Phone sockets to patch panel

[Roger Hayter]

No, the phone and alarm should be filtered, and the modem unfiltered. But note that the separate so-called "filters" you buy consist of normal telephone plug going directly (unfiltered!) to female RJ11 and via a low pass filter to a standard telephone socket. If you use the filtered faceplate the RJ11 on the front is unfiltered and the telephone sociket on the front goes via a low pass filter. Both connections are also available as IDC connectors on the back. Possibly you will need separate runs to the patch panel for each if the modem is not near the master socket. You can run the unfiltered line to the patch panel and use plug in filters for the phone and alarm, but this is a waste of the filtered faceplate and leads to more plugs and sockets than necessary. You may have to look at the rules for the alarm (rules written by insurers or alarm companies) as they may demand a hard wired connection (i.e. no plugs and sockets) from the master socket to the alarm.

[John Rumm]

No, the broadband router/modem need the unfiltered connection, and everything else should be filtered.

(Contrary to popular belief the filter is mostly there to stop the audio side interfering with the data)

[Lee Nowell]

Amusingly the rest is unfiltered at the moment so might even get a better broadband connection at the end of this. Only thing I can think of is to find a filter with an RJ11 plug on to connect into the line patch and then the filtered connection (ideally RJ11 too) to the phone parallel ports.

Is my logic about worrying about the colours right?

[Lee Nowell]

Bit more research. This link

Seems to say that blue + blue/white are the ones as these end up as pins 3 and 4 in the RJ11 and these are the pins the phones use.

I found this filter

Which I could use by plugging into the main line patch and then connecting the filtered side to the phone parallel patches and the unfiltered to the modem (RJ11 modem lead into the rj45 ) not ideal (and expensive) but might work.

[stephenten]

What you might be better off doing is to physically move the master BT socket to where the rack cabinet is. You can get the pukka BT cable and jelly connectors off eBay.

You can then buy a surface mount box and an adslnation faceplate from

This replaces the removable front plate of the BT master socket.

You can then plug your broadband modem into the broadband port and the telephone patch panel can be hard wired to the terminals behind the removable Adslnation faceplate. All phones will then work through one single filter

This is assuming you have power at the location of the patch panels.

I have all the equipment in one location so no boxes or filters all over the house and a lot tidier.

[Lee Nowell]

Thanks all. I was rooting around in one of my many cable boxes and stumbled across some RJ11 to BT adapters. So have wired it up using these for now. So I have

Port 1 - wired master socket and using an RJ11 to BT adapter have connected to it the normal ADSL filter. Modem connected to the unfiltered port. Then using a BT to RJ11 adapter connecting the filtered side to the phone ports I wired in parallel.

Phone and alarm are wired into separate ports and then patched across to these. All seems to work fine.

Need a neater solution for the various adapters etc but otherwise it works

Thanks all for your help

[John Rumm]

+1

A good approach IME.

[John Rumm]

A master socket face plate filter is often the way to go. These have the filter buit in and easy access to filtered and unfiltered on the front:

Terminals on the back for both filtered and unfiltered extensions:

Openreach often fit them as standard now, and have a few revisions of different types :