BT Master plug in hallway of house, my BT HH3 60 metres away in luxury shed down the garden, BT Infinity 2 has just come available at my exchange, question: Is it possible for me to get it? the phone cable from master plug goes under the house and under the garden into my den, or will I have to wait for some even better technology, where they could fit another master plug in my den, your thoughts most appreciated.

How easy would it be to run in a bit of CAT5 or CAT 6 network cable? If that were possible you could let BT install the modem alongside the master phone socket and plug the HomeHub in the shed using the ethernet cable.

The Openreach guy who may well turn up probably won't run the cable in so it would be down to you to do so. But it would be an option. You can easily run ethernet networking on a 60m cable as long as you use decent cable and terminate it correctly.

chrisjr: Sounds like a plan, I already have run (weatherproofed) Cat 5E from the den up to back of house to hard wire my YouView box, SkyHD, + my Blu Ray ( all running from a switch box), so are you saying I could run some cat 5E from switch box, to a place adjacent to my Master plug, ready for the engineer?

fttc at the moment works on a separate modem connected to the master socket. then this is connected via ethernet to the HH3.

the length of that ethernet cable is neither here nor there provided it's under 100m.

The modem needs a direct connection to the HomeHub. So if you have the HomeHub located in the den and a switch in the house you would need two cables between den and house. One to connect modem to Home Hub and a return feed back to the switch.

If you only have a single cable then that is not the end of the world. You can get "port doublers" that make use of the fact that CAT5 cable has four pairs but only two are used for 100Mb ethernet. So it uses a specially wired plug that wires one socket to the "normal" pairs and a second socket to the unused pairs in the cable. Fit one each end and you have two separate connections on a single cable. ie one for modem to HomeHub and one for HomeHub to switch.

The alternative would be to swap the HomeHub and switch around. So the HomeHub is in the house serving the various devices there and the switch is in the den serving the devices there. If you want WiFi in the den you can get Wireless Access points with built in switch or that would plug into your existing switch or just use a WiFi router in "switch mode"

A lot to think about, also a lot of cabling and floor boards up in sitting room also floor boards up in hallway, I know I could probably do it in a day but I have to psyche myself up for it, and at the same time convince my wife that it is all worth it.
Plenty of food for thought, will print off this thread and give it some serious thought. Much obliged for your input.

or use homplugs if the power circuit is on the same run

Different circuit has got it's own consumer unit for power & lighting.

You could just run the cable round the skirting. Or would that incur the wrath of SWMBO

They don't need to be on the same circuit. I have a pair at home on two different rings.

The signal should even be able to bridge Consumer Units. The meter is the component at which the signal is supposed to stop. (In the past, I have come across examples when the signal actually jumped that.)

Never use Homeplugs. They are bad technology that cause interference to your neighbours.

http://www.ban-plt.co.uk

http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/publications/whitepaper195

On Hobby Horse Again I see.
Please let it rest.

This has been discussed umpteen times and found to be nonsense. Starting with confusing two different power line technologies and them lumping them together.

It is not nonsense it is a proven and very serious issue. Did you even bother to read the links?

Are they better informed than the last load of round things that was posted a few years back?

The ones where one type of power line technology was slagged off (with no support from ofcom) and the same data used against a different technology. Showing a lack of technical knowledge.

I had a feeling winston would turn up.

Just a few observations - powerline datacomms was brought in as a quick and dirty fix in the pre-Cat5 days, when the maximum RS232 cable run one could safely bung in was 50 feet - a humble 15 metres. Beyond this would require expensive line drivers and a comms engineer to put in a dedicated point to point telecomms cable run back in 1985.

As a quick and dirty - Verrint (I think) brought out the Dataline PLA device, allowing a 9600bps serial connection to be temporarily put in... so you could drive a terminal or printer at a remote location (this was in the days of text terminals to minicomputers). Speeds of this ilk would be way below the mains floor - so wouldn't cause an issue with the mains cabling not being balanced etc. Modulating this onto the mains carrier also was slow enough to nto interfere with anyone.

While different current PLA devices have certain frequencies notched - the very NEED for them to be notched proves the main problem with the tech - the fact that they are pushing a modulated signal out onto unbalanced, unshielded cabling.

As the data rates go up , higher frequencies are needed to handle the data volumes (as well as different modulation methods) - to demonstrate this, you could look at the different comms rates on different freq ranges used in naval comms to submarines.

ELF - 5 baud if that - used as a notifier channel.
VLF - slightly faster
HF - Shortwave (up to 30Mhz) - 10Mbps
VHF - 100-200Mbps

Wasn't there an issue with earlier PLAs affecting shortwave comms? That would also impact aviation, police...
Later ones up the speeds - which affect the frequencies they are modulating to.. and with them sending out onto an unbalanced aerial, they can but interfere with other applications that use the scarce radio spectrum. Imagine how awkward it'll be if PLAs stamp all over 2.54GHz or 5GHz Wifi allocations...

I'm afraid the detractors' point stands. The fundamental tech would only work and not cause interference if mains cabling was required to be shielded in the same way feed cables to radio transmission aerials are. The VERY FACT that frequencies have to be notched out is an admission that the tech is electromagnetically noisy...

Just quick point about radio comms. the Police etc haven't used HF in donkeys. All of that stuff, including air-bands, are on VHF or UHF. (Ex TA Royal Signals.)

HF is still used for marine and transatlantic aircraft comms.

The newer gigabit PLAs interfere with VHF.

So by your logic, unless one's dwelling is close to a transatlantic airliner or a cruise ship at sea (Sea lane and harbour comms are VHF - at least in my boat - SSB is only used for long distance comms.) there is no problem.

I think that you are grasping at straws now.

Anyway this subject has been done to death in the past and the toss has been argued by people less qualified than me so I'm off now. Bye.

The base station is on land.

Gigabit Homeplugs interfere with VHF.

Read post 17 as well.