I have an ADSL connection which is currently going into one of my spare rooms. The line was ceased recently as it was payed for by my old company. Next to the broadband socket I have an Ethernet socket installed which runs into my office (Yes I cabled in the end!) My ADSL router normally plugs into these sockets and there is a switch attached in the office for some servers.
My question is, can I rewire the old broadband cabling to be an extension of my main line without running this cable into my master socket or would I have to get BT to do this, or is it even possible?
My normal phone line has been ADSL enabled, apparently
On 5 Sep 2006 03:56:59 -0700 someone who may be snipped-for-privacy@btinternet.com wrote this:-
And in this spare room was there a master socket with a filter of some sort, into which your ADSL modem/router was plugged?
If there was a master socket did it look like the NTE5 one third of the way down
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and did this have something like the filter at the top of
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screwed into it, or a nasty dangling thing plugged in to it like
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?
This is presumably in the spare room. Is this a master telephone socket as above?
So far so good.
What sort of cabling? Where does it run to and from?
It depends on what the cabling is and how your telephone systems are arranged.
If the cabling is running to a master socket then this is not your cable and you should not do anything with it. You only work on what is after the master socket.
Diagrams of what is where, where cables run and what sort of cable they are, together with photographs would be useful.
Yes this is the one, I do not have any visible microfilters plugged into the socket
or a nasty dangling thing plugged in to it like
it has 4 wires, I think! I know it definatley had a green and a black wire as that is what is actually wired into the socket, the others are unused.
my old business line comes from a box which is high up above my front door. It is routed around my house and comes into the spare room. My home line also comes from this into the house and then to a master socket in the front room. Basically I want to wire the old business cable up to be an extension of my home line somehow so I can avoid running a new cable, it's a big house and stone so its a bitch to run cabling around. I also just put the ethernet connection in thinking it would not be a problem!!!
If so, it probably used only 2 pairs, although you connected up 4 pairs. 2 of those pairs are redundant for ethernet usage. A phone line needs 1 pair (it also has a ring line which would be best not connected, as it is a source of interference).
So if the ethernet goes somewhere useful, like next to your master socket, or a socket in your office, then you can borrow part of the cable.
An alternative is to get the old business line connected up as a second line on your personal account.
The short answer is yes you can. ADSL has already made it down a mile or so of very indifferent twisted pair to your house. A bit of CAT 5 properly connected will make sod all difference.
In general you are supposed to get BT in to move the master socket. In practice if thats what you want to do, just do it.
And if its just and extension you want, wire it to the back of the master with two pairs and go for it.
Thanks however I am confused now. I dont want to wire the cable to my master socket of my main home line as this will involve unwiring the end that is wired into the BT box above my front door and somehow extending this cable into the front room, where the master socket is.
What I want to achieve is to do some kind of jiggery pokery in the BT box above my door which will essentially make the old business line an extension of my home line
I think maybe this is not possible, so maybe my only bet is to part with some cash and re-activate this line or am I missing something here? errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
You simply need to make whatever the phone is to be plugged into am extension rather than master socket, and carry three wires of almost any sort between the appropiate pins on the back of the master socket to the extension.
What wire you use is down to whatever is already there. Its so un critical its not true.
Basically a BT line comes in on two wires. A third - the ring circuit - is regenerated via a capcitor/resistor combo in the 'master socket - or BYT termination box.. These three are what a phone works on. All phones are wiored in parallel. Cant remember if there isn't a 4th wire shared between all phones for 'anti tinkle' if you have loop disconnect dialling etc..
Anyway, these three, or 4, wires are available on modern BT masters - unscrew and unplug the front bit, and there are some connectors there to wire extensions to.
If its an old BT socket simply get BT to upgrade it..IIRC that's free. You are allowed to wire your own extensions..if you screw up, BT come around, unplug the face plate, test the line and tell you to sort your own shit out if thats the problem.
IIRC you simply have to make the 3 or 4 wires that are provided with terminations in the master connect to the identical 3 or 4 wires that the extension socket has.
Extension sockets are freely available at any electrical outlet (of the mercantile, rather than mains) sort..if you have an old master socket that's not in use, cut the capacitor out of it and use it as is. It's likely you have a two pair incoming, of which two are now disconnected at the main incoming box. You can do what you like with the redundant BT kit and wires INSIDE the house - any fresh installation they are likely to lay new wires and sockets. Unless you provide them with house wiring to connect to - they don't mind doing that.
A lot I think. Its terribly possible and dead easy. The trouble is understanding your question and describing in words what a picture does better.
OK we have a disconnect here. I understand how to put in an extension however what I am trying to ask is slightly different. Let me start again omitting the ethernet business as that probably confused things.
I have a home phone line which comes from a BT box which is above my front door. A telegraph pole wire feeds into this box. My home line has just been BB enabled.
I also have wiring for a ceased business line which has been BB enabled. The wires to this line also come out of the box above the front door.
So we have one input and two outputs to each line
What I want to do with the wiring for the business line is to turn this into an extension but WITHOUT wiring it into the master socket of my home line (Which is in the front room)
I was hoping that inside that little old BT Box above my front door there was something I could do to achieve this?
Why do I want to do this?
Well I spent buggering well ages cabling some ethernet into my office from my spare room which is where the business line socket was and hence where my wireless ADSL router is.
The only other option I really see is that I could unwire the business line from the box above my front door and extend this down to the front room and wire this as an extension to the master socket as you describe above - Do I really have to do this?
There is ADSL on this line, random bits of "wet string" as directly connected extension wiring is a good way of slowing your ADSL, particulary the Max variant.
The "ring" wire performs the anti-tinkle function, the fourth wire is earth.
The best bet is for the OP to buy a good quality microfilter and place that as near as possible to where the line arrives. Feed the unfiltered "ADSL" side directly to the modem and to the modem only using good quality cable. If the modem has ethernet put it next to the microfilter and run ethernet to your router/switch/computer WHY. All the POTS stuff is then connected to the "Phone" side of the microfilter in the normal way.
On 5 Sep 2006 11:36:56 -0700 someone who may be snipped-for-privacy@btinternet.com wrote this:-
There is. However, if you do it you are interfering with their property and that is illegal. For various reasons you may only do wiring after their master socket.
If you were to decide to do something in the box and you do it well it is likely nobody will be any the wiser. However, if you do it badly the likely result is you requesting the visit of a BT employee to sort out the mess you have created. What happens after that depends on how nice a day they are having.
I suggest that you put a filter in the master socket of your home phone line
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and wire the existing extensions from that. What you do with the master socket in your spare room and the wiring from it is up to you.
On 5 Sep 2006 05:32:19 -0700 someone who may be snipped-for-privacy@btinternet.com wrote this:-
Green and black are generally a second line, orange and white are generally the first.
Personally I would do it properly, from a proper filter in the master socket. I would take filtered and unfiltered extensions as necessary to suitable sockets. Re-using old cable can cause frustration as it can reduce ADSL speeds a lot.
Ok so BT will be able to do something for me if I contact them?
I have not had much joy contactig them recently waiting over 30 minutes on hold and this is why I would prefer to do it myself they are pretty useless.
Alternatively if I do decide to run the cable to my master socket is there such a thing as a joiner, a junction box or something similar that I can use to extend the existing wiring down to the master.
I've had excellent service from the actual engineers. The knack is in getting them to come in without a completely fixed idea of what they are to do. Like you, I had two lines coming into my house. The original phone line was connected to a horrible junction box screwed to my front door frame with a surface wire leading down to the master socket. I could not easily redecorate with this mess in place and asked for a surveyor to come round. I explained that I would like this tidied up, or... the line brought in elsewhere. An appointment was made for the engineers to visit. More recently, a business line had been put in to my cellar, and I asked them if it would contain 2 pairs. Yes, they said. Right, I said, can we bring my home line in on the other pair and ditch the original cable. No problem. This was duly done, the spare pair re-patched at the street box, and a new master socket fitted (from which I ran extensions myself). They even took down the unused cable from the pole. Sorted.
As others have pointed out, it's not a good idea to work on the BT side of the master sockets, which is what you seemed to be thinking of doing.
It sounds like you have what I used to have - one master socket for one line which, later, had a second master socket installed elsewhere, for business. This used a connection at the back of the first master to the new business master socket. All this was installed and "owned" by BT as part of their network. No problem - each master socket was the point of demarcation for the service delivered by BT. The fact they chose to loop the main incoming wires via one master to the other was their decision and was maintained by them.
When I converted to BB, one of these masters became redundant so I removed the loop-through from the now dead incoming pair and reconnected the pair to the front user connections. I therefore moved this part of the BT service to the user- maintained side (done with the aid of coffee and biscuits, while a BT guy was on-site, doing some other chargeable work...) You shouldn't touch any of the BT side, since it is their responsibility. If you get it wrong, they will charge a fee, including call-out, to get it back to their standards before starting on any work needed to fix a problem. However, that is your decision, depending on your abilities in maintaining BT standards for their part of the service.
I now have one point of demarcation at the one master socket. At this point I installed an ADSL faceplate splitter (see other replies) to remove all the ADSL frequencies from my internal phone wiring. My broadband router connects to this close to the master and, from there I run Ethernet to all computer installations. I do not use any phone wiring for data. You should try to adopt the same philosophy, since most problems and faults are found to occur due to damage to the user's internal wiring. You also separate the unbalanced 3rd wire ringing signal from the data rather than running it in parallel, causing crosstalk into the data wires.
If you want to continue to have two BT phone lines to have two separate broadband connections, then you will need to have two master sockets as the points of demarcation between the BT and your own wiring. If one of these does not have any telephones connected, then you do not need any ADSL filters on this. Filters only separate the "voice" part from the ADSL, so you can extend the combined signal on the incoming pair, from the point of demarcation master socket to your office, where you can install a splitter to separate the voice. This is the one you can use to run the broadband to your office.
If you want to extend the broadband wires from the master location, then I recommend you do it without also extending the voice circuit's ringing wire in the same cable. The data, including the incoming combined ADSL plus voice, is best run as a twisted-pair. If you also need to extend voice to your office, then use a filter at the phone outlet in the office, since this will put the unbalanced bell wire close to the phone and away from the data wiring.
So lets get this straight - overhead line into box, wire from box into house, feeding a master socket.
Ok here it gets a bit confusing - "a ceased buisness line that has been BB enabled". You mean there used to be a second line, that used to have BB on it, but you now no longer pay for the second line, so it is in effect disconnected?
One presumes this was also fed into its own master socket in the same way as your current home line?
By "outputs to each line" - you mean two outputs to two separate master sockets?
OK
If you have what I have described (i.e. two cables leaving your junction box, one carrying a live, BB enabled "home" phone line, and a second one
- feeding a now defunct master socket), then yes you could.
As others have said this would be messing with the BT side of the line and hence "naughty", however it should be simple enough, as long as you do it right.
Start by having a look at the wires feeding your master sockets. There will only be a pair of wires (even if the cable has more than one pair) used for each socket. These connect to a pair of screw terminals in the back of the socket. Once you know which pairs are used, you can follow the wires back to your junction box. To achieve what you want you would need to lift the pair of wires going to the defunct master socket from their current terminal positions, and move them to share the terminals that feed the pair going to the "home" master socket.
Thanks John you've saved me money yet again! Also thanks to all other posters for their input. In hindsight I should of looked in the box in the first place to see what was in it and to see how easy this really was.
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