Additional telephone socket

stevetuk

A local telephone engineer has quoted me £100-£120 for moving the master BT socket from the lounge to an upstairs bedroom and then installing an additional socket back in the lounge.

Is this a fair quote?

The line is supplied outside along the side of the house upstairs past the room that the master will be moved to (so hardly any work there) and then down to the lounge. So it would involve drilling through the wall into the bedroom and bringing a bit of the existing line into that room to put the master socket there, and then joining the existing line running down the side of the house with a bit of extension line from the newly relocated master socket.

I know you aren't supposed to move the master socket because it belongs to BT Openreach. Is this a bad idea?

The reason is because my broadband router will be upstairs and not downstairs and the engineer told me that for the best speeds I should move the master socket.

To install an additional socket upstairs without moving the master, would be £60.

Any advice? I've been fretting all night about it!

mummyroysof3

We have our bt router plugged into an extra socket stairs with no problems. We paid about £40 to have the extra socket put in around 9 years ago

Cisco001

Why do you need router upstair?
You just need a wifi extender or repeater...

mummyroysof3

Our router is upstairs as that's where my husbands pc is and for gaming its better plugged into router than using wifi apparently

Myser

It is against the terms & conditions of your phone provider to move the main BT socket by anyone other than BT Openreach. So unless the person doing the work is employed by BT, you will be breaking your T's&C's.

The other option if you need a fast connection for gaming is to keep the router near the main BT socket and run an Ethernet cable from the router to the computer.

This will not degrade the line speed.

evoke

What Myser said. You need to contact BT to get it moved. And use an ethernet cable plugged into the router for gaming. WiFi adds a load of extra bandwidth to the comms for security and error correction so will never be as quick as a direct ethernet connection (assuming your machine is fast and has gigabit LAN sockets and the router has gigabit LAN sockets). The WiFi signal also degrades fairly quickly with distance and obstacles (particularly walls) so the actual WiFi speed is usually quite slow compared to the rated speed of the devices.

You might be able to get away with ethernet over mains adaptors - I use these for my Xbox 360 and find the performance is fine. You need 200Mbs+ ones for them to work reasonably well - you plug unit into a mains socket and attach your console to it using an ehternet cable, and you plug the 'master' unit into a socket near your router and attach it to your router using an ethernet cable.

Cisco001

mummyroysof3 wrote: »

Our router is upstairs as that's where my husbands pc is and for gaming its better plugged into router than using wifi apparently

I don't know if that necessary. BT infinity up to 76 Mb/s? Router with 802.11n working at 150 Mbps. So 150 >> 76.

I suggest you do a speed test to see the difference before taking action to install external socket.

stevetuk

Thanks for the replies. Line rental and broadband are both with Sky but presumably Openreach still own the master socket?

The PC is based in a study upstairs so this is why I was advised that moving the master socket there for a wired ethernet connection was the best thing to do for speed.

Should I change the request so that it's an extension from the existing downstairs master socket to the study upstairs even though it will mean reduced speed? How much does it degrade by?

Myser

stevetuk wrote: »

Thanks for the replies. Line rental and broadband are both with Sky but presumably Openreach still own the master socket?

The PC is based in a study upstairs so this is why I was advised that moving the master socket there for a wired ethernet connection was the best thing to do for speed.

Should I change the request so that it's an extension from the existing downstairs master socket to the study upstairs even though it will mean reduced speed? How much does it degrade by?

Yes, BT Openreach still own the line up to the BT NTE5. If done correctly, you should not see a significant speed drop running the router off the extension. Roughly how long is the run?

If you want to be ready for fibre broadband in the future, then ask the guy to use one of these to create the extension:

http://www.clarity.it/xcart/product.php?productid=16215&cat=262&page=1

It will also ensure you obtain the highest speed as it uses quality filtering and eliminates the bell wire.

Note, with fibre broadband (Infinity etc.) the router is usually connected to the main BT socket. With the above modified VDSL adapter, it allows the extension to also have the router connected.

Some more information here:

http://www.clarity.it/vdsl_nte5_adaptor_faceplate.htm

Edit: This is the kit you need to create the extension. You can specify the type of socket you want near the computer:

http://www.clarity.it/xcart/product.php?productid=16139&cat=250&page=1

drummer_666

it'd be better to have the router upstairs, rather than having cables running from downstairs to upstairs tbh

rich_jtg

Or you could you a couple of Homeplug devices to get the internet connection available upstairs.