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Advice on a new phone master socket etc.

Radfordman

pfm Member
My broadband is sort of OK, but I’ve noticed pages loading slower that usual for the last month or so. It’s most likely the service provider. Nothing has been changed to the phone line installation for about 30 years when a standard master socket and extension sockets were fitted by BT.

I am thinking that a new master socket, the type with a test socket inside, would be a good idea.

Can I get BT, or is it now Open Reach to do this without charge?

I have noticed that the phone cable that comes out of the ground to a junction box on the outside of the house, has its outside sheath cracking badly.

Advice welcome, thanks.
 
BT did mine FOC about 6 months ago, even though my ISP is Sky. Just call them and report the fault.

Rich
 
Openreach take the view that if it works its OK and you'll pay to have an upgrade. However if your line is actually faulty then you will get a repair and new socket FOC.

Do you have a handset and if so can you hear any noise on the line. If so that is a fault. Plug your computer straight into you master socket and run a speed test. This will give you some idea if the degradation is due to your line or other factors like PC configuration and WiFi interference. Try without a handset connected and the micro filter removed as these can go faulty and reduce throughput.

If you have dual band WiFi try using the 5GHz band as its less prone to interference but some implementations have poor range.

Cheers,

DV
 
Openreach take the view that if it works its OK and you'll pay to have an upgrade. However if your line is actually faulty then you will get a repair and new socket FOC.

Do you have a handset and if so can you hear any noise on the line. If so that is a fault. Plug your computer straight into you master socket and run a speed test. This will give you some idea if the degradation is due to your line or other factors like PC configuration and WiFi interference. Try without a handset connected and the micro filter removed as these can go faulty and reduce throughput.

If you have dual band WiFi try using the 5GHz band as its less prone to interference but some implementations have poor range.

Cheers,

DV

The only faults I get on the phone are an echo occasionally, it's more often that the person that phones me gets an echo, which they find annoying. Also sometines, a person phones me, I can hear them well, all they can hear is noting, or something feint and distorted.

The master socket in in the front room, the router is off an extension in the hall. The reason I do this is that I only usually connect by Wi-Fi and with the router in the hall I get better Wi-Fi in the rest of the house than with the router in the front room.

I will try the router connected to the master socket, and connected to the computer by cable as you suggest.

I will go into the router settings and see if I have dual band Wi-Fi and if so set it to 5GHZ.

Thank you.
 
I've just been into the router settings, I cant see dual band anywhere, but the is a choice of Wi-Fi mode and it's set to B/G/N, there are other choices.

Also, I cant see any choice of GHZ settings, but I have a choice of channels, 1 to 11, it was on 11, I changed to 9 and I get the impression that pages are loading a little faster now.
 
Pretty sure pages loading faster now on channel 9, did a speed check, and got what I think is a good result considering my scheme is up to 20 Mbp/s, I'm connecting by Wi-Fi and the router is the other side of the house to the computer.

https://flic.kr/p/LTmXws

Also, youtube videos load faster, without the error at the beginning, when I had to re-load the page.

Thanks.

I have tried different channels in the past, but not noticed much, if any difference.
 
It would appear that you have an old basic router with just the 2.4GHz band. What make and model do you have?

A very good network stumbler was inSSIDer but unfortunately version 4 is not free. However version 3 was and whats more it can run off a USB stick. I have it running on both Win 7 and 10.

This application scans both the 2.4 and 5GHz WiFi networks so that you can see all the WiFi networks and choose channels on your router to avoid the strongest signals and hence improve your WiFi performance What it can't do is show you other devices that transmit on the same frequencies like microwave ovens and baby alarms etc. I currently can see 21 Wifi routers near me on the 2.4GHz band but only one router on the 5GHz band - me!

Cheers,

DV

PS your download speed is as good as it gets on a 20Mbps circuit and should be fine.
 
It's a D-Link DSL-3780 supplied by Talktalk about 18 months ago.

Never heard of a network stumbler, will have to investigate that.

Thank you.
 
It's a D-Link DSL-3780 supplied by Talktalk about 18 months ago.

Never heard of a network stumbler, will have to investigate that.

Thank you.

Its a very basic router that sold for around £45 and only supports 2.4GHz WiFi band. I suspect that once you have several users you'll get poor performance as it just doesn't have much processing power and these 'routers' are essentially small computers running a flavour of Unix. A 'proper' BB access device will set you back 3 to 4 times the cost of your basic router but will keep the traffic flowing under heavier loads.

Cheers,

DV
 
Yes, I noticed that when other people use the Wi-Fi here too, mine slows a lot, however, it's usually just me on one machine, so it's not a real problem.

I installed a Network Stumbler, not sure if it's any good. Got the result below:

https://flic.kr/p/LTsDRW

Thanks.
 
Here is some bed time reading. These guys know what they are talking about and wrote not only inSSIDer (no longer free boo) but also wifi spy which is a relatively cheap (from a commercial POV) WiFi spectrum analyser.

http://www.metageek.com/training/resources/why-channels-1-6-11.html

Take it slowly and have a play with netstumbler. I was disappointed with v0.4.0 as it would not recognise the WiFi adapter in my old IBM T60. Win 10 Enterprise however does recognise everything on this old machine including the finger swiping doobry except the WWAN adapter and thats because the manufacturer of the WWAN hardware hasn't written an updated driver. I also ran inSSIDer 3 successfully from a USB stick on the T60.

I note that you are using WEP which is insecure. May I suggest that you move to WPA2.

Cheers,

DV
 
Here is some bed time reading. These guys know what they are talking about and wrote not only inSSIDer (no longer free boo) but also wifi spy which is a relatively cheap (from a commercial POV) WiFi spectrum analyser.

http://www.metageek.com/training/resources/why-channels-1-6-11.html

Take it slowly and have a play with netstumbler. I was disappointed with v0.4.0 as it would not recognise the WiFi adapter in my old IBM T60. Win 10 Enterprise however does recognise everything on this old machine including the finger swiping doobry except the WWAN adapter and thats because the manufacturer of the WWAN hardware hasn't written an updated driver.

I note that you are using WEP which is insecure. May I suggest that you move to WPA2.

Cheers,

DV

Thank you again, I will immediately try changing to WPA2.
 
Mixed mode is my choice if you have a range of devices some of which are old.

This enables both WPA and WPA2 with both TKIP and AES. This provides maximum compatibility with any ancient devices you might have, but also ensures an attacker can breach your network by cracking the lowest-common-denominator encryption scheme. This TKIP+AES option may also be called WPA2-PSK “mixed” mode.

If you only have new devices and want to be ultra secure than use WPA2 only. Oh and before I firgit turn off WPS for max security.

Cheers,

DV
 
Not sure if my devices are ancient or not! I certainly am.

The WPS is just a momentary push button, I presume that it's only effective for as short time.

I will try switching to WPA2, and see if my devices still work.

Many thanks.
 
Switched to WPA and my desktop that has a relatively modern Wi-Fi dongle, connects fine, so does my fairly ancient netbook. I have yet to try an even older HP laptop.
 
Although there is a push button switch on the router for WPS, I have to get into "Advanced Settings" to disable WPS.

Which I have done.
 


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