Broadband setup help - phoneline

[Monty_Stranger]

I have moved into an old house last year where the previous owner was 92 and not interested in broadband. The phone line works like this. The drop cable meets the house at the roof where there is a junction box. Another cable comes from the junction box into the cellar where it goes into a BT80 style junction box (see pic - this has the old 'T' telecom logo on the casing). An internal cable comes form this into the cellar where it goes into a normal (non NTE5) socket.

I am not interested in having a landline and I signed up for superfast fibre with BT. What I have done (and i know i can be shot for this) is connect a CW108 cable from terminals A/B in the junction box directly into the house to a ADSL filter faceplate. This is giving me download speeds of 3MB/s which is poor and not what i am paying for. I told BT and they want to send someone out at a charge. Now do I need a VDSL faceplate instead? Or is there a more fundamental issue? I dont have a master socket so wary about asking openreach to have a look..

IMG_1015

• Monty_Stranger
• 30 Jun 2019

 

[rsgaz]

You have split the pairs. You use either the blue pair(normal) OR the orange pair, not one wire from each.
The incoming wires look a little corroded, too. As you have a tiny amount of slack to play with, snip off the corroded end and strip the wire again to get a fresh bit of copper.

Change it to the blue pair at both ends and report back with the speed.

 

[rsgaz]

Also just noticed, your incoming line also has the same problem, the colours should be either orange and white OR green and black, not a mixture. Only BT can fix that though as you need access to 'the other end', which could be up a pole/underground/inside the roadside green boxes, etc. They ought to do that for free as it is their error.

 

[Monty_Stranger]

Thanks for the quick reply. I made those changes including the corrosion stripping and slightly marginal gains with a longer ping. The incoming does use orange and white, the photo is deceptive. Could it be the faceplate i am using?

 

[rsgaz]

Could it be the faceplate i am using?

Possibly, if it is just a cheap ADSL splitter which only has a few components on the PCB, like...

The latest BT master, NTE5c Mk4 has loads of components on, most of them for filtering out unwanted noise to improve speed.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/323845185543

You should have a master anyway, so would be worth fitting one IMHO.

 

[rsgaz]

slightly marginal gains

Haven't you gone from 3 Mbps to 20 Mbps?! A bit more than 'slightly marginal' I'd say!!

 

[Monty_Stranger]

Haven't you gone from 3 Mbps to 20 Mbps?! A bit more than 'slightly marginal' I'd say!!

Lol yes - i was meaning 3 Megabytes per sec is slightly more than 20 Mega bits per sec - or have i got that wrong?

My ADSL faceplate is this one.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Solwise-ADSL-NTEFACE-SOL-ADSL-Faceplate-Splitter/dp/B003H6GUNA/ref=sr_1_2?crid=PEYQ9Y7VOKMV&keywords=solwise+adsl&qid=1561915569&s=gateway&sprefix=solwise,aps,142&sr=8-2

 

[Monty_Stranger]

Also I am paying for and guaranteed 23Mb - 36Mb

 

[JohnD]

Mb is megabits

MB is megabytes

Note the capital.

8 bits in a byte

 

[Monty_Stranger]

Mb is megabits

MB is megabytes

Note the capital.

8 bits in a byte

Ok so that makes sense. I am still underachieving as far as I am concerned with the speed. 19.8 Mbps is not 24 Mb - and even that is the lower end of the speed range I should apparently be getting.

 

[JohnD]

I am not a comms enthusiast but I believe figures are usually quoted as bits per second, being the speed. When someone's speaking you wouldn't know if they meant Big B. That way the numbers sound bigger.

So my Fibre is nominally 100 Mbps, and with a wire I get a little more, but on wifi I only get 53.70 Mbps

People talking about storage will talk in MB (or GB, or TB, or whatever), being the size. A byte is one ASCII character, depending what you're doing, so would be relevant when you were talking about the storage needed per page of text or quantities of other data.

 

[rsgaz]

My ADSL faceplate is this one.

So, you do have a master then, or what is this filter plate plugged into?

If the speeds are guaranteed, won't Openreach come and improve the speed for free? i.e. fit the latest master socket for you.

 

[JohnD]

p.s.

if you're measuring it, you should test at the master socket, wired. The supplier has no responsibility for inadequacies in your own equipment.

 

[Monty_Stranger]

Thanks for these replies. I see where I have gone wrong. My faceplate is fitted into a backbox NTE5a which i bought at the same time as the ADSL faceplate. It was this one

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B006V1P39A/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I have been running the tests over wifi . So that coupled with my confusion between bits n bytes has led me down the garden path......still i wouldn't have figured this out without your input so thank you.

I will buy the NTE5c master -thanks for the link - and use that instead to see if it makes a difference. My concern with asking openreach is that they may see I've tinkered with the junction box and whack a painful charge on.

 

[JohnD]

Obviously revert to the original equipment and apply a good thick layer of dust and dirt from the hoover.