I will soon be getting a new telephone line installed by BT. I would ideally like to have a couple of extra extension sockets installed as well, but would really like to do it myself to decrease the overall costs.
I've seen some threads discussing putting in a extension sockets but is installing a dedicated extension a difficult process best left to the professionals, or is it something a budding diy-er should be able to do? I'm talking about a proper wired extension socket rather than a plug-in extension lead.
As I would like two extensions and on the assumption that I would be installing them myself, should I be considering using a junction box or is it OK to just daisy-chain the sockets off the master one?
Also, do extensions cause a degradation of the quality of the line?
In your response, are you saying a "definite yes" to the use of a junction box or the daisy-chaining (I think it's to the junction box but wanted to check)?
They are simple to wire. They sell the things in high street shops. Personally, I'd always go for sockets with krone connectors, which will also require you to use a krone tool (you can get a cheap throwaway plastic one)
The BT engineer will install the line and terminate it at a NTE5 (or 'Linebox') socket, which will have krone connectors on the removable bottom half ready for your extension wiring to go on to. If you have your extension wiring in place before the engineer arrives, chances are a cup of tea and some biscuits will get that done for you.
That said, they are also easy to wire badly. Make sure that you wire pin 2 to pin 2 and pin 5 to pin 5 using two wires from the same pair in your extension cable, and the ring wire is on pin 3. I'd say that pin 4 isn't used, but there appears to be some confusion in the marketplace as to which way around the pins are numbered[1], so be consistent with the wiring on those two as well. Usual colour scheme, assuming CAT5 cable, is Blue to pin 2, White/Blue to pin 5, Orange to pin 3, and White/Orange to pin 4. The green and brown pairs are not used.
Depends on the number of extensions. You can get away with wiring two extension wires into a krone socket; more than two, and I'd definitely wire to an junction box of some kind. You can daisy chain them if that is more convenient.
Noise can be picked up in a number of ways. Use twisted-pair cabling (like CAT5) to minimise noise, and avoid running the cable alongside other cabling (like mains, speaker wire, etc.).
If you plan to use ADSL, you may want to invest in a filtered NTE5 faceplate which will allow you to restrict which extensions the ADSL signal runs to (you'll still need a plug-in microfilter for that extension if you also use analogue equipment on it).
This page is particularly useful:
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[1] BT telephone PLUG wiring is 1 to 6 (most plugs do not have pins 1 and 6) reading left to right if you point the plug upwards with pins uppermost and facing you. SOCKET wiring is, for reasons best left unexplained, the other way around. I.e. when you look into a socket, pin 1 is on the right. In 99.9% of cases, this does not matter.
It's easy enough if you're reasonably competent at DIY in general. Get yourself a proper insertion tool like
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rather than trying to do it with any plastic rubbish.
Have a look at
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for some clues on how to go about it.
It depends on what is most convenient when running the cables. Each IDC terminal can take 2 wires - so you can go in two different directions from the master faceplate, or on to the second socket from the first. Either way, you're unlikely to need a junction box.
Not if you use proper twisted pair solid core phone cable (or even Cat5 cable) and route the cables sensibly to avoid noise pick-up.
I didn't know you can use CAT5 cable, so that's a bit of a pleasant revelation. From what has been written, it looks like using CAT5 is as easy as using regular telephone cable (if such a thing exists!) so I'll definitely go down that route.
Is the ADSL face plate you mentioned easy to get hold of? Does that mean that the face plate only needs to be fitted to those sockets to which an ADSL modem will be connected? What happens if you try hooking up the modem to a normal extension socket (i.e.standard face plate) with a microfilter fitted?
apologies - IME, daisy chaining works fine, but I've not done that with the wall-mount sockets, just extension cables... A string of caller display, DECT, fax and other kit plugged in, with ADSL router connected to the end of an extension (some would say "use a faceplate filter"!) and I have had no problems with internet / voice in 5 years of use.
Over 10 years at this property with extension cables of my own.
The filter installed on the master socket is there to remove all the ADSL data signals from your house telephone wiring. It has two sockets on the front and one or two sets of punch-down connectors on the back. One is for your telephone-type devices and the other for your single ADSL modem, preferably in a modem/router rather than a USB modem (I get most problems in installations using USB modems).
If you believe you must extend the ADSL connection to a remote room, then, before doing this, look into installing your modem/router close to the filtered master socket and then extend the router's Ethernet cable over CAT-5 to the computer.
Alternatively, if you must, extend the just the ADSL signal wire using CAT-5 or twisted-pair telephone cable, from the filtered master to a single socket in your computer room. This should preferably be an unfiltered RJ11 type for ADSL modems only or you can use e.g. Solwise ADSL-FFP85D or
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if you want ADSL and a telephone in your computer room. If you do go this route, then do not extend the single "pin-3" ring wire from the master socket alongside the ADSL extension pair. The computer room filter will generate the ring signal on pin-3 for telephone-type devices at the computer room socket.
On 9 Jan 2007 05:31:02 -0800 someone who may be "Inquisitive" wrote this:-
In essence it is just "souped up" telephone cable and telephones work fine over it.
While you are at it install cable and sockets for a computer network.
Yes. One supplier is
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they have all the explanation anyone could need.
Only one modem will run on the line at once, so it makes sense to put it in one place and run a computer network from it. The face plate separates the ADSL and telephone signals (something of a simplification) and should be installed on the master socket. From there a cable with the ADSL signal can be run to the modem and cable(s) with telephone signals can be run to telephones.
Assuming there is a face plate fitted at the master socket then hopefully nothing, because the ADSL signal has been filtered off there and does not exist at the extension socket.
Performance. My own installation, using Solwise, of over 3Km to the DSLAM went from a BRAS rate hunting between 7.392 and
8.128Mbps, with the last month's setting of 7.392, to a solid
8.128Mbps with the XTE2005. Others I've used on more difficult lines have similarly improved, but these were replacing ISP provided plug-in filters so isn't a fair comparison.
I don't like the type of push-down connector they use, though, but they appear to work, since I've never had a failure. Perhaps it is because I'm used to the Krone style MDF/IDF blocks...
Thanks. Currently have a BT MF50 filter straight into the test socket and a 12" length of cable from it to the router. I'm about 4.5km from the exchange and get sync rates from about 4500 to 6000 tops (they don't last long, never overnight). I could do with tidying up the connections and I want to squeeze every last drop out of the ADSL...
Do Bt actually still use twisted pair telephone cable for extensions nowadays (I presume you mean the standard extension cable sold core b/w w/b o/w w/o (g/w, w/g) which is slightly twisted) though crap for ADSL especially when near to mains wiring etc.?
To the OP, from the wiring I've seen apparently done by BT, you'd do much better if you did do it yourself!
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