Broadband

[gas path]

Does it matter where in the telephone line the master box is? I spoke to a BT engineer who said it doesn't matter, and low and behold my installation on checking, the masterbox comes after the extension
However looking at a few sites like adsl.org it always shows it as incoming line in/ master/ ext/ ext.
The reason for asking is for another crack at BB which didn't want to play last time
Lastly what's the better bet, the BB modem supplied by the ISP or go for an internal PCI card one.
Any thoughts or recommendations?

[Memetic]

Lastly what's the better bet, the BB modem supplied by the ISP or go for an internal PCI card one.
Any thoughts or recommendations?

I'd say none of the above. Go for an ADSL router.

It would add more protection from internet nasties by providing what is called NAT traslation as a minimum and probably some more advanced firewall options.

In addition as single port routers are rare now it would no doubt offer the option to easily add more PC's should you ever need to. Even a single port router offers more options. e.g. perhaps to add a wireless access point later - that said a decent ADSL router with wirless is sub £100 now days.

As long as you have an network card in your PC a router is IMHO the way to go.

Memetic.

[gas path]

Ah! thanks for that Mem, I'd not considered that route! The option of another pc would be useful.....keep the daughter away from my computer! and save running more phone cable round the house.

[SoftTop]

The master socket simply has a few more components in it to ensure that the line is properly terminated and has a bit of electrical spike protection. If you want to indulge in a bit of paranoia, make sure that your expensive stuff is connected either to the master socket or sockets further down the line away from the incoming bit of wire

The components are mainly for BT's benefit rather than the customer. If you need better protection from things like lightning strikes etc., you can get quite cheap combined surge protected mains distribution socket blocks with a telephone surge protection filter fitted as well (Comet, B&Q, Homebase, Woolies etc.). Haven't tried one of those with BB yet though.

Cheers

ST

[mikedurward]

As for your phone line. It matters not where the master socket is on the line. All it does is provide the ringing current for you phones inside the house. As for BB I would strongly recommend an all in one router,switch, modem. I use a netgear dg834g. If you look at some of the other treads they will explain the advantages of their use. The MAIN ONE as far as i am concerned is that as far as the internet is concerned you are invisible to attack



Mike

[Evo]

I also use a Netgear dg834g - simple to set up, and works perfectly. I'd recommend it.

However, to be fair, there are some reports of instability out there, sometimes related to certain levels of firmware but these include some i've used without problems. I don't know if there was a duff batch or something, but i've had no problems with mine at all