NTE5 Faceplate Queries

zorrofox

Hi folks. I live in the sticks and have some serious issues with my Broadband which is supplied by BT. It's gotten so bad that I'm seriously considering switching to satellite Broadband in spite of the cost as the best speed I get from BT is maybe 350kb/s! Switching to satellite would mean losing any chance of online gaming (I'm a big Gran Turismoo fan). I can play it pretty well most of the time but it dies whenever someone phones our house. Curiously there are no problems when we phone out.

Anyway, I thought I'd have one more attempt at fixing this problem as I can just about live with the slow speeds as long as the connection is consistent and reliable. To this end and after reading of the above mentioned faceplates I'd like to give it a try. However, my master (only) telephone socket is one of those which is split horizontally along the middle and I'm unsure if switching the faceplate is possible with this type of socket.

Here's the one I'm thinking of buying -

Pressac NTE5 compatible ADSL filtered faceplate: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics

Can anyone tell me if this would allow a straight swap or if I need to look elsewhere for a relatively cheap "fix"?

Thank you all for taking the time to read my post and I wait in anticipation.

bod1467

http://www.siteguru.co.uk/be/ADSL2PlusForDummies.pdf

Might be worth having a read of that, to see what type of socket you have and to do tests to check your line.


As regards the socket, technically your master socket is owned by BT so you're not officially allowed to change it, but would they know?

spike7451

You are allowed to swap the removable faceplate bearing in mind the might be extension wiring connected to the back of it.One of the reasons the NTE/CTE (Cable version) was introduced was to cut down the number of service calls bought about by DIY'ers tapping into the back of the old style NTE & then loosing the phoneline.
If the OP's loosing internet when the phone rings,he needs to connect a different corded phone,filter & bband to the test socket behind the faceplate on the main body of the NTE & then dial his landline via mobile,that'll determine if the fault lies with any extensions hard wired into the faceplate.Then he needs to ensure if the are extensions off the faceplate,they are microfiltered.
Also if the are extensions hard wired into the faceplate,disconnect the ringer wire (number 3 Orange/white)

kwikbreaks

The NTE5 masters are he ones with a split across the middle - it's older ones that have no split so the faceplate you've linked to should fit. You may well get one cheaper from ADSLNation depending on post charge.

If you only have the one socket and run your router and phone off it directly through a filter then the filtered faceplate will bring no benefit. It mostly offers a good solution for installations with hard wired extensions (these connect to the back of the faceplate). If you have a plugin extension don't run your router on it and filter it at the socket end.

When somebody calls you your phone rings. That draws more current and is why your internet drops - it's a fault on the line caused by a bad connection somewhere along the route to the exchange. To get it fixed you'd need to report this as a fault through your ISP who may well take you on a merry dance of changing filters and many other things (none of which will fix it) before just possibly passing it across to BT to fix who will probably send a voice engineer who probably won't find the fault and you'll eventually end up bald. I had a slightly different fault also caused by a line fault which BT failed to fix. I was lucky(ish) as I switched to cable. There are outstanding faults on that too which I'm waiting to be fixed. I'm considering taking up needle point and forgetting all about this internet thing - it seems the bit of wire or coax defeats the current crop of so called engineers employed by BT and Virgin.

Post up your router stats ...
http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/frogstats.php
They may throw some light on why your speed is so poor - I'm expecting to see high attenuation due to line length plus probably a high noise margin due to the target being set high because of the drops caused by your line fault. If I don't see that it'll be thinking cap time.

bod1467

That's why I linked that PDF - it gives a reasonable troubleshooting guide.

Filtered faceplates can be better than plugin filters, usually because the filter components are better quality then those in plugin filters provided by ISPs. If you have extension sockets then a filtered faceplate really comes into its own.

zorrofox

Hello again. I'm sorry I've taken so long to update you all. Well, I got the faceplate, moved the phone to a different location, re-wired all my internal ethernet cabling and...no change

What's more the service I'm getting when I do ring up BT to complain is bordering on the ridiculous. They now want me to pay them £30 to terminate the contract but I would have thought that it's them who should be paying me! Anyway, they're not getting a penny more from me as I'm going to move to Tooway satellite BB. It's way more expensive but I think I stand a good chance of at least getting close to their advertised data speeds.

Many thanks to all who took the trouble to respond to my queries, this is a great forum

macman

£30 is a standard cease charge for broadband if not migrating using a MAC- it's a charge levied on BT by OR, and will be in your T&C's.

Owain_Moneysaver

zorrofox wrote: »

Hello again. I'm sorry I've taken so long to update you all. Well, I got the faceplate, moved the phone to a different location, re-wired all my internal ethernet cabling and...no change

Which router are you using? Some routers are better at working with long or noisy lines than others.

zorrofox

Owain_Moneysaver wrote: »

Which router are you using? Some routers are better at working with long or noisy lines than others.

I'm using the BT Home Hub 2

Owain_Moneysaver

zorrofox wrote: »

I'm using the BT Home Hub 2

It might be worth asking on a broadband forum for opinions on whether that's good for long/weak lines.

Mark_In_Hampshire

One of the BT Home Hubs is said to be good for longer lines, from memory it's called something like the HG2700v but I may not have that quite right, can someone clarify?

As to the speeds - the ADSL dropping on dial in can be caused by a fault, believe that's called an HR-DIS fault. Such faults tend to get progressively worse until it dies altogether. Getting it found and fixed before then can be problematic to say the least but it depends on 1. Who supplies the broadband (it's a broadband fault, so you have to report it to them) and 2. How reproducible it is.

Are you sure you can't get a 3G service? We live out in the sticks, admittedly, we don't have a "long line" but we do have a poor quality one, which can't even do 2Mbps so we use Three instead. It probably won't be great for gaming since ping times are usually 50 to 70ms but it can be very much faster outright. If you plan to keep the landline for gaming (if the ping times are better) and back that up with satellite for speed, do consider 3G for speed. Setup costs only the cost of the modem, you can take it back (usually - do check) within a limited period if the signal strength doesn't work for you.