Moving BT master socket, is this frowned upon?

[Jason Arthurs]

My server currently runs in the loft and I have a somewhat threadbare telephone extension lead trailing up the stairs and through the loft hatch which supplies my ADSL connection.

As our house is supplied via telegraph pole the main pair meets the house at roof level and then comes down the front of the house before coming in alongside the front door. I was wondering about merely disconnecting the master socket and pulling the external cable back through the wall before running it into the loft under the barge boards. I can then run a slave socket back to the location of the original socket by the front door.

It is frowned upon to relocate the master socket? I ask this as it will of course be in the loft rather than merely moving it into a different room.

Also does anyone know of a supplier of exterior grade telephone cable (preferably black) that I can use to run the new slave socket back down to old master socket location.

Regards, Jason.

[Set Square]

AIUI, it's illegal to mess with anything on BT's side of the master socket. You'd probably get away with moving it locally - but into the loft . . .

If you ever have to call BT out to deal with a fault, they will need to get at the master socket - since this is where their responsibility ends and yours begins. They won't be best pleased at having to get into the loft - and it will be pretty obvious that you have moved it!

[Martin]

I have exactly the same situation. If the owner of the house is not allow to relocate the socket their self is there a procedure whereby you can request (for a fee) that BT relocate the socket for you. Again I would like it in the loft for the ADSL router.

Regards, Martin.

[Richard]

You are not supposed to move the master socket yourself. BT will do it for a fee. What you are proposing makes good sense. However as a DIY job " Rules is Rules" Or so the saying goes.

Richard.

[Richard]

If you have your repositioned master box fitted with a filter faceplate and you take your ADSL connection from there you will not need any more filters for any other phone equipment connected to the filtered output from the box.

Richard

[Harry Bloomfield]

On 19/02/2004 Jason Arthurs opined:-

Strictly speaking you are not allowed to interfere with the master socket or the wiring linking that to the pole. In practise, if you make a reasonably competant job of it, then the BT engineer is very unlikely to complain.

I moved our master socket into the loft, in fact the BT engineer actually assisted me to do this when they were installing new cables from the pole. He pushed the cable in from the outside, I pulled it through and connected it up to a new master while he waited.

If you are certain you know what you are doing and feel absolutely confident, then get on with it.... Just keep the phone cables well away from any mains wiring.

[Dave Stanton]

O

Maplins used to do it. Nice to see someone using black cable outside instead of all that white stuff you see everywhere.

Dave

[Lurch]

It's not strictly allowed, but it's been known to be done. If you're running cables into the loft then back down to where the socket is now, why not just run a extension from the master into the loft, following the route from the master up to roof so there are no extra cable runs. Or am I missing something? ..

SJW A.C.S. Ltd.

[PoP]

I am curious!

I would have thought that running any sort of equipment in the loft is asking for trouble. Reason being that the temperature up there can go outside the specs of the equipment. It gets damned cold up there in winter and sweating hot in the summer.

Am I just being unrealistic or could this be a real problem?

PoP

-----

My published email address probably won't work. If you need to contact me please submit your comments via the web form at

apologise for the additional effort, however the level of unsolicited email I receive makes it impossible to advertise my real email address!

[Ed Sirett]

Why not run a slave extension into the loft from the existing without moving the master. I doubt whther it would make any noticeable difference to the bandwidth you get.

[Martin]

As the cable is coming from a telegraph pole and therefore arrives at roof level is looks unsightly running down the wall and worst of all wrapping around the brickwork at the front door.

Martin.

[Lurch]

Typical BT job then! How about if you just tidied up the existing cabling. ..

SJW A.C.S. Ltd.

[Dave Liquorice]

Yes, ring 'em up and ask. The price is in the online BT Price List (somewhere). Moving socket at customer request OWTHE.

H&S rules means that BT engineers should not go into lofts. They are rather hazardous places, not to mention feet through ceilings etc...

However if access is via a proper loft ladder through a decent sized hatch (2 to 3' min) into a roof space that is well lit and the floor is securely boarded over for all of the access a BT chap needs and the socket not tucked right down in the eaves then you can probably bribe any engineer that visits with cups of tea and chocolate biscuits...

Asking an engineer to squeeze through a tiny trap perched on the top of a rickity step ladder with a stair well to one side, cross the roof space by treading only on ceiling joists covered by insulation to then lie flat out on said insulation to reach the socket at arms length aided only by a AA maglight just ain't going to happen.

You could of course just put the master socket in the corner of a bedroom. B-)

[Andy Hall]

If you don't take any steps to control the temperature then it could be.

I dealt with it by making an insulated cabinet and arranging two fans with ducting in and out from the outside and inside the house. The fan speeds are controlled by a temperature sensor and motor controller, and there are servo controlled dampers in the ducting.

During the winter months, air is brought in from and out to the house so that heat produced by the electronics ends up in the house. The fans run fairly slowly and the cabinet is maintained pretty well at about 23 degrees.

During the summer, air is taken in from and delivered back outside. The fans are still effective even in hot weather and last summer the cabinet only ran a couple of degrees above the outside temperature during the hot period, which was OK. Most of the time it was running at the 23-25 range.

.andy

To email, substitute .nospam with .gl

[N. Thornton]

The master socket contains a sense resistor, and the lines are automatically monitored. If you remove the master socket a fault condition will therefore be detected.

Regards, NT

[M]

In my house, BT connected the wires between their master socket and the cable master socket and all the other cable sockets around the house and then ripped out the incoming cable connection.

[stefek.zaba]

Exactly my experience when getting an ISDN line put in at my previous house: it made most sense to run through the loft close to where the existing cable from the pole attached to the property, running from front to back of house over to just above the corner of the bedroom where I wanted the socket. So the day before the BT bod came, I went up a ladder and put in a draw wire through a little hole in the soffit/eaves/whatever- you-call-that-bit, and another from bedroom to loft. The loft had boarded walkways and light. When the BT engineer came, I stared with the obligatory tea & biscuits, then showed him the prepared route, and he was a very happy bunny to have had the route worked out, draw wires prepared, and loft timbers to drive cable clips into at speed rather than ever-so-careful surface-running around doorframes and the like in the way they so often end up doing. He put in the transition box from external-black to internal-white at a handy point in the loft, and put the ISDN termination box at the requested spot in the bedroom, with the BT cable coming down a handy-dandy bit of trunking I'd provided. Job done to both parties' satisfaction...

Cheers, Stefek

[Alistair Riddell]

Only when they run the nightly diagnostic routines on the exchange.

In any case, I have had lines with no master socket or terminating apparatus connected for several years without BT saying anything. I'm sure they were glad that some fool was paying the line rental charge for a line that went no further than the DP in the basement.

[Dave Liquorice]

Always assuming that your line is on an automatic tester, not all are, and that the tester just happens to test your line as it's disconnected from the master socket. Even then it's not likely to result in more than a few bytes of storage used in the testers log file.

[Nick Pitfield]

Jason Arthurs wrote in news: [e-mail]:

I bought mine from J H Hardy of Birmingham - 0121-7848478. Also online at

You want CW1308 spec cable in black.