The Underscore Archives

On Wed, 2008-05-28 at 15:22 +0100, Matt Hamilton wrote:
> Hi All,
>    I'm helping my father-in-law wire up an extension for ADSL at  
> home.  He has 'helpfully' already run a cable under the carpet from  
> one end of the bedroom where the master socket is to the extension  
> next door... maybe about 10 metres.  However the cable he has used is  
> not twisted pair, but just the 4-wires-side-by-side telephone wiring  
> that you often get between the phone and the wall.  Anyone know if in  
> practise this will make a difference vs. using cat5?  I mean I'm sure  
> the wires out in the street are probably just bits of old wet string  
> anyways, so shouldn't make much different, but wasn't sure if a 10m  
> run of non-twisted pair cable between the master socket and ADSL  
> modem would be an issue?

It should be easy to tell , just plug the router into the shortest cable
you have and into the filtered side of the filter then into the master
socket.

Then power up and read the signal level from the diagnostics page
then compare with it to the same with the extension cable.

It shouldn't make much difference if you are near the exchange and
other conditions are ok but cheap cables that get trodden on can
break ADSL2 and 2+ connections which are more sensitive. Stay close
to the master socket. Most problems are caused by old devices that
seemed ok with adsl 1 but interfere with the version 2 gnomes , use
filters. filters can die.

ADSL2+ uses gnomes (slightly fatter than pixies) to move the data so
the cable needs to be a little bit chubbier than the old ones . On the
upside their beards need less cleaning and they are better behaved at
meal times.

Toodle-pip
Amias

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