Bell wire and SNR etc

[#1]

Quote from: itsme

No, but it will eliminate whether the handsets are a source of electrical noise. For instance DECT base stations and answering machines. The wiring is an issue as it can act as an aerial so twisted pairs are used and as the noise is picked up equally on the pairs the effective noise is cancelled. The problem occurs when non-twisted pairs are used or the pairs are untwisted. The noise picked up on each individual wire could be different and therefore is seen across the pair.

Ahhh.. well as we only use 2 simple touch tone phones - no faxes or answering machines etc im guessing the handsets aren't the problem (although I'll still try with them unplugged)..
Im not much of a cabling person so no idea what sort we have in the house, but if it's the 'wrong sort' I can't see my parents allowing the place to be re-wired just so i get better BB speed! I think im at the point where i can't do much else then, im still going to try and get my uncle to take a look when he's next over and get him to fit the NTE5 socket but as I understand it I don't think this is going to make any difference since i've already taken the bell wire out...
Thanks for the info though itsme 

[#2]

Unplugging handsets will probably make no difference.
Disconnecting the bell wire (anything other than 2 and 5) at ALL sockets will almost certainly improve things.

[#3]

Quote from: HPsauce

Unplugging handsets will probably make no difference. Disconnecting the bell wire (anything other than 2 and 5) at ALL sockets will almost certainly improve things.

Thanks - saved me wasting my time!
I did the bell wire thing and got a decent improvement but we're talking about an original sync speed around 1mb  and now I get about 2.5mb (d/l speed of about 1.8mb)  so whilst i've more than doubled my original speed, considering im 1.4km away from my exchange (straight route) I should, in theory, be getting better. pre-live estimate speeds on my line were said to be around 3.5mb. Just there's little point in me being on the pro package at £20 a month (not that I can get out of the contract now) to be getting those sort of speeds (i know my traffic gets prioritized). Im better off going with someone like sky for a fiver a month as I'll still get similar speeds! 

[#4]

Looking back I see you'd already done the bell wire (easy to forget in a long thread).
Simplifying the wiring by disconnecting unused extensions will help eventually to some extent.
Also, have a  good look round for unexpected/unknown bits of phone wiring, it's amazing what you can find sometimes that needs removing.
Basically, now the bell wire has gone (and speed increased somewhat) the level of interference should reduce AND (if you are lucky) the target SNRM drop too (in a geological time frame  ) giving more speed.
Shame you left Be really, their systems don't have that weird BT logic. 

[#5]

Hi Guys,
Hi robbiegy2k.
Just read through your thread and just to recap on a couple of things -
If your parents still pay line rental to BT then you may be on to a winner as far as the Master Socket / new LineBox goes. You'll have to get her to phone BT and tell them she's registered disabled with the Local Authority -  Blue Badge etc, also presumably with the GP. Tell them you want a new NTE5 LineBox because you want to alter your extension wiring and can't because you don't have the LineBox, just the old master socket. That ought to work it with no charge. If you pay the Line Rental to TT you'll have to try it with them, but make sure they'll not charge before agreeing to go ahead. (The work is carried out by BT OpenReach as mentioned before but read on).
The other point is your wiring, although you've done the bell wires etc, as you have an old Master you may have old type wires, which aren't going to help. Have a look and tell us what colour wires you've got connected to terminals 2 and 5 both incoming to the Master and on to each of the extensions. Also are there any other connection boxes between the Master and the BT cable from the Pole or Underground Cable terminal box.
If you have old type incoming cable, it may be an idea to try and get BT to replace that as well if some wease can be found.
Lastly, it might be an idea to discover whether the cable route follows the road, because with that road distance you mentioned, your attenuation ought to be lower.
Rgds.

[#6]

Hi Anotherone,
Thank you for taking the time out to reply, your suggestions are appreciated    yep, we pay our rental to TT and when I tried phoning them I got sent to BT and they sent me back to TT and so on. I think it was for TT to do as they said they would arrange an engineer to come and install the socket without charge but she would have to call me back to confirm a few things and to check some bits at her end... 15mins later I get the call saying it's nothing to do with them and to speak to BT..... I suspect higher powers stepped and messed it all up!
I'll check tonight what colour the wires are will post the info up here. As for my mum phoning them, i msure she would but she is a real technophobe, she doesn't even know how to play a DVD in the DVD player. So either i'll sit with her and within 2mins she'll hand the phone over to me or being the sweet lil ol lady she is she'll accept the first fob off they give her! Thanks though, at least I have a concrete reason as to why I want the NTE5 socket fitted. When I phoned before I just said we needed one for some reason or another...
From what I can see there isn't any other boxes as theirs a cable that comes in through the front wall and pops up the other side from under the floor boards and straight in to the master socket and then off to the extensions, I will double check this as I didn't check if that cable comes directly from the 'pole'..
I just wonder, I saw an openreach man parked up doing some work on a laptop but think he was fixing someone's fault, I saw him coming down our road again this morning so if I see him again is it worth me asking him any questions? I was half asleep so didn't think to 'sieze the oppertunity'.
As for the route - the kitz page actually informs me that the distance by road is approx 2.57km  - the 1.5km is direct route.. im guessing that the cable will be laid via the roads and not the direct route. Sorry if my previous posts info were incorrect.
Just to add some more info to this case, my folks replaced one of the handsets last night because they said the ring wasn't working on it, not sure if this may have had any effect but did notice the following:
When I got home early around 17:30 (they'd already replaced handset) I did a speed check and got my highest yet throughput - 2.2mb (1.9 being the best i'd got before) but more interestingly my router stats were showing my SNR margin had gone down to 12.5dB (down) - previous best was 14dB but more often shows as 14.5 to 16dB.. Saying that i've never checked the stats that early during the weekdays.
Now the bit I want to take up with plusnet - when I did a speed check around 21:30 I got what I've seen from most of the time during peak hours, my throughput was a measly 0.9mb(modem sync's always been 2.8mb since I synced last week at 6am). I checked my router stats and they showed my SNR margin down to 12dB...  I'd like to find out why I get such bad performance during peak hours - im on the pro package! I may look at getting a solicitor to look in to this as I don't believe I am getting what I paid for with this 'pro package'. If my 0.9mb is 'priortised' traffic what do the folk on the value packages get during peak hours? 33.6kbps?!! My gaming traffic is supposed to 'line speed' so tonight im going to install some apps to monitor this traffic to see what speeds I get - my line is capable of 2.2 which i've seen with my own eyes so not sure why im paying extra money for performance that im obviously not getting! 
Sorry this turned in to a rant which  I mean to post under the feedback forums.. Oh and 8am today I did another check, my SNR margin has gone back up to 15dB and my throughput was 1mb exactly... I know people say during peak hours things do slow down but then my question is what good is the pro package? I may raise a ticket with plusnet anyway to see if theirs anything on my profile that restricting things dueing peak hours as i've seen a few cases on these forums where this has been the case.
Thanks again for your post Anotherone, i'll post back when I have some more info.
p.s my line att has never changed from the 48dB from day one.

[#7]

Quote from: Anotherone

The other point is your wiring, although you've done the bell wires etc, as you have an old Master you may have old type wires, which aren't going to help. Have a look and tell us what colour wires you've got connected to terminals 2 and 5 both incoming to the Master and on to each of the extensions. Also are there any other connection boxes between the Master and the BT cable from the Pole or Underground Cable terminal box. If you have old type incoming cable, it may be an idea to try and get BT to replace that as well if some wease can be found. Lastly, it might be an idea to discover whether the cable route follows the road, because with that road distance you mentioned, your attenuation ought to be lower. Rgds.

Well I forgot to check the cable outside but if I remember right my mum said that the cable outside was fine as we had a landline problem a few months back (no calls incoming or outgoing), turned out to be a local area issue but before they established that I think they checked out our house as a normal 'line fault'.. From what I remember my mum said "they checked the cable out to the pole and all that stuff"..
As for the cable in the house, i open up one of the ext boxes and i've got a full blue cable going into terminal 2 and a white and blue going in to term 5 - not sure if thats any use to anyone?
As I pay TT for our line rental im not sure of the best way to try and get them out to do the NTE5 box, getting them to do it for free even though openreach will charge them may prove to be too bag a hurdle! 

[#8]

I was playing with my phones over the weekend and had some odd results..
My main extension had all 6 wires connected at both ends.. 
After disconnecting the bell wire, my connection speed dropped from 3.5 to 2.5 mb. 
Disconnecting everything except 2 + 5 caused it to drop to 1.5 mb even at the master socket
At this point I'm somewhat confused,  so plugging  the router into test socket,  speed returns to 3.5 mb.    (obviously a problem with the extension)
Before reconnecting all the wires I decide to unplug a phone I've had connected to the extension for over 5 years and the router connects at  3.5mb. 
Quite why removing redundant wires caused a problem with this phone I don't know, but it's definitely worthwhile removing all phones, etc. when playing.
The only unfortunate thing for me,  it appears 3.5mb is my lot and the bell wire has no appreciable effect

[#9]

I found that the sync speed did increase over several weeks when I removed the bell wire in my house

[#10]

Hi kmilburn,
From what i've read removing the bell wire helps increase speeds on 90%+ of people, maybe you were just unlucky! Glad you found your fault though and 3.5mb isn't that bad, I would of thought you'd get decent speeds on ADSL2 - try signing up to the plusnet trials if their accepting people.
I've tried syncing without any phones plugged in and at the master socket and it made no difference and as I don't have a test socket my uncle explained the only way to take the internal wiring out of the equation is to run a new cable from *some place near the master socket* (he explained but I lost track and he said he would have to do it anyway) and up to my room but thats not really possible due to the house layout (existing cable is nice and neat and would be ALOT of work to run another one as neatly).
What i've just found out is that we have 6 sockets/ext in the house yet 3 of them are hardly used and i've been given permission to 'kill em off'. Just wondering if it would make any difference to disable these, as in take out the wires from terminals 2 & 5? Im no sparky so guess it wouldn't be that simple to re-connect them back up again should I need to. Just I don't want to disable them if it's going to make no real difference as they may have a use some time in the future.
I vaugely remember reading somewhere that the more extensions you have around the house, the more the signal weakens. Or does this only apply if they have equipment plugged in to them?

[#11]

I'd love to go for ADSL2,  there's just one minor snag at the moment....    RFS date set : 31/03/2011 
There tends to be two types of connectors on phone extensions, screw in and push in (commonly known as krone or IDC),  both are easy to deal with,  if necessary you can pick-up a krone tool from Maplin (http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=929&C=SO&U=strat15)
IIRC, the effect of extra extensions will be there whether used or not.

[#12]

Oh yeah.... sorry being in london I take it for granted that the exchanges have been made ADSL2 ready!
Thanks for the link, seems easy enough but before I do it I want to find out if it's even going to make any difference to my adsl performance.

[#13]

Robbie,
This linkwill tell you if your exchange is WBC (ADSL2) enabled.
http://www.samknows.com/broadband/search.php

[#14]

Thanks Jameseh,
Sorry my post was misleading, i've known for a while my exchange is activated and I used to be with BE but what i've established (the hard way) is that due to my noisy line (which is what im trying to improve) ADSL2 doesn't work too well for me. I get better speeds but get steady disconnections (once or twice every hour or so - constantly). As I understand it ADSL2 doesn't work too great on noisy lines and only emphasises problems - which is why i've switched back to standard ADSL. I'll apply for the trial if I can get my line att down to something respectable.  Currently 48dB on a 2.5km distance (by road)

[#15]

Hi Robbie,
The likes of Be/O2 use a forced fixed SNR.  They don't rely on on the DLM that BT uses.
In your case, you may find the BT implementation of ADSL2 to work better than that of the LLU suppliers.
Just something to think about for the future