Extension cable

[#1]

Hi. I've recently upgraded to fibre broadband at home. I get speeds of 10MB using an inexpensive 15m extension cable between the BT socket and the Hub One router which increases to 18MB without the extension cable. I want to keep my router upstairs. OK, let's be honest, I don't actually need 18MB but I like a challenge. Can I purchase a better extension cable? If so, from where? I need (1) BT male to RJ11 male or (2) BT male to BT female. Thanks.

[#2]

You may have a poor or faulty extension cable.

One test you could do is plug a landline phone into the extension and see if there is any noise on the line. You may hear it on the dial tone or a test call. Or do a 17070 option 2 quiet line test.

Saves spending money on another and find it doesn't fix the problem.

I've got a faulty one at home. Sky put an extention cable in (as the box has to plugged to be plugged into the phone) had noise on the line. When I removed it, then it went away.

[#3]

Have a look at My Mate Vince's videos to see what options you have and how to help get the best speeds.

[#4]

Many thanks. Vince has got a really useful website.

I’ve got a better idea of what I need now.

[#5]

Thanks. Worth a try.

I didn’t experience any loss in speed when I had normal broadband.

[#6]

Fibre uses a wider span of frequencies, the higher frequencies will be inhibited by your poor quality extension cable, hence it is more sensitive than ADSL.

In an ideal world you would leave your router downstairs and run a Cat5e or Cat 6 Ethernet cable from one of the router LAN connectors upstairs where you would distribute the broadband using either a wireless, wired or combined Access Point. These are not expensive.

If you are adamant that you want to put your router upstairs then my advice is to leave the filter downstairs and extend the DSL data cable upstairs using either Cat5e or Cat 6 cable. You could try extending the telephone cable upstairs with Cat5e or Cat 6 and put the filter upstairs but in this case you may experience problems if you plug a telephone handset in downstairs, hence forming a star connection.

All you can do is try the various options. As your connection is quite slow by fibre standards you may get away with more than one connection option.

One final piece of advice, when playing be very wary about constantly disconnecting the router from your BT socket. Before doing so go into the router settings (it may be in advanced settings, I'm not familiar with the Hub One) and click the disconnect button before removal. Leave about 15 minutes between disconnecting and reconnecting and don't do it more that say a couple of times a day. If you're not careful the DLM will think that there is a fault on your line and will try to compensate by dropping your speed.

[#7]

Your best solution would be to put the router next to the socket then run cat5 but to connect your computer. That isn’t always the most desirable location though.

If you want/need a decent dsl cable you need to use a good quality twisted pair cable, I’d suggest using cat5e and picking one of the pairs. Make sure you get solid core cable not CCA as that makes a huge difference and then crimp it to length so there is no excess. You may end up at least half way to your target but as per initial paragraph, you’d be better terminating the DSL as soon as you can and then running the rest in data cable.