Is my router dead, can't connect to internet

kah22

I'd appreciate your advice, my internet is down and I think my router a Netgear DG834G v3 may have died but I'm not sure. Here is my situation

Six weeks back when doing some rewiring for me my electrician ran a cable, I think he said a Cat five or six cable, from my my main telephone socket to my new living area. He wired one end into the Openreach junction box in my front hall. There is no power supply beside, or near to the junction box

The cable was run up into my loft, across and down into my living quarters. The box it goes into has two separate outlets: an outlet for this cable and an outlet for my standard telephone. All worked well up until Saturday night when my internet went down. At first I thought it was the storm but when it hadn't reappeared by Monday I rang my ISP TalkTalk. They tested the line and said the line was working fine.

Hands up, I've been messing around with the router, tried linking it directly to the test socket in the Openreach box, got power via an extension lead, I've noticed, however, that the Internet candle symbol is no longer working, the wireless light is working. That leads me to think the modem has died. Would I be right?

I'm not especially worried if the Netgear has died as I've signed up with BT and will be going live with them on the 25th, so I'll have a new router then anyway. I can live without home internet till then!

The spark set up the router and all for me before he left and I've only just now noticed that the end of the Cat cable has the kind of a connector you put into a lan socket

Any ideas as to what might be wrong? And why would the Cat cable have that type of a connector? What to do?


Sent from my iPad

kwikbreaks

> He wired one end into the Openreach junction box in my front hall.

Assuming this really was a junction box and not your master socket he really shouldn't have done that. You can only touch the wiring after the master socket.

It sounds like he rewired your master socket with a filtered faceplate. Apart from breaching BT T&C by altering their wiring and using network cable instead of phone cable this was perfect. There is no reason it wouldn't work and work well.

As you mention a storm then it is possible that a nearby groundstrike has naffed up the router although I would expect it to be completely dead. It may also have damaged the master socket as that should have a spark gap inside which may or may not have been damaged as well.

What cable are you talking about? With a filtered faceplate you should be connecting the router into the connector that looks like a LAN connector. In fact they are normally RJ11 cables with only 2 wires and a 4pin connector rather than 8 wire RJ45 cables. An RJ11 will fit in a RJ45 socket - it sits in the middle but may be a tad wobbly.

grumbler

kwikbreaks wrote: »

> He wired one end into the Openreach junction box in my front hall.

Assuming this really was a junction box and not your master socket he really shouldn't have done that. You can only touch the wiring after the master socket.

I think it was an existing Openreach faceplate for the master socket, but I still don't understand how a network cable (cat 5/6) can be used for connecting to the faceplate.

It sounds like he rewired your master socket with a filtered faceplate. Apart from breaching BT T&C by altering their wiring and using network cable instead of phone cable this was perfect.

Why do you think that their wiring was necessarily altered? Even if it was a network cable instead of a phone cable, only the plug on the cable might have been altered.

AndyPix

"BT fully supports the use of ADSL faceplates and in no way will the use of a filtered faceplate contravene BT regulations with regard to the NTE5 mastersocket."

JJ_Egan

First step would be to try a factory reset on the router .

bsod

if a phone works in the test socket, so should a router, plug it in with the lead and filter that came in the box, login to the router interface, and check to see if there is any adsl connection (router status screen) - there are many possibilities why a connection is down, a faulty router is well down the list of probabilities, especially as you are in the process of moving isp. If you reset the router, make sure you have the settings to hand.

kah22

It's possible I got the Cat bit wrong.

To clarify: my Electrican wired a cable into my telephones master socket it travels through the loft and into my living quarters besides where my router sits. This end bit has a clear plastic jack with four wires: red, blue, green and brown separated by a white space. That clear jack fits snuggly 5 a lan port. I've tried several factory resets .

My Electrican works to current regulations, is highly qualified so I doubt if he'd wire something into a bt socket that he wasn't allowed to

As regards the bt hub. My old Netgear router had a very small port into which fitted an equally small jack. That router is years old. Will that larger jack fit into the bt hub. Pardon if I'm not getting the names of these jacks. I'm struggling to send these messages via my mobile.

I've carried out several factory resets, the Internet signal, the candle, does not light up

bsod

it won't light up if there is no connection or the hub has the wrong details after a hard reset, so check them

the cat5 thing is a red herring, check it in the test socket

the bt hub comes with the leads required, but you may be better off with the netgear, username is [EMAIL="bthomehub@btbroadband.com"]bthomehub@btbroadband.com[/EMAIL] when you switch over

grumbler

In my current (~3 y.o.) Plusnet setup I have Openreach box connected to Openreach faceplate by a telephone cable and a router connected to Openreach box by a network cable.

Possibly, this changed now and there are more modern 2-in-1 routers?

NeverEnough

grumbler wrote: »

In my current (~3 y.o.) Plusnet setup I have Openreach box connected to Openreach faceplate by a telephone cable and a router connected to Openreach box by a network cable.

Possibly, this changed now and there are more modern 2-in-1 routers?

Homehub 5 is integrated modem /router so dispenses with the two separate items. HH 4 is just a router, attaches to the old Openreach modem.

grumbler

NeverEnough wrote: »

Homehub 5 is integrated modem /router so dispenses with the two separate items.

If integrated, why two separate then?

And the OP says "Netgear DG834G v3"...