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9 REPLIES 9
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Message 1 of 10

Re: Ancient Wiring?

> You said in the OP that you'd already identified the two cables, so all you need to do is cut the one going upstairs

Ah yes, I suppose so!  Would have worried that simply cutting might short things across the wires inside, but..

> Just don't cut your neighbour's line!

Indeed!

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Message 2 of 10

Re: Ancient Wiring?

@loosestrife 

You said in the OP that you'd already identified the two cables, so all you need to do is cut the one going upstairs. Only down side to that is if the cabling to downstairs is sub-par, you've lost the upstairs option. Just depends how brave you're feeling, which is why I suggested going the official route.

Just don't cut your neighbour's line!

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Message 3 of 10

Re: Ancient Wiring?

> if the extension socket is not needed , remove it completely from the line ( wiring and socket ) , it may improve your broadband performance on the remaining main socket .

May try that - if I can work out quite how the connections inside the BT66 box work!

 

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Message 4 of 10

Re: Ancient Wiring?

Thank you. That's really useful to help me understand things!

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Message 5 of 10

Re: Ancient Wiring?

Depending on the age of the property , that looks pretty ‘standard’ for housing build in the 1960’s through to late 1970’s , it’s common to have an underground cable to an external block ( the grey BT 66 block ) and cables to an interior ‘decor’ socket , that was part of the developers interior design specification , to give a modern finish ( what was modern in the 1960’s  )  , so although the socket  in the image is not an NTE5 type master , it is the main socket .

It was also common to have extensions wired from the external block , that’s bad from both from a ADSL performance point of view , and also doesn’t allow easy disconnection of extensions, as can be done with NTE5 type sockets , which became ‘standard’ in the 1980’s , but  when telephony was all that the line was providing , it was an acceptable way to provide an extension socket and phone .

With semi detached housing it was common for the BT 66 to be mounted at the boundary of the two dwellings served by a 5 pair underground cable , so each property used 1  pair and the cable had 3 spares ) a separate cable then taken into each house, any  ‘extra’ cables to extension sockets may have been provided by a DIYer  , or may have been provided as a paid for extension , but it’s been decades since anyone  rented extension sockets / phones , and these extensions have long since been the householder’s responsibility, if the extension socket is not needed ,  remove it completely from the line ( wiring and socket ) , it may improve your broadband performance on the remaining main socket .

FWIW , if the cable from the BT 66 to the main socket were defective ( it could be 60 years old ) then it also could be disconnected and a new NTE5 could be cabled from the BT66 , but just because it’s old doesn’t mean the existing cable is faulty , if you wanted Openreach to do that , it woukd need to be proved faulty , or pay for a master socket relocation 

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Message 6 of 10

Re: Ancient Wiring?

Is this a property you've newly moved to or have you lived with it for a while?

I'd start by trying to report a fault, quoting what your router is telling you. Ideally BT will send Openreach to disconnect the upstairs wiring & replace the first socket with a proper master. What you don't want is one of their own pretend "engineers" who may well fit a master socket, but presumably won't touch the external wiring.

Maybe try the online tests first & see if that picks up the poor line quality.

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Message 7 of 10

Re: Ancient Wiring?

And is it also common for such an external junction to serve both our property and our neighbour's? 

Since this must mean that we share the same copper line, this would seem to complicate resolution of line issues!

Thanks again!

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Message 8 of 10

Re: Ancient Wiring?

Ah, thank you.

Would that be consistent, then, with there really being no Master Socket as such?  Can any socket be thought of as  "primary", given that all seem to be "starred" off the same external junction box?

Is there anything that can practically be done about it? Would BT come to replace it? (though this would clearly involve my neighbour too)?

(There are also other internal extensions apparently slaved off the initial sockets)

Might this also be why my router always tells me that:

"Impaired quality of the signal on the DSL line was detected due to incorrect cabling. Please make sure that your line does not include any branching or multi-distributors. The branch is [length] meters long. This costs around [loss in data throughput] kbit/s."

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Message 9 of 10

Re: Ancient Wiring?

It's known as star wiring & isn't great for broadband.

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Message 10 of 10

Ancient Wiring?

To investigate some ADSL issues, I have been trying to find our BT "Master" socket. But there doesn't seem to be one.

Externally, the phone line comes to the ancient-looking grey box (picture below), which contains junctions to three cables. Two come into our property, and one (a bit hard to see behind the ivy) to our adjoining neighbour's property.

For our two, one cable comes through the wall and (following it with an endoscope) goes under the floorboards of the ground floor, from where it emerges at a normal "extension" type socket (second picture). The other goes up the outside of the wall and thenn into a bedroom as another "extension" type socket.

It seems there is no Master Socket in play in this context, and all three connections are terminated only at this external junction box? Is that possible? Am stumped for where to test, in the absence of a Master..

Thanks!

IMG_8065.resized.png

IMG_8066.resized.png

 

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