Broadband filters

[maggioneato]

Have just had my new broadband modem delivered this morning. Before I mess it all up installing it, does Sky TV have to have a filter? Does it make much difference if the modem and main filter are not connected to the main BT socket? All three filters look the same to me anyway. I need more filters, do they all have to be the same make. Will I still have access to dial up if I make a hash of it. Such a lot of questions. Hope someone can help. :confused:

[BRL]

Hi there. I have a filter plugged into my main socket here at home. Into the filter is the adsl modem then next to that the connector coming from sky. That has two holes in it, in one is my bt line for my home phone and the other is connected to my modem in my computer here so if the broadband fails then I can still go online with dial-up. There is a thread from a while ago with some pictures of my set-up, someoone was asking a similar question and I posted my set up learning that it was wrong in doing so and it is now changed. Good luck. :)

[digidave]

maggioneato,

I've recently installed broadband and I've fitted a filter to each of my sockets (3 in total).

In two cases there is just a phone plugged in and in the 3rd case I've got the adsl modem and a dial up modem plugged in (dial up is just in case).

As long as you plug BT appliances into the BT sockets and your adsl modem into one of the adsl sockets you should be fine.

As far as I know all adsl/bt filters should be functionally the same.

Hope that helps, good luck.
dd:ok:

[ORAC]

Your present wiring supplies the combined phone/ADSL signal to all your sockets. With your present wiring, it doesn't matter which is the master socket, all behave the same way. (see more below).

Since the signal goes to all the sockets, you can plug your ADSL modem into any socket. The microfilter just acts as an adapter providing a suitable RJ-11 socket for the connection lead.

The second socket is a filtered BT socket for the phone.

Can you plug a phone/Sky/fax/whatever straight into a phone socket without a filter? It depends on the equipment, some are designed to ignore the ADSL signal or just work anyway due to luck, others suffer interference. My house alarm, for example, is hard wired to a socket but works fine. if you'd prefer not to use a filter use trial and error and see if it works.

The make and design of filter is immaterial. Some people prefer the rigid plug in variety, as with Solwise below, others prefer the BT (http://www.voyager.bt.com/microfilters.htm) box on a bit of string where they can hide them behind the furniture.

Other Options
If you intend to plug your modem into the BT master socket, you have a further option. You can replace the existing BT faceplate with a Solwise (http://www.solwise.co.uk/adsl_splitters.htm) ADSL splitter faceplate. That will provide an ADSL socket on the faceplate, but will filter the signal to all other sockets in the house, removing the need for any plug in filters at all.

[BRL]

Here is my set up taken a few mins ago. The main filter goes into the wall and everything else goes into it.
http://www.btinternet.com/~paul.evans28/117_1768.JPG The big box under where it says PHONE comes from the sky box. Into that goes my home phone and the dial-up modem. The second picture simply shows it going into the main phone socket for my house. http://www.btinternet.com/~paul.evans28/117_1769.JPG Good luck with yours. :)

[maggioneato]

Food for thought, thanks guys. I am about to do the deed and see what happens. I can't put my PC in to the master socket as it's not really close enough to it, also I have two separate telephone numbers on one BT line, so it will be interesting to see what works when I have finished in view of my limited knowledge.

Update. IT ALL WORKS. Even both numbers ring, what the reception is like, don't know yet. Wow it's so quick. Thanks again folks. :D

[holbrob]

You can plug a voice device into your wall socket without a filter. As mentioned before, the filter is there to provide an RJ11 socket to connect your broadband kit.

Anyone tried 1Mb from BT yet????

Also the '2 numbers' thing should work regardless as the splitting of the line is done virtually at the exchange. Works quite well!!! Works even better when you get it for free!!!!!!

[Spitoon]

holbrob - I guess you know far more about these things than I but I thought the filters did more than just provide somewhere to plug the ADSL box into. Don't they keep the voice signals out of the frequency range used for the ADSL - and v.v?

[The Nr Fairy]

Spitoon:

Correct - if there's no filter, the signals from the low frequency (voice) bit get mixed with the high-frequency (data) bit. For it to work properly, any analog device (phone, fax, answering machine, dialup modem and the like which previously would have been plugged into a normal socket) needs to be plugged into a microfilter first. The ADSL modem can be plugged straight into the wall (via an RG11 - BT adaptor) if you wish.

Holbrob - you can plug things straight in, but if there's an ADSL modem then voice/fax calls will get clicks and stuff on the line which reduces the quality of the call.