So, our DSL is sickly. We don’t know where the sickness is coming from, but much testing has revealed that the main fault is either the box, or something obscure with the line. We should be getting 10Mbps, we top out at 4Mbps. However, further testing (albeit with a potentially sickly box) has revealed that our house phone ‘network’ is hurting our broadband speed. Quite a bit.
Like, from averaging 4ish Mbps on the master socket to Averaging 3Mbps on the socket on which it’s normally used.
And given the crappyness of our incoming ADSL* this is quite a concern. Unfortunately, the wires are now plastered into the wall, and I am not, come hell or high water, changing them. They also are held in place with clips under the floor in a region that’s inaccessible. And the phone wire was of reasonable quality, at least, as far as I’m aware.
So there’s a couple of things we can do. Disconnecting the ring wire, that’s something I shall probably try soon. The other plan is a bit more cumbersome, but essentially revolves around moving the router out to the utility. Whilst this actually puts it further from the incoming phone point, my thought is that I can slap the ADSL filter in-line at the master socket such that the run to the ‘phone in the lounge is filtered, and the run to the utility is ADSL only. However, this does then put a whacking great extension lead, in essence, in the way of the router.
The other option, as I see it, is to hide the router under the stairs, whence it could reach both the alarm’s power supply and the master socket. However, that means locating the never connected network cable which runs to, currently, under the floor by the master socket.
Of course, the best plan would be to go back in time, and when I was specing the house mains wiring to remember to put the mains socket next to the phone point under the fuse box. Which was my original plan. That would eliminate this problem, because I could do the filter-at-master socket trick, and not be stuck with either no power cable, or no network cable, which is where I’m at at the moment. Bother.
* All this is because I don’t like Virgin’s position on things like privacy. And I don’t want to give (B)Sky(B) any money, ever.
** Sort of
