Movement of Telephone Master Socket?

Josh2512

Hi


Apologies if I have placed this in the wrong section/area - but I would appreciate some help/advice on the best way forward.

I am looking my master socket (which is currently in my roof space) moved to the hallway in my house, so I can get a stronger signal from my router for my wi-fi.

At present, the strength of my wifi at times is just ok, but lately is is dire.

Does anyone know who can move this, I have called BT to ask them about a broadband deal, as a new customer etc, and asked them about moving the master socket and they have quoted me £200 (£130 call out fee and £70 for the actual work for the Openreach engineer). I had been told that if I was one of the new customers they would do this as a 'new installation' job, but the BT woman said 'No'!!

I have tried improving the strength of my signal by pigbacking the router and this does work sometimes but not always.

Im currently using a Billion Router supplied by UTV Connect from about 18months ago.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.


Thanks

D.A.

Only BT can legally move your master socket, as that's considered the termination point of their network.

An easier and cheaper solution would be to buy a wireless range extender and plug it in somewhere midway between your router and where you'd be using the Wifi most. Some of them can be a bit temperamental, but you can pick up decent ones for £40-50.

Out of interest, how big is the house, and are the walls stud or brick? Are the floors concrete? It's strange, because normally the attic would be a very good location for the router - the higher the better. You could be unlucky though - it may be that your router's signal may have a 'dead spot' directly below it or something which may be exactly where you don't want it to be.

Also, do you see a lot of your neighbours' wireless networks when you do a scan? If so, check that you're not using the same wireless channel as them.

Josh2512

Thanks DA for your help.


My house is a 3 bedroom bungalow with a loft conversion.


My PC is situated in the conversion, hard wired to the router. There are a few walls that are brick but most are stud walls, and the floors are all wooden.


I will look into the wifi range extender and see if that makes any difference.


A new router may well be another answer?


I will also check the neighbours networks tomorrow, but I think (I cant remember exactly) that I might have done this before - but definitely worth another go if nothing else.


Thanks very much for your help.

bsod

extension lead? no running costs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaKTUF4UoEI

does your router have external aerials, or a socket for one

maggiecon

Wifi homeplugs £40 on Amazon.

esuhl

You don't need to move your master socket. Run some Cat5e (or Cat6) cable from the master socket to the hallway. Then, you can either use the cable as an extension to the phone line (and plug the router in downstairs) or keep the router where it is, and use the cable for ethernet to a wireless access point downstairs.

Josh2512 wrote: »

A new router may well be another answer?

You don't need two routers (i.e. devices that route) on a network, but consumer "routers" do a lot more than just routing, so you could certainly use one as a 2nd ethernet & wireless access point.

D.A.

All of the above will work. Question - are you on BT Infinity, or just normal ADSL?

thetope

a powerline wifi kit will do the job (not a standalone wifi range extender or repeater, we have found these to be terrible value and very slow). We have the Devolo dLAN 500 Wi-Fi Starter Kit (bought from amazon, currently £65) - they are absolutely excellent and we have 6 of their powerline adapters running to webcameras in our farm sheds to supervise lambing, and a couple of wifi ones round the house as it's got metre thick stone walls and the wifi signal doesn't penetrate them - the range is excellent. I also hear good things about TPlink as a lower cost alternative (an example would be the TP-Link TL-WPA4220KIT).

Essentially one plug plugs into a power socket near your router and you run a network cable from your router to the powerline adapter. You plug the second wifi enabled socket into an empty socket in the area of the house where your wifi is weak and creates another wifi hotspot. The devolo one can be set up to [securely] mimic your router's ID and password so your devices automatically transition from one to the other as the signal becomes stronger.