Will a very long telephone extension cable affect ADSL speed?

[Hades]

My BT Home Hub and modem is currently in the living room behind the TV, because that is where the master socket is. I want to clear up that area and move it to the office next door. But unless I get the socket moved then I will have to run a long telephone extension cable under the floor to that room (5m to 10m).

Would this cause any problems with internet speed? I am not worried about wifi speed as I will also be installing mesh wifi around the house.

Thanks.

 

[Steveocee]

Yes.
Extension cables are notorious for being very poor quality cabling so keeping them to a minimum is an absolute must.

You could wall mount the modem and run a cat5 to the office? That would be virtually lossless or alternatively you could run a modem on the wall and then a router in the office (again cat5 connected).

 

[Hades]

Yes.
Extension cables are notorious for being very poor quality cabling so keeping them to a minimum is an absolute must.

You could wall mount the modem and run a cat5 to the office? That would be virtually lossless or alternatively you could run a modem on the wall and then a router in the office (again cat5 connected).

Thanks. Yes that might be a better option. I was hoping to move it all completely because it's a mess there. But leaving just the modem might be a better compromise. Thanks.

 

[bremen1874]

If you run the extension using the correct cable (cw1308 or Cat5e) you shouldn’t loose anything noticeable.

 

[DragonQ]

Yeah, run proper Cat5/6 twisted pair cabling and you'll be fine.

 

[renton_2004]

FWIW I have a 10m cable from my BT master socket to the router, and still get the maximum possible out of the service I subscribe to, with no issues at all.

By cable, I mean BT plug to RJ11, not an extension as such, but nothing fancy either.

 

[Hades]

Thanks.

 

[FatRakoon]

My last house I had a cable run from the socket along the ceiling and around the corners etc, and it totalled 36 Feet from the main phone socket, to my modem.
It was flawless for the entire 19 years I lived there, and it started off as dialup and then went 8MB Broadband. Im no longer there, but I do know that the woman who lives there now, is still using my cabling and she has put her computer there so its doing the same thing.

If done right, it should be ok. Just dont get cheap cables.

 

[Rroff]

It is probably more than just distance but we've just moved to a house where we can't even find what passes for a master socket and the incoming line disappears and there is a mess of extensions chained off extensions, etc. with result we get 21/1.1 from what should be approx. 37/5. Gonna have to get BT out I think to effectively just delete the line at the point it enters the house and run a new master socket.

 

[Caged]

It's not uncommon for builders/electricians to have just shoved a phone line into terminal blocks and then wire 5 extensions off that point as a star.

 

[bremen1874]

Also common for them to use alarm cable (untwisted) as well.

 

[Hades]

Again thanks for the opinions. It seems a mixed bag but probably OK if care is taken and quality cable is used. I will give it a try and report back.

 

[firstborn]

I recently introduced a 5m cable from master socket to modem RJ11, no drop in performance.

 

[TheVoice]

It won't unless your connection is iffy already. I use a 10m extension cable and neither in my current flat nor my previous one did I get any drop in sync speed whatsoever.

It's a £5.50 cable from Amazon, so don't go spending silly money either.

 

[AWPC]

I run a 90FT extension high quality cable no signal loss whatsoever! With it plugged in or not the signal strength is virtually identical.