Im trying to setup broadband for a client and am having a few problems! It was ordered fine (Aol) and has been activated etc but on attempting to install it today I find they have some kind of featureline!

Basically you have to dial 9 for an outside line so im getting no dsl signal until I pick the phone up & press 9 and then its only a flashing light on the router & not solid.

Also putting adsl filters on the other phones results in the phone being dead & completly un-usable, take the filter off & it works again!

I dont know what the system is but the phones are all Panasonic txt7130e so basically I need to know if BB can be setup on this system and how?

AOL have already told me there's a line fault & to wait up to 48hrs to fix!!

hope someone can help! Sorry for the lack of info

I strongly suspect that what you have is a PBX/Extension phone set-up. Especially as you have to dial an access code to get an outside line. An even bigger clue is if they can dial between phones using a simple 2, 3 or 4 digit extension number.

So what you have is a number of phone points wired back to a Central Control Unit somewhere which in turn is wired into the BT phone network. The reason some phones stop working when you try to plug a filter in is that they are not standard phones. They probably use more than one pair of wires to comunicate with the CCU. I've certainly seen those types before.

On other lines you may have a bog standard phone, many PBX systems allow this so that ordinary FAX machines etc can be used. But what they won't do (or are very unlikley to) is route the ADSL signal through the CCU from external phone line to extension.

What you need to do is locate the CCU and hope it is not hardwired into the BT phone line. If you are lucky the incoming BT line ends up on a standard phone socket into which the CCU is plugged. If so then unplug the CCU and plug in the microfilter.

The only problem with this is that where the CCU is may not be in the most user friendly location when it comes to wiring up the PCs to the router!

And of course the CCU may well be hard wired into the BT line. In which case you are going to have problems!

Thanks for your advice, im going back tomorrow morning so will give it a try then.

Can you confirm will I have to plug the router directly into the main phone socket i.e. a microfilter then the ccu & router or can I set it up so that I can plug the router into one of the extensions (the one in the office)?

An alternative maybe could be to remove the office extension from the ccu (not sure if this is possible) & have a splitter after the filter so that line is seperate & just use for the broadband, would that work?

You will have to plug the filter directly into the incoming BT line. However as I said this may not be easy. It is quite possible that the CCU is hard wired into the BT line in which case it is going to be somewhat difficult to insert the filter.

A very likely scenario is that the incoming BT lines are terminated on an IDC connection block. The lines in and out of the CCU may also be terminated on a similar block. Then a twisted pair jumper wire run between the incoming BT circuit and the line in on the CCU block.

That would make it a bit harder to wire in a standard microfilter. I haven't seen a microfilter with wires to terminate the phone side to IDC blocks which would make the job far easier. A potential solution might be to buy a filtered socket such as this from Solwise

http://www.solwise.co.uk/adsl_splitters.htm

The one on the extreme right, ADSL-FFP85D.

Wire the incoming BT circuit to this and use the internal extension connections to wire out to the CCU. Also gives you a nifty test socket on the incomming BT line.

Otherwise you have to hope BT terminated the line on a socket of some kind and whoever installed the phone system used a plug to connect up the CCU. If they used a NTE5 style socket with the removeable lower section of the front panel then you could use the ADSL-NTEFACE product from Solwise to wire it up.

What you will not be able to do is wire the ADSL up to an extension. For a kick off the extension will only be connected to the incomming BT line when it is making an external call. And it is very unlikely the ADSL signal would survive passage through the CCU anyway.

If you want to unwire an extension from the CCU then that may be possible. Again it all depends on how the system is wired up. If it all on IDC blocks then it is very easy. However just be aware that some PBX/Extension systems use non standard phone instruments and wiring so be carefull which one you choose.

You will need to splt the incomming BT line before the CCU and insert a filter into the feed into the CCU (so in fact you are hardly any better off). Then take the unfiltered line and connect onto the extension wiring. Then use a second filter at the extension socket to connect up the modem/router. But obviously any phone you plug into that extension can now only access the BT line, it is no longer an extension off the CCU.

The filter removes the ADSL signal from the phone socket, the RJ11 socket that the router/modem plugs into is hard wired across the phone line unfiltered. So if you split the line AFTER a filter there would be no ADSL signal on the feed to the router!

To be honest it would be far easier to put a single filter in front of the CCU and extend either the RJ11 socket on the filter to where ever you want the router or extend one or more of the RJ45 LAN connections on the router out to the PC

I have a very similar setup as mentioned above and have a Big Grey BT Central Control Unit under the stairs. All the sockets are extension that require 9 to dial out and adsl splitters don't allow phones or broadband to work.

I see I need to fit a splitter before this CCU in order to extract my ADSL signal. BT are quoting 3.5 weeks to send an engineer, so I'm going to give it a go myself.

1/ First thing I'm stuck with is removing the cover from the CCU! I was on location and couldn't easily see how this is done. I've done some web-browsing and determine a screwdriver lodged in the right place should open it.

2/ Hopefully there will be a socket inside, with which to plug in my adsl splitter, but if not my plan is to remove the incoming BT wire (4/6 wires,should be) - sending it into a new master socket with adsl filter included. A further internal connection should then be made to go back to the CCU.

Until I get that cover off, I won't know what I'm dealing with, but does this sound about right?

I think I'll need :

-new master socket with adsl filter included
-an IPC Insertion Tool
-some spare cable

Thanks