Options
Master Socket
AKW
Posts: 1,050 Forum Member
✭✭✭
I am moving to a house without Virgin Media so will need to go ADSL/Fibre for my Broadband. The house has the master socket in the bedroom and an extension in the lounge, which is my preferred location for the modem.
How essential is it that the modem is plugged into the master socket rather than an extension?
The outside BT termination box is directly behind the extension socket so suspect that at some point the original configuration was changed (current people use the bedroom as an office). Could the sockets be swapped?
How essential is it that the modem is plugged into the master socket rather than an extension?
The outside BT termination box is directly behind the extension socket so suspect that at some point the original configuration was changed (current people use the bedroom as an office). Could the sockets be swapped?
0
Comments
What makes you think the bedroom is the master and the lounge is the extension? The style of socket does not necessarily mean anything if they are different. It is where the incoming line is attached that usually determines the master.
There are two main styles of socket, the NTE5 type which has a split face plate and the LJU type that has a single piece faceplate but either can be master and either can be extension.
One thing you could do is take the faceplate off the lounge socket and see what is behind it. The incoming line often uses different style of cable to extension wiring so should be fairly easy to tell which bit of wire is which.
If the incoming cable is connected to the terminals on the back of the lounge socket then that is the master and the bedroom is an extension. But what may have happened is the cable to the extension has been used to re-route the line via the bedroom.
It is not strictly speaking best practice but it may be that the incoming line has been removed from the lounge socket and jointed to one pair of the cable to the bedroom. This pair is then connected to the line terminals of the bedroom socket making it the master. A second pair in the bedroom socket is connected to that socket's extension terminals and in the lounge is connected to that socket's line terminals turning the lounge into an extension.
Ideally a new cable to extend the line should be used keeping the extension wiring completely separate from the line wiring. But either way if the incoming line is accessible in the lounge then it would be a simple matter to return the lounge to master and bedroom to extension if they are not already.
Self installs like BT and Sky fibre means you just plug in a filter with no master socket change.
I've also run a Cat5e extension from the master socket to my upstairs computer suite (bedroom!) and found no sync speed variations between connection directly to the master VDSL socket or to the extension that is about 20 metres long - but you must use decent twisted pair networking cable and not some Argos super thin phone extension cable.
Although if/when G.FAST ever happens, those 20 metres will be important. Nothing to worry about for the short to medium term, but worth considering.
I'd hope that G.FAST would be professionally installed anyway, and not by having modems being installed at the ends of 50 metres of the lowest quality cable B&Q sells, which might work fine for ADSL or VDSL
Trouble is that with fibre going self install it'll end up like ADSL with lots of users connecting to lousy extension leads wonder why their up to 76mbps is only 9mbps or whatever