Broadband to garden office: a tale of moving master BT sockets, WiFi woes and long ethernet cables

[Andy82]

Hi Everyone,

First post for me, I've not been able to find out a solution to my problems so hoping someone can help me here. I've added a few photos and drawings to help with my explanation below:

The phone line coming into the house in a rather bizarre location - an upstairs bedroom (see below, location "A" on my sketch). When we had the house rewired a couple of years ago, our electrician said that we can't move the BT master socket but he put in two more sockets where we wanted them - one in the hall for a phone and one in the living room which is where I plug my router/modem in for my TV, PVR, NAS etc that all need wired connections. As a result, I don't actually plug anything into the BT master socket in the bedroom so I guess it's just a kinda 'bridge'?

Here is the problem - I now want internet access in a newly build garden office (location "D" on my sketch). I've tried wifi options (including powerful routers and extenders/repeaters but with no reliable performance) but I want a wired solution. I need to retain the phone line and internet points in my house (locations "B" and "C" on my sketch) so I can't really just plug the router in the bedroom and run an ethernet cable down the side of the house and under the garden. I was planning to possibly run a super long (~60 metre) ethernet cable out of the living room, around the house and under the garden to the new garden office but two things worry me:
1) is that too far for an ethernet cable?
2) take a look at the inside of the master socket (in my bedroom) - it seems like my entire phone line / internet is running through a couple of tiny orange wires! Is that normal? From the 'line in' only the white and orange are being used, you can see the 'line out' quite clearly on one of the pictures. There are a lot of wires not plugged into anything. fyi - the black cable is the phone line coming into the house and the white one is the new cable leading away to the phone and internet points downstairs.

What do people think about somehow joining together the line coming into my house and the new white phone cable leading away from the BT master socket and into the wall? That would effectively mean 'moving' the master socket to downstairs in my living room. Is this possible/necessary?

Sorry for the long rambling post but hopefully you have all the information needed! I don't mind the solution being difficult or expensive, I just want to have fast reliable internet access in my house and garden office. Any thoughts appreciated.

Andy

 

[Wilko]

Hello Andy and Welcome to the Forum !
It is correct we are not allowed to move the BT mastersocket. It remains BTs property. They can move it but will charge for their work. The cable they use is able to run kms to your house and still work, but the further the run the slower is your internet speed. Likewise if you extend the cable your speed will slow down. The best speed you will get is with the front cover off (removes your house wiring) and your router plugged directly into the port as shown in your 3rd pic.
If you want to hardwire your shed it certainly is possible. The trick is to do it in a way that doesn't eat up all your broadband speed. What do you get today, may I ask ?

 

[Andy82]

Thanks Gilko,

My current speed data is below. btw, The speeds are about the same whether I plug the router in at point "A" in the bedroom or point "B" in the living room.

Download speed: 53.96 Mbps
Upload speed: 8.31 Mbps
Ping Latency: 42.75ms

Andy

 

[saspm]

Hi Andy,

I would recommend the cat5e network cable from your router to the shed. It can be up to 100m in length without the need for a repeater.

You should be able to use the router connected to a secondary socket, it is just recommended that the master socket is used by your ISP.

 

[MisterE]

I would look into using powerline adapters (sometimes known as Homeplugs HomePlug - Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HomePlug)
Especially if the power to the garden office is on the same phase as the rest of the house.
I've successfully used them up to 90 odd meters.
It's worth the investment of about £50 to save a dig.
P.S. I'd look for one that has at least two network sockets on the adapter.

 

[Andy82]

Thanks for your suggestions. I've tried power line adapters but with no luck, the shed is on a different phase (in fact, they don't work very well in my house even between upstairs and downstairs, dodgy wiring perhaps!)

Looking at the pictures of the inside of the BT Master socket, does it look right to you? Anything I should be worried about? There seem to be lots of unused wires!

Andy

 

[saspm]

BT sockets only use the 2 wires that is correct

 

[SparkyChick]

You should be able to get 100m+ with good quality Cat 5e or Cat 6 cable, so I'd hard wire it.

I think I'd sink a semi-rigid nylon reinforced hose pipe into the ground and run the cable through that.

And to answer your question about the master socket, no, it looks a little like mine did until I moved it does

 

[Wilko]

Definite case of speed envy here

 

[Andy82]

Ok great, sounds like we've got a plan!

Last questions: 1) is running Ethernet cable next to power cable really a bad idea?
2) is it worth using Cat 7 cable or is that a waste of money?

Andy

 

[MisterE]

As SparkyChick says the BT wiring looks as good as any ...... there are normally spare wires on the incoming cable incase you want additional telephone lines in the same building.
Look for the external grade CAT5E from a reputable supplier.

 

[SparkyChick]

I agree with @MisterE , Cat 5E is more than sufficient.

And to answer your question about running it along side the main... try not to. If they need to cross, try and make it a perpendicular crossing to minimise the chances of interference. The longer they run parallel to one another in close proximity, the greater the chances of performance degradation.

 

[Octopus]

Thanks for your suggestions. I've tried power line adapters but with no luck, the shed is on a different phase (in fact, they don't work very well in my house even between upstairs and downstairs, dodgy wiring perhaps!)

Shed on different phase - I doubt it very much - does your house have a 3 phase supply?

Don't work between upstairs and downstairs.... I'm guessing you have a dual RCD fuse board - RCD's do impair the performance of the powerline adaptors..

 

[buzzlightyear]

work out the meters you need .go on ebay get black cat 5 one bt slave and one
punch down tool .extend to shed .

 

[Resu]

Best option is to try and run the cable away from any power cables as best as you can, if there's no other option shielded cable may help. To minimise loss you might also want to avoid unnecessary joins, so crimping an RJ45 connector onto each end and plugging it directly into you router, etc. would be better (basically making it an extra long patch lead). You could use brush plates to keep it neat.

Shed on different phase - I doubt it very much - does your house have a 3 phase supply?

Shed could have it's own seperate supply.