Tackling a common broadband fault

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Before you read any further read my latest post on all you need to know about homeplugs

Recently i had installed a business broadband connection at one of my families houses, they had really got fed up their AOL broadband, although it was on an 8meg connection and they only lived a short distance from the phone exchange they would rarely see very good speeds.

So they decided to migrate to my Entanet Business broadband package, after a quick check i could see the phone exchange was enabled for ADSL2 (21cn enabled) so in theory the check said about 17 meg download available.

Initially BT engineer messed up the migration and we had to organise through Entanet another BT visit, which delayed things 3 days but upon BT arrival it was deemed to be their fault as something was wrong at the phone exchange.

Initially for a couple of days things seemed ok but then i was told that the router was having to rebooted on a regular basis, this is not good for adsl connections at all, as it stops the communication with the phone exchange, if this happens to much, your broadband speed gets lowered to a safe speed automatically at the phone exchange, which can be very slow indeed.

On the second visit i decided to unplug the phone extension in the kitchen where the router was plugged in to the phone extension. Headed upstairs to find the BT master Socket which was and old designed master plate which usually has the half plate with 2 screws.

Unscrew the screws and when you remove the half plate this will disable any phone extensions that you have. Then plug the router directly into the interior of the master socket.

What actually happens with the extensions in the house is that the orange ring wire acts as antenna picking up lots of noise and distorts your adsl signal. A quick fix is to buy an I-Plate which basically kills the ring wire its very easy to fix on and can be done yourself. The other option is to put a adsl Faceplate on which again implements a similar fix.

After removing the extension broadband speed within about an hour rocketed from 12 meg download speed to about 16 meg download speed and allowing a few days to settle hopefully should rise to about 17 meg. Thus allowing media streaming from services like BBC Iplayer and YouTube to hopefully be seamless, HD streaming is very popular in the household with the new HD computer and screen!!

Remember that it can take several days for the router to sync with the phone exchange to get max speed again, so be patient.

Then the next problem!!
The house had lovely big thick walls, no plasterboard to be seen. Wireless was rendered useless very weak signal, so fortunately i had brought some homeplugs with me.

Homeplugs distribute the broadband around the house via the electric circuit, there are a variety of homeplugs available. For this install i used 1 basic homeplug for the router (simply plug into the mains socket and connect Ethernet lead to the router) and for this house i plugged into the kitchen a wireless Homeplug which can distribute wifi in the same way as a normal AP (wireless access point).

Remember the wireless homeplug will have no security as yet setup as default. The best thing to do here is to either insert the cd provided by the homeplug package or look for the default web browser ip address of the homeplug. Then once accessed copy the your router wifi settings this will then act as a wireless booster for your house allowing you to roam without having to keep looking for different wifi signals.

Our Amazon shop provides has all parts mentioned in this article of click one of the images below for a direct link to the parts.