

SB

 

[andy]

you can plug a filter into the master sockets, and have every other socket plug into that. HOWEVER, this means the modem will have to be plugged into the master since the rest are phone only.

as for the upstairs not workin, have you tried with a diferent filter?

 

[felix]

I haven't seen any phone sockets with built in filters but it's such an obvious solution that somebody must start making them (if they haven't already). As broadband becomes the standard for internet access, so phone sockets with filters will surely become standard items. Maybe all you have to do is wait.

But there's a better way. The broadband signal arrives at your house as a high frequency superimposed on the low frequency voice signals. Now those low frequencies don't mind being bounced all around your house on multiple branched extensions but high frequencies are less forgiving. Even if you plug your broadband modem into the first socket in the house (the master socket), the mere fact that you have all that other stuff out there is going to degrade the signal.

My solution goes like this. Run a single extension wire from INSIDE the master socket to wherever you want your modem. You can put a filter in this one if you like and have a phone (or dial-up modem) beside the computer. Next you plug a filter into the master socket and connect all your other phone sockets to that. The effect is to split the broadband off onto a single line. It will work better this way and you won't need filters anywhere else.

PS: If your computer is next to the master socket you can of course plug the broadband modem in there.

PPS: Now that you have broadband you will have to be much tighter on your software security. You are constantly visible on the internet with a fixed IP address. (On dial-up you came and went at random and got a different one every time.) Also, rogue programs can take control of a dial-up modem and ring premium rate numbers. I might be preaching to the converted here but you might like to try these:

Free firewall - Outpost Free Edition from www.agnitum.com

Free spy/ad/dialer blocker - Spybot Search and Destroy from www.safer-networking.org

PPPS: That filter isn't passing all the wires through. Try a better one or use a phone that doesn't need the ringer line.

 

[Lectrician]

http://www.clarity.it/telecoms/adsl_faceplate_mod.htm

 

[HDRW]

http://www.clarity.it/telecoms/adsl_faceplate_mod.htm

That's a good place to get the sockets - as long as you have an NT5, you get the faceplate from Clarity. If you havn't got an NT5 you're out of luck, because the Master Socket belongs to BT and you aren't allowed to change it for anything else!

The best place to go for ADSL advice is the ADSLguide(.org.uk). This is their diagram of how Filters can be used:

http://www.adslguide.org.uk/guide/connections.asp#microfilters

Cheers,

Howard

 

[delmel]

Are you using Broadband on this one ?. I have come across problems and been told they have resolved by exchanging the slave for another master

 

[Lectrician]

That clarity face plate replaces the lower half of the BT NTE5, and is BT approved.

It filters all the extensions, and terminals for an unfiltered pair to an RJ11 outlet for your modem.

 

[Big_Spark]

I would check the line...in mine I have a phone splitter (standard) with the DSL modem feed in one outlet, and the phone in the other...no filter and phone and DSL work as they should.

If I put a filter in place, the DSL cannot connect to the server properly and the speed is restricted.

I wonder if this is cos I am on a 4MB pipe? However the Tech support at Bulldog say the size of pipe should make no difference and that with the new equipment in many exchanges, filters should not be necessary on all lines now.

 

[sparkybird]

Thanks for the speedy replies everyone - although they started to get a bit techie towards the end! I think the easiest solution will be for me to split the phone line 'at source' and the ADSLguide.org.uk was really helpful in this respect.

Cheers

SB

 

[plugwash]

I would check the line...in mine I have a phone splitter (standard) with the DSL modem feed in one outlet, and the phone in the other...no filter and phone and DSL work as they should.

If I put a filter in place, the DSL cannot connect to the server properly and the speed is restricted.

I wonder if this is cos I am on a 4MB pipe? However the Tech support at Bulldog say the size of pipe should make no difference and that with the new equipment in many exchanges, filters should not be necessary on all lines now.

just connecting the DSL modem direct to the phone line is not a problem

connecting a phone directly can iirc cause problems when the phone rings. It probablly depends somewhat on the type of phone and whats at the exchange though.

maybe there was a pinout issue somewhere or something. (there are two different pinouts used for RJ11 connectors in the uk. on most uk phones the rj11 socket has the active pins on the outer pair on most other kit the active pins are on the inner pair like with us phones).

 

[Big_Spark]

Plug, I cannot say for others, but in my case the phone in question is actually an inkjet fax/phone made by Samsung.

Into this I have pluged a base unit for my DECT phone. I don't get any problem with the phone or the DSL?

 

[mapj1]

Some more info on this.
From the point of view of interference radiated from the phone lines in your house, and also for minimising any interference picked up by them, Felix's dedicated ADSL extension, and one filter-splitter as near as possible to the entry point is certainly the preferred method.
It is much better in the unlikely event of your ADSL interfering with your radio reception (most likely if someone in the family is a listener to overseas short-wave services), or more likely if your ADSL suffers random drop-outs or periods of long latency, that might be caused by packet loss due to interfernce **
This method is the best, because the shortest possible length of cable is carrying the vulnerable ADSL signals, and you can take care to route it well away from mains wiring and other cables, and use good quality cables and connectors for it.
The better ADSL filters can also be used successfully to eliminate problems of electrical noise pick up on some cheaper phones.

Note that not all phones use the ringer wire, some have a duplicate of the ringing capacitor in the 'phone, and will work on an extension where the ringer wire has not been connected. This can cause confusing symptoms, as a phone with two wires may work, and one with three may not.

regards
Mapj1.


**Such interference can be induced if the system is poorly filtered, either from nearby electrical switching, like lamp dimmers and motor brushes, or from radio transmitting equipment like mobile, DECT or cordless phones, or maybe if you or your neighbours have an amateur radio or CB installation, or possibly just if local radio taxis go by frequently !!
Missing the filters off may well work, but only in a quiet electrical environment, and remember it leaves you vulnerable to random problems, so is probably a false economy, unless you live well out in the sticks.

 

[plugwash]

if your master socket is a nte5 then you might be interested to know that http://www.clarity.it do a special version of the splitter faceplate that has terminals on the back for the unfiltered signal

 

[plugwash]

its the first item on http://www.clarity.it/acatalog/ADSL_Installation.html

 

[bonebill]

My other half recently got us Broadband (he does seem to spend a lot of time on the internet..... ) Anyway, the provider (Tiscali) ...

Sorry you probably don't want to hear this but Tiscali are one of the poorer providers out there.

Here is a comparison with two other (mediocre) mass-market providers, and one other decent provider:

http://www.adslguide.org.uk/isps/compare.asp?aol=ON&bt=ON&plusnet=ON&tiscali=ON&cmp_action=Compare

You can always migrate to a decent provider when your 12 month contract is up. Just make sure you don't set yourself up with a Tiscali-based e-mail address because that is somewhat of a lobster-pot and you'll be lumbered with them forever. Instead get yourself a free e-mail account from someone like Gmail, Fastmail, Hotmail, or Yahoo.

... gave us these Z blocker DSL filters to plug in between the main phone sockets and the phone lines. We were told we had to do this on all phone sockets for broadband to work.

That is a simplified version of the truth. All of your telephones need to be (electrically) on the filtered side of a microfilter, one way or another. You must not have a telephone which doesn't have a microfilter (electrically) between it and the phone line. You don't need a microfilter on an unused socket, and you you are not limited to having only one phone on the filtered side of a microfilter. You can happily plug a doubler into a microfilter and plug two (or more) phones into it.

Two questions:

Is it possible to get phone sockets with these Z blocker things in them already as they are quite ugly and messing up my nice minimalist decor.

Yes.

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

The XTF filters are different from other ones because they contain a really good active microfilter (with 2 transistors), the exact same circuit as used in the XF-1e microfilter.

(One thing to watch out for, the terminals on the XTF are labelled with British Standard numbering rather than BT numbering. These two numbering schemes are reversed with respect to each other; where one goes 1 to 6, the other goes 6 to 1. So where the XTF socket says LINE5 and LINE2 these should be connected to terminals 2 and 5 respecitively on a BT phone socket. The terminal marked NC should be wired to terminal 3 (the ringer wire) on the BT phone socket in case you want to make an onward unfiltered connection in the future. If you want to take a filtered connection off to a standard BT phone socket then PHONE5, RING4 & PHONE2 should be wired to terminals 2, 3 & 5 respectively on the extension socket. If you want to take an unfiltered connection to another socket, you should wire LINE5, NC & LINE2 to terminals 2, 3 & 5 respectively on the extension socket.)

I found that the XF-1e was the only microfilter which would allow Caller Display to work on my Philips DECT phone on my long (6km) exchange line. All other microfilters (even supposedly superior filters) failed to work.

Once you have an XTF socket, you can wire other extension sockets from the filtered side of the socket. You then don't need to have a separate microfilter on those extensions, because the circuit to them is already filtered. (That also means you can't connect any ADSL equipment to those sockets, but that may well be what you want.)

My upstairs phone (an extension) doesn't work when plugged into the new Z blocker but I do get a ring tone when it's plugged in normally. Any ideas?

Substandard microfilter?

If you have a microfilter that looks like a bit like a BT socket doubler, i.e. the plug part of it is part of the body of the unit, then chances are it's not that great. It may work to a certain extent, and many people are perfectly happy with them, but many of them have significant design flaws which mean they won't work in many configurations which should be valid. Personally I wouldn't touch them with a bargepole.

Microfilters that look like a little box with a short bit of cable coming out of them are generally much better. As far as I can tell, the best one you can get is the XF-1e:

http://www.adslnation.com/products/xf-1e.php