[Closed] Installing wired network at home - best way of extending BT master socket?

You are not meant to touch the master socket.

BT will come out and move it for you, it's about £150 and they will only do a simple move.

There are alternatives. [url= http://www.telecomgreen.co.uk/home-repair/can-i-move-my-bt-master-socket-a-telephone-engineer-gives-his-advice/ ]http://www.telecomgreen.co.uk/home-repair/can-i-move-my-bt-master-socket-a-telephone-engineer-gives-his-advice/[/url]

Saying that I moved mine a couple of metres.

Assuming it's a modern socket, it'll have a split faceplate. The top half is BT's, the bottom half is yours. You remove the bottom half to punch down the extension.

I'd question the motive in doing this though. Internal extensions are a major source of arseache for ADSL, wiring CAT6 throughout the house and then having the last 50m run over some shitty BT extension sounds like madness to me. What are you trying to achieve?

I've left the master socket where it is and that's where my router sits. I then just ran Cat 5 from there back to my patch panel and patched in that way.

Although you're not supposed to I think so long as you did a good job you'd be unlikely to get complaints from BT/Openreach. (I've moved quite a few).

The right thing to do would be to put a filter faceplate on the master socket. Then run the unfiltered output to your router and then use the filtered output for phones. Cat5 would be fine for this.

You could shorten it in the loft and install the master socket there but I'd worry about access if an engineer ever had to visit.

Out of interest - why are you using cat6? ... cat5e is so much easier to work with.

I've left the master socket where it is and that's where my router sits. I then just ran Cat 5 from there back to my patch panel and patched in that way.

Indeed.

If you absolutely must run an extension (ie, DECT coverage isn't sufficient to flood the house), there's no reason why you can't punch down a pair out of a CAT6 cable run, then connect the patch panel back into itself to send it on to where you want it to go. Punch down a BT socket at the other end. It'll run through a PP quite happily, what it won't run through is the switches.

Though as I said, I'd avoid doing it unless it was absolutely necessary, and I'd avoid moving the router at all regardless.

Out of interest - why are you using cat6? ... cat5e is so much easier to work with.

Because it's one louder?

A DIY home CAT6 installation is almost certainly pointless, not least because it's not just about the cable. Tolerances for the connections are much more stringent, and the sockets and so on have to be compliant. Unless you're a structured cabling engineer with access to a Fluke, the chances are that your CAT6 installation is actually a very expensive CAT5e install.

We discussed this a while back and IIRC the OP on that thread used CAT6 "because he really wanted to."

You'll get the least possible loss from the network by minimising the cable running to your modem / router. If possible, don't move the socket, but have your modem / router located next to it. Run Cat5e/6 cable to a switch and distribute the ethernet from there. Providing the run from the modem / router is <100m to the switch you won't need any signal booster and there shouldn't be any degredation in signal.

DHCP for the whole network will be handled by the router.

Thanks for the input so far....
my plan was to have the router located in a cupboard along with network switches and patch panel. I've had a look at the adsl faceplate filters suggested on gobuchul's link and they seem to suggest that I can leave existing master socket in place (currently in the kitchen on a wall that will eventually be taken down as part of my kitchen refurb so will have to be attached to nearest convenient wall in the future which is why I was keen to have router remote from current master socket position) and run cat 5e cable from the faceplate filter to a secondary master socket with another faceplate filter next to router/network switches etc. I was then going to connect from the new relocated master socket to BT homebub then on to network switches etc...probably talking about having homehub about 10m away from current master outlet.

Current setup is pretty lame as router is currently connected to a slave socket which is "daisy chained" to about another 5 outlets linked to master in the kitchen which is sitting there doing nothing so anything I do from here on (Should) be an improvement.

I'm wanting to use the patch panel to handle the ethernet/data side via switches and realise that the phone signal doesn't go through the switches. What would be the most efficient way to wire up extensions via patch panel. At the moment I've run 2 cat 6 cables from proposed patch panel location to each network point thinking I can run data down one or both or data and phone. If I wanted to run 4 phone extensions how do I link ports when I'm only bringing in the phone signal to 1 port?

Cougar - I'm using Cat 6 "coz one of the guys from work told me to".

Hoping I've not gone overboard here although cable was about £25 more expensive than cat5e for 300m drum (made sure I got solid copper stuff)

run cat 5e cable from the faceplate filter to a secondary master socket

a) It's either a master socket or a secondary.

b) The ADSL socket on a filtered faceplate will be RJ11, not RJ45 (ie, smaller than a standard Ethernet jack).

If I wanted to run 4 phone extensions how do I link ports when I'm only bringing in the phone signal to 1 port?

POTS phones are daisy-chained together as you describe, they're not a star network like Ethernet. Whatever cabling solution you come up with, that's not likely to change. It sounds like you want some sort of telephone hub, and if such a thing exists I'm not aware of it outside of the VoIP world. The question I'd be asking perhaps is, what are you hoping to gain by running all the telephony through the structured cabling rather than leaving it as-is?

Personally, I'd be ripping out all the extensions and replacing them with DECT phones. At the very least, you want to disconnect the exttension's bell wire (orange one, either pin 3 or 4 IIRC) from the back of the consumer side of the master socket. But I'll reiterate what I said earlier; running CAT6 throughout the house and dangling the ADSL router off some poxy extension makes little sense, you might as well get a couple of Homeplugs.

Cougar - I'm using Cat 6 "coz one of the guys from work told me to".

Then you need to stop asking technical advice from "a guy at work" and, erm, ask complete strangers on a bike forum instead. (-:

There's nothing wrong with using CAT6 per sé other than it being more awkward to work with, it's just that there's little reason to use it either. For the sake of £25 the cost is neither here or there I suppose (though either the price of CAT6 has plummeted since I last looked or you've got some CAT5 cable with CAT6 printed on the sheath).

If it's just simple phones you are wanting to connect, then you can use your RJ45 Patch panel. Terminate correctly and replace your BT plugs with RJ45 or RJ11 (they'll sit quite happily in pretty much all RJ45 sockets and it would work. However, I reckon it's going to get pretty noisy, so I'd be tempted to do what Cougar said and go DECT - way less fuss.

I did run a load of CAT5 into my house, but ripped all out and gone fully DECT / WIFI - much neater

You can wedge RJ11 into an RJ45 socket and it'll work, but depending on the design of the plugs / sockets you can damage the socket fairly readily. I wouldn't.

Wasn't really saying you should, but you could. In any case, retro-wiring a house is way more hassle than just going wireless these days

more awkward to work with

Yep, proper CAT6 doesn't like going round corners. For example, it's not going to like going neatly round the edge of wall corner!

Moreover, it shouldn't. Kinks and sharp turns take it out of spec.

Kinda committed to the wired route as house is on one level but over quite a distance with stone walls to negotiate which makes wireless difficult. I'm coming around to the fact that it's best to get as direct a connection as possible to existing BT master socket and to leave it where it is.

Would this work to allow me to have router connected to master but in a cupboard elsewhere - fit filtered faceplate to the existing master connecting to unfiltered side on back of faceplate in cat 5e cable which I'll run to patch panel approx 10m away. I'll then run RJ45 from patch panel to RJ11 to router then to network switches onto to patch panel and finally on to network outlets (in alread run cat 6).

As for phones I'll look into DECT as not too bothered about landline too much at the moment - just need to get broadband/data side sorted.

What are you referring to as "unfiltered"? Both sides are filtered - the ADSL side has the voice filtered out, and vice versa.

It's not clear to me exactly what you're proposing. A faceplate (or for that matter, a regular microfilter) can split the two signals at the master socket. You can then route both feeds to different places if you like. Is that what you mean?

Faceplates have three advantages. They're neater, they're generally better quality (the ADSLnation NTE2005 was the best one, last I looked) and they disconnect the bell wire from the extensions (which you can do yourself as above).

Have I got this right? You want to take the filtered ADSL data feed from the BT Master to the patch panel, and then from the patch panel to the router? I can't see any reason why that wouldn't work, with the caveat that the further you run this internal wiring, the greater the risk of interference degrading the ADSL signal. Is this just for aesthetic reasons, you don't want the router on show?

Oh, and, the data socket on a filtered plate is RJ11, not RJ45. So here's an idea; take a CATwhatever cable run from the patch panel punchdown to a regular Ethernet socket mounted next to the BT Master. Then you can connect the BT faceplate data line to your patch panel with a short cable having RJ45 at one end and RJ11 at the other. At the panel, you'd then use a similar cable to plug the router into the panel.

This has the added advantage that when you try it, find out that it's shit and finally give in to doing it the way everyone's been telling you to do it for the last dozen posts (-: you can move the router back to the BT Master socket and use the same cable run to send an Ethernet connection to your PP instead without needing to amend your structured cabling.

Of note here though is that an ADSL cable uses the centre two pins to carry the signal, and the centre two pins of an Ethernet cable aren't a twisted pair. So if you do go this route, I'd make a pair of cables connecting the centre two RJ11 pins to pins 3 and 6 in the RJ45 jack.

How's your crimping?

Oh, and,

You could of course just wedge an RJ11 cable directly into the Ethernet wall socket and another in the corresponding patch panel socket, and it would almost certainly work.

We do it in the Lab here all the time. However, half of the wall sockets in the Lab are now buggered because of it (though oddly the patch panel is fine). For a single use you'll probably be ok, I think the problems here are due to RJ11 plugs combined with cheap sockets and excessive usage - they get unplugged and replugged a -lot- as it's a test environment, which isn't really what they're designed to do.

Blah blah speed blah extensions meh.

After disconnecting the bell wire I had more improvement to my phone line by getting the sequential patchwork of pre-socket extensions thrown on over the years ripped out than anything else. Adding in a few secondary sockets hasn't harmed my internet, in fact wireless has done more to bugger my network than anything else.

Fact is, unless you are an idiot and start ripping chunks out the master line nobody would ever know, it's not like theres a file somewhere saying so and so's socket is 1.2m along the east facing wall of their kitchen just next to the fridge. If you can get some slack on the wire and move it to where you want it there's nothing to really stop you barring a 'scary' threat and a 50p plastic punchdown tool. The engineer who moved my line for me (as I was getting an extension built on the existing entry point) was good enough to leave me about 20m worth of wire coiled up just before the socket, never made any difference to my predicted speed.

As for wiring master to cat5e:

mastersocket < cat5e < secondary socket

Punch it in, job done. Twisted pair will probably be better than any phone wire you get. Not sure why people are talking about messing around with ethernet faceplates and such. Talk about over complicating a job.

Oh, and if you ever want to go for Infinity or similar products you'll be ditching the filters anyway.