1930s phone wiring?

Apodemus

Rodders53 said:

Do check what the ADSL speed checker suggests for the line to parents...  and whether FTTC is available... as you may be expecting more speed than is possible?  https://www.broadbandchecker.btwholesale.com/#/ADSL

Thanks for that link, which is interesting as it shows information relating to my last couple of "HELP" texts to the BT faultline.  I'm not sure I understand all the info, but I think it is telling me that I can't expect fast Broadband at this site, but that it should be a good bit faster than I am actually getting! 

Interestingly it has 'N' against the Premises Environment line for NTE Faceplate, where I think the 5C that we have is short for NTE5C, so perhaps they don't actually know what sort of Master Socket should be in place.

Apodemus

Oh, and courtesy of that website that Rodders has linked to, I can now identify the bellset as the 1933 Bellset 25!

Apodemus

Just an update on this one.

I tried by-passing all the old wiring by connecting a length of Cat6 cable directly from the incoming wires to the Openreach 5C box.  Connected the router via a new splitter directly into the test port in the 5C and ran a speed check (via an ethernet cable).  It made no difference - still getting 0.24Mb download and about 1.0Mb upload.  I tried various permutations on all this and the speeds remained pretty consistent.

Spoke to BT/Openreach who reckoned that it might be a faulty router.  Their thinking was that the line looks ok from their end, and that since my upload speed is at the max that I should be getting on my exchange, there is no reason to suspect a wiring problem between router and exchange.

They have now sent me a new router and it is installed...but I am still getting 0.24Mb download and 1.0Mb upload.  They were pretty insistent that it can't be a restriction at their end, but I am running out of ideas on what else it might be!

New router has only been on for 12 hours, but old router was connected and switched on up to that point.  Should I be giving it a couple of days to recalibrate? 

As ever, any thoughts would be welcome!  

wongataa

Always worth leaving the router on for a few days and seeing if the speed changes.

Owain_Moneysaver

The grey wire from the outside to the inside of the house (it looks like old figure-8 'drop wire' ) should have been replaced when ADSL was first installed, and everything else disconnected. It's not even twisted pair. 

The fused block connector and bell set will fetch money on ebay

I would get Openreach back to do the job properly. 

JSmithy45AD

Perhaps I missed it but:-

1) New wires from pole to outside of house.
2) 1970s plastic-coated copper wires through wall of house

How do the two connect outside?

Apodemus

Further update.

I booked a visit by the BT inside-the-house team and left the new router running in the meantime.  The night before the BT visit, I checked the speed again and it had miraculously returned to 10.2Mb download and 1.2Mb upload.  That is pretty near the maximum available for this exchange and above the 8Mb contract offer.

The BT guy was good and happily checked everything over and had a look at the ancient wiring.  While he wasn't that shocked by the 1930's wiring or that the new incoming line hadn't been taken on through the wall, he suggested that the problem was most likely to have been either at the exchange or the router.  His view was that internal wiring is pretty consistent - it either works or it doesn't. It  doesn't really get knocked about, so a sudden drop in speed is unlikely to be an internal wiring issue (unless work is going on in the house).

He asked to see the old router and was appalled - took pics of it to show his colleagues, as he hadn't come across one so old  (Lol! It was 2008!).  He was able to tell me that the new router had last been re-set (remotely) a couple of days before and it would have been at this point that the download speed corrected.

So we are left with the conclusion that a router fault led to a restriction on the line speed and that it took about five days for the new router to kick the exchange back to a raised speed.  As it stands, there seems little point in paying the £150 to have Openreach install a new connection through the wall, unless we have more problems.  I guess it will be worth doing at the point where the line is upgraded to FTTC and/or when we are moved over to VOIP.

Thanks again for everyone's input to this!

Apodemus

JSmithy45AD said:

Perhaps I missed it but:-

1) New wires from pole to outside of house.
2) 1970s plastic-coated copper wires through wall of house

How do the two connect outside?

Yes, that is a good question, which the BT guy also wondered.  He said that they normally would use a gel connector, but that there would be no way to get the plastic-coated copper wires into the gel connector.

I had the same problem when doing my trial with the Cat6 cable!  Joining Cat6 strands to the copper wire wasn't easy but seemed to work with a standard terminal strip.  I assume that there is a similar arrangement outside, but since I am now getting the max available speed through it, I'm not going to open up the enclosure to see what is inside!