This week I got my new BT Infinity broadband installed and it's plenty fast enough. Speed tests to European servers show about 37Mbit/s download and 8Mbit/s upload. So I am happy.
When the BT Openreach engineer was here he chatted about some installs. The old style 'star wiring' of homes for phones points he said can cause major problems with ADSL speeds. This is where wiring into the home is split at the junction box to various phone points around the home. Current best practice is to split at the main BT phone point.
So he installed the new data socket in the office after running the cable. And I got about 300Kbit/s download and a bit better upload! We retreated to the main phone point and it was the same. His diagnostic box said sync speeds for downloads were around 38Mbit/s so something was wrong.
At this point he asked if we had a cellar (which we do) and we found the real first junction box.... and it had a set of wires to the hall socket and another set going somewhere else. The extra pair of wires were disconnected and speed shot up on the next test to what I am now getting. He then asked what I wanted to do with those other wires!!?!? Well connecting them back up would cripple the Internet speeds.
So the previous occupants using ADSL must have had poor broadband speed too. Or maybe VDSL2 is affected more. But the engineer said star wiring is bad for ADSL broadband.
So after my rambling, anyone with poor/low bandwidth on ADSL broadband have star wiring for phone sockets? It would be easy to test the impact.
If this was your normal ADSL install where you stick microfilters in and plug in your own ADSL modem/router then you'd think that was it. But with a BT Openreach engineer doing the install we had his diagnostic equipment on hand. Note the affect of the extra phone socket wiring affected this big time - I now get 37Mbit/s+ not 300Kbit/s. And the VDSL2 modem has to go into the main phone socket whereas ADSL modems are often plugged into sockets elsewhere in the house.
Food for thought and maybe the reason some get such poor Internet speeds over xDSL?
Last edited by: rtj70 on Thu 10 Jun 10 at 17:50
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