Recommend a Microfilter

Krav

Hello,

There seems to be an array of different microfilters out there from cheap ones to more expensive ones - can someone recommend a good one which is known to be reliable?

Thank you

spannerzone

I decided to get rid of microfilters once and for all and changed my master socket faceplate for a dual socket that gives adsl and phone connections. Now none of my phones need a filter and the adsl modem gets it's own direct connection....the internet speed also increased slightly.

It's a fairly easy thing to fit and is the same as BT would install, plus you're allowed to change this part of the BT master socket.

Link
It may not suite everyone due to modem location/master socket location but it worked well for me.

Krav

Excellent - I will buy that. I have an extension upstairs which needs to serve only ADSL and from the guide it suggests it can be filtered once at the master socket and serve ADSL to all extensions (wires A and . Is that correct?

Update - looks like I may still have to filter the extension:

"A and B are the new additions for ADSL-carrying extensions. They actually offer the entire line signal, unfiltered. This means they also carry POTS signal too, so you can serve both ADSL and POTS from these terminals, but you must, must, must then filter those POTS things at the extension end - more on that later."
http://www.clarity.it/telecoms/extensions.htm

Also a similar looking one on Amazon (but the back of the faceplate has 2 connections not the 1-4 and the A and .

http://www.amazon.co.uk/BT-Telephone-Broadband-Filter-Centralised/dp/B003V7782M

Lum

Personally I'd move the router downstairs and find some other way of getting internet upstairs. Internal wiring extensions are a common way to slow down your connection speed. The very guide you linked even says to use cat5 for internal extensions and very few internal extensions in homes ever do that.

bondy01

Lum wrote: »

Personally I'd move the router downstairs and find some other way of getting internet upstairs. Internal wiring extensions are a common way to slow down your connection speed.

Agree with this. I've got the adsl nation faceplate on my master socket. I don't have any extensions and it's much neater than microfilters.

Dave_C_2

+1 for moving the router near the filtered faceplate. Running A and B around extension cabling defeats the object of having the faceplate in the first place.

Dave

closed

The one that comes in the box with the router.

bluesnake

if you are the type of household that uses the mobile, but never uses the house phone, no filter at all should give more bandwidth and a better signal.

spannerzone

Krav wrote: »

Excellent - I will buy that. I have an extension upstairs which needs to serve only ADSL and from the guide it suggests it can be filtered once at the master socket and serve ADSL to all extensions (wires A and . Is that correct?

Update - looks like I may still have to filter the extension:

"A and B are the new additions for ADSL-carrying extensions. They actually offer the entire line signal, unfiltered. This means they also carry POTS signal too, so you can serve both ADSL and POTS from these terminals, but you must, must, must then filter those POTS things at the extension end - more on that later."
http://www.clarity.it/telecoms/extensions.htm

Also a similar looking one on Amazon (but the back of the faceplate has 2 connections not the 1-4 and the A and .

http://www.amazon.co.uk/BT-Telephone-Broadband-Filter-Centralised/dp/B003V7782M

No, as it provides 2 lots of connectors inside the dual faceplate you'd be best to use one pair of the extension for the ADSL and another pair for voice. It should all work ok. BUT some dual faceplates DON'T have the A-B connectors only the revised version does (that's why I got mine from Clarity who source these specific faceplates, read their long amusing story if you've got an hour)

I did this:

The extension lead goes upstairs to my office where the phone and ADSL modem live and I have other phone sockets for other phones and sky box.

So I replaced the master socket with this dual socket, using orange/white pair cables I connected to the unfiltered ADSL port on master socket, using blue/white pair I connected to voice port of filered master socket. Upstairs I have a dual socket, the orange/white go to RJ11 socket (unfiltered) and the blue/white go to voice socket with subsetquent blue/white feeding futher voice only sockets.

It works very well, ADSL performance is virtually identical to having the router connected to the master socket and performs better than when it was all on the same cable pair with filters. The result is no filters needed, best acheivable speeds on modem.

spannerzone

Maybe this quality schematic might help



This information is only correct IF using a dual port filtered ADSL master socket faceplate, don't confuse connectors A & B with that of a standard NTE5 master socket where A&B represents the incoming phone line connector!

I used THIS NTE5 master dual faceplate with This RJ11, this BT 601a and this faceplate for them both (and a back box) - this gives a really neat dual socket for the extension whre the modem and a phone are used.

spannerzone

Dave_C wrote: »

+1 for moving the router near the filtered faceplate. Running A and B around extension cabling defeats the object of having the faceplate in the first place.

Dave

Not necessarily, it wasn't convenient for my modem to be in the room with the master socket, this dual socket allows a reliable way to get unfiltered and filtered connections in another room using the spare orange pair that most phone extensions have already (you might need to disconnect the orange to pin3 on all sockets)

If the run is reasonably short there's no reason you can't use the spare pair that most extension cables already have present, if the connectors are sound and it's wired correctly a twisted pair of phone copper is probably as good as running a cat5 cable.