BT Infinity - speed

Graham. wrote:
> On Thu, 12 Jan 2012 15:39:30 +0000, The Natural Philosopher
> <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
>> Flop wrote:
>>> On 11/01/2012 21:48, DIYer wrote:
>>>> My father in law was tempted by the 35Mb predicted speed and so had BT
>>>> Infinity installed today. It reached 6.6Mb. That might seem a little
>>>> slow
>>>> but is a huge performance hike on the 0.9Mb he had before on BT
>>>> Broadband.
>>>>
>>>> Something that doesn't sit right with me about the installation,
>>>> though, is
>>>> that the BT bod plugged the hub into a downstairs extension socket and
>>>> not
>>>> the master socket that is upstairs on the end of the black BT drop
>>>> wire. Is
>>>> there anything in this or am I just proving that I don't know what I'm
>>>> talking about?
>>>>
>>>> Thanks for any feedback.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> I was surprised by the quality of the [yellow] cable supplied by BT.
>>>
>>> One cable looked seriously kinked. So I replaced it with a cheap Cat6
>>> cable.
>>>
>>> http://www.7dayshop.com/catalog/prod...ucts_id=110670
>>>
>>>
>>> This boosted the signal from 14Mbps to 18Mbps. I then replaced the other
>>> cable and now have 27Mbps which is the estimated speed.
>>>
>>> However, this might be a one-off where they had kept the cable under the
>>> driver's seat - or worse.
>>>
>>> Flop
>>>
>> At the sorts of frequencies we no are starting to expect, cat 5 is a
>> better bet than the stock BT cable for sure.
>>
>> Now when its fiber to the premises........ho hum. I watched an engineer
>> take 4 hours to terminate a monomode undersea fibre once before its
>> reflection coefficient was satisfactory. "Still a but rough - should be
>> a dB better than that, but its in spec'
>>
>> I for one cannot WAIT till all this last 5 miles of copper is down to at
>> the worst the last 200 meters.. or is gone, altogether.
>
> I was surprised to hear that Flop got such an increase in speed by
> replacing his internal phone wiring with CAT5.
>

I'm not.

I got a doubling in speed in the in laws house when I took the phone off
the hook.

I decided to say nothing...bitter experience...

> Kinks in UTP is not a problem, it's not like co-ax.

well actually it IS like coax.

It DOES depend on an 'infinitely long' pair of conductors of 'equal
length per unit distance' and a precise spacing and dieletric constant
between them to maintain its integrity as a a 'transmission line' of
more or less constant impedance..



> The tighter twist of the individual pairs of CAT5 compared to regular
> phone cable is helpful in that crosstalk between pairs in the same
> bundle is reduced, but in the case of cables with only one pair in use
> I would not expect to see much difference. Often 1 1/2 pairs are used
> the "half" pair being a bell wire (pin 3). Maybe CAT5 would have
> helped to reduce the interference from the unbalanced bell wire, but a
> better solution would be not to carry the bell wire at all.
>
> Remember the signal has come all the way from the exchange in big fat
> ancient telephone cable with losely twisted pairs, why should a few
> meters of modern CAT5 make much difference?
>


I think you have answered that question. BT twisted pairs from te
exchange are manufactured and indeed terminated to a better standard
than many an internal house wire is.

Having done all my own internal wires from scratch sadly there is no
more to come.

On 12/01/12 21:41, Peter Crosland wrote:
> "Woody" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
> news:uuHPq.2257$(E-Mail Removed)2...
>> One thing not mentioned so far is the cable that links the incoming
>> upstairs to the extension downstairs.
>>
>> Is it proper BT twisted pair cable or, since you say the house was wired
>> before the days of sockets, is it just the old plain non-twisted
>> four-wire? The difference will be the colours - modern twisted is candy
>> striped white/blue and blue/white for the first pair, the same with
>> orange, green and grey for subsequent pairs; if it is old cable it will be
>> red, green, white, and blue IMSMC (or was it ... orange and blue?).
>>
>> If it is the latter and the original wiring was done by BT (or the GPO)
>> then I would get them back and have them wire it properly; if it was done
>> DIY then consider moving the new faceplate upstairs to the primary socket
>> and see if it makes any difference. If they have predicted 35Mb/s and you
>> are only getting 6.6 then something is drastically wrong and needs fixing.
>
>
> Agreed it is not right but usually BT/Openreach have no liability for the
> wiring beyond the NTE5 even if they installed it in the past. If the
> customer wants that rewired BY BT/Openreach then they have to pay.

AFAIK this even applies to their monopoly wiring, junction boxes, master
socket etc. at the customer's premises. If it works, then they won't
replace old stuff - unless you pay them to do so.

I have the old drop cable which isn't twisted-pair, this is connected to
a 1950s bakelite lightning protector with a couple of fuses, and then
on to an early master LJU (not an NTE5). When I've asked Openreach
guys in the past about having it all replaced, the reply has always
been that it would be a chargeable job.

[snip]
>
> I have the old drop cable which isn't twisted-pair, this is connected to
> a 1950s bakelite lightning protector with a couple of fuses, and then
> on to an early master LJU (not an NTE5). When I've asked Openreach
> guys in the past about having it all replaced, the reply has always
> been that it would be a chargeable job.

Conversely, where Openreach have attended to resolve an unreliability
the technician has replaced an exactly similar setup free of charge,
removing the museum-piece lightning arrestor and replacing all the cables.

Sadly this didn't resolve the unreliability problem (extensively
reported here during the spring of 2011). We got as far as identifying
a large burst of RF occuring daily between 05:15 and 07:30, causing the
connection to drop - but the end user got bored and gave up bothering.

He now has the router on a timeswitch so it is always powered down from
about 4am to about 8 am.

--
Graham J

On Fri, 13 Jan 2012 12:58:29 +0000
Graham J <graham@invalid> wrote:

> [snip]
> >
> > I have the old drop cable which isn't twisted-pair, this is
> > connected to a 1950s bakelite lightning protector with a couple of
> > fuses, and then on to an early master LJU (not an NTE5). When I've
> > asked Openreach guys in the past about having it all replaced, the
> > reply has always been that it would be a chargeable job.
>
> Conversely, where Openreach have attended to resolve an unreliability
> the technician has replaced an exactly similar setup free of charge,
> removing the museum-piece lightning arrestor and replacing all the
> cables.
>
> Sadly this didn't resolve the unreliability problem (extensively
> reported here during the spring of 2011). We got as far as
> identifying a large burst of RF occuring daily between 05:15 and
> 07:30, causing the connection to drop - but the end user got bored
> and gave up bothering.
>
> He now has the router on a timeswitch so it is always powered down
> from about 4am to about 8 am.
>

I remember that, if it was the one in Kenninghall. It must have been
something at Lakenheath, firing up the trans-Atlantic encryption machine
or something. <g>
Maybe there's still something covert going on at Fersfield......
A pity it was never resolved, though, I found it
intriguing.
--
Davey.

On Thu, 12 Jan 2012 15:39:30 +0000, The Natural Philosopher
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:


>Now when its fiber to the premises........ho hum. I watched an engineer
>take 4 hours to terminate a monomode undersea fibre once before its
>reflection coefficient was satisfactory. "Still a but rough - should be
>a dB better than that, but its in spec'

I usually reject any fibre splice that has a loss of >0.2dB
--
Cheers

Peter

(Reply-to address is a spam trap, please reply to the group)

On Thu, 12 Jan 2012 20:35:39 +0000, Woody wrote:

> If they have predicted 35Mb/s
> and you are only getting 6.6 then something is drastically wrong and
> needs fixing.

I've just remembered that, perhaps last year, a neighbour of a friend
of mine ordered BT Infinity. The OpenReach guy visited, installed a new
box, and her speed went from 2Mb/s to 8Mb/s. When the speed didn't get
any better after a few days, she complained. They finally admitted that
they had switched her from a capped 2Mb/s to ADSL Max and not supplied
FTTC at all. I think she gets about 35Mb/s now BT have actually supplied
her with what she originally ordered.

Worth checking that your father-in-law has an installation which has all
the right boxes.

Peter wrote:
> On Thu, 12 Jan 2012 15:39:30 +0000, The Natural Philosopher
> <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
>
>> Now when its fiber to the premises........ho hum. I watched an engineer
>> take 4 hours to terminate a monomode undersea fibre once before its
>> reflection coefficient was satisfactory. "Still a but rough - should be
>> a dB better than that, but its in spec'
>
> I usually reject any fibre splice that has a loss of >0.2dB

maybe it was 0.1dB. twas a long time ago..and he was muttering..;-)

Andrew Benham <(E-Mail Removed)> considered Fri, 13 Jan 2012
12:41:39 +0000 the perfect time to write:

>On 12/01/12 21:41, Peter Crosland wrote:
>> "Woody" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
>> news:uuHPq.2257$(E-Mail Removed)2...
>>> One thing not mentioned so far is the cable that links the incoming
>>> upstairs to the extension downstairs.
>>>
>>> Is it proper BT twisted pair cable or, since you say the house was wired
>>> before the days of sockets, is it just the old plain non-twisted
>>> four-wire? The difference will be the colours - modern twisted is candy
>>> striped white/blue and blue/white for the first pair, the same with
>>> orange, green and grey for subsequent pairs; if it is old cable it will be
>>> red, green, white, and blue IMSMC (or was it ... orange and blue?).
>>>
>>> If it is the latter and the original wiring was done by BT (or the GPO)
>>> then I would get them back and have them wire it properly; if it was done
>>> DIY then consider moving the new faceplate upstairs to the primary socket
>>> and see if it makes any difference. If they have predicted 35Mb/s and you
>>> are only getting 6.6 then something is drastically wrong and needs fixing.
>>
>>
>> Agreed it is not right but usually BT/Openreach have no liability for the
>> wiring beyond the NTE5 even if they installed it in the past. If the
>> customer wants that rewired BY BT/Openreach then they have to pay.
>
>AFAIK this even applies to their monopoly wiring, junction boxes, master
>socket etc. at the customer's premises. If it works, then they won't
>replace old stuff - unless you pay them to do so.
>
>I have the old drop cable which isn't twisted-pair, this is connected to
>a 1950s bakelite lightning protector with a couple of fuses, and then
>on to an early master LJU (not an NTE5). When I've asked Openreach
>guys in the past about having it all replaced, the reply has always
>been that it would be a chargeable job.

When I moved into my current house, I knew I would be getting adsl,
and routed a cat5 cable in parallel to the existing BT one from the
first junction back that I could reach (where the cable from the pole
connects to our house), past the existing indoor connection, and on to
the point where I wanted the master socket to be, where I connected it
to an ancient BT junction box (like the existing one on the old
installation) that had been left after some work at a previous
address.

When BT set up the line for residential service, the engineer just
used my cat5 (as I'd intended) rather than the old untwisted stuff
that had been there since the 1950s, and put a nice new NTE5 on the
end of it

My line has subsequently been tested (due to a different and unrelated
problem) as the best quality for it's length that the test engineer
had ever seen
I synch at 8192 (on ordinary adsl - best I can get on my exchange) on
a line length which is apparently well over the normal limit for full
speed.
None of my immediate neighbours get more than 6Mb/s, so it's likely
that the care I took over the cabling is at least partly responsible
for my good speed.

"DIYer" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
>> AFAIK, the bod should fit a VDSL specific faceplate to the master socket,
>> and the router should connect to that ... is it possible he re-routed the
>> incoming line to what used to be the downstairs extension, and then
>> routed an extension back upstairs to what used to be the master?
>
> Nope. What the bod simply did, was to change the faceplate on the
> extension socket and plug the hub into that. He didn't change any wiring
> or run new wires anywhere. We expected some form of new wiring to / from
> the master socket to the room with the extension socket, and actually
> lifted floor boards and drilled holes through the ceiling / coving to make
> the bod's life easier. But he didn't make any use of it.
>
> Regarding speed, the bod did mutter something about the burglar alarm
> being wired into the master socket and said that this would knock the
> speed back.
>
>
>

Suggest you jump up and down, with a little shouting possibly to get someone
who knows what they're doing to do the install again.

The burglar alarm should be filtered during installation of the NGA service,
but........

Are you sure you are actually talking about infinity/NGA as there should be
2, not 1 but 2 mains powered boxes. As it stands it sounds like a bodged
DSL fit not an infinity. Even so if your father has paid for an
installation to be done it should be done in the correct fashion and with
the correct quality not just a bish bosh bash and of they go.

"Adrian C" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> On 11/01/2012 21:48, DIYer wrote:
>> My father in law was tempted by the 35Mb predicted speed and so had BT
>> Infinity installed today. It reached 6.6Mb. That might seem a little
>> slow
>> but is a huge performance hike on the 0.9Mb he had before on BT
>> Broadband.
>>
>> Something that doesn't sit right with me about the installation, though,
>> is
>> that the BT bod plugged the hub into a downstairs extension socket and
>> not
>> the master socket that is upstairs on the end of the black BT drop wire.
>> Is
>> there anything in this or am I just proving that I don't know what I'm
>> talking about?
>>
>> Thanks for any feedback.
>>
>>
>
> ISTR (BCBW) there is a variant of home wiring specifically done by BT that
> makes all sockets on the install masters?

'A long time ago in another place and time'. Nowadays these circuits have
to be converted to one master and all extensions run from there (officially
that is).