Relocating BT master socket - bad idea?

OCdude

OCdude

OCdude

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I move into a new-build recently and the master socket is in the least convenient place ever (basically in the hallway, nowhere near I'd actually need it!).

I'm due to have Sky Fibre installed in a couple of weeks, so I think i'll ask the BT engineer to relocate its... but i have a few quick questions!

1) Is it easy enough to move a master socket upstairs (preferably - either that, or the front room)? and will the fact that it's further from the actual entry into my property, have any detrimental affect to the overall speeds I'll get? (Does that fact that it's a new-build, have any bearing on this? Less likely to be dodgy old wiring?!)

2) I've got other phone sockets in the house that aren't "live" - what do they actually do, to make these live? It's not just a case of wiring up behind the face-plate is it?!

3) Does either of the points above, involving tearing holes out of my walls?

Cheers :D
 
main socket is always best, using an extension will or could slow down the speed and degrade the strength and ping / etc

making a new hole upstairs is one drill hole thats covered by a box, so no big deal.

any box that isn't live as long as it has cable going to it can be made live
 
An extra 5 or 10 Metres of decent twisted pair cable is not going to add much additional attenuation to the line. I understand Openreach use a special twisted pair cable similar in number of twists to Cat5e rather than the less twisty CW1308 for VDSL installations. It'll certainly not anything perceptible in terms of ping times as the signal travels pretty fast down the cable.

You could also consider keeping the master socket where it is and using a suitable Cat5e/Cat6 cable to run to where you need your network to begin. That will also add basically nothing to your latency.
 
BT should do a free data extension to the master socket up to some distance away, 10m maybe, I doubt it really matters. We had the master socket at the front of the house but it made more sense to have the router upstairs and the computer room upstairs is roughly in the middle of the house so better spot for wireless so he just whacked in an extension for the modem only so as clean a line as you can get really.

For fibre that will likely be the best way to do it, for the other phone plugs I would think its likely they were connected to the master socket and have just been disconnected. you can pull out the master socket and have a look if there is extension wiring in there, look up some pictures online to compare to what you have. Being a new build its a bit odd they aren't working already, maybe someone got lazy and didn't tighten the cables in, or I don't know it could be a case that they install all the extension wiring early then later on have a BT guy to do the master socket and obviously can't connect the extension wiring till after the master is in then they've forgotten to attach it.
 
You just need to drill a hole and wire a new socket, it really isn't hard at all.
However if you are in a old house like ours the walls are pretty thick so it was more getting hold of the tools to drill the hole in the first place that was the issue.

I just got the sky engineer to drill an extra hole in the loft when they came to put our dish up as i wanted the router in the loft and run all the networking from there

I can't comment on Fibre as I have no idea what's involved as they haven't turned up to install it yet
 
Thanks for the replies guys!

So in theory, assuming the phone socket upstairs is connected to the master socket, i should be able to just setup the router (and Openreach box?) there with no ill effect (assuming the internal wiring wasn't totally bodged!)
 
I'm in the same boat - our master socket is in the cloakroom by our front door. Rather than move the master socket, I had an electrician add 4 power sockets and link them to the ring for the ground floor. The BT Infinity stuff will go in the cloakroom and I'll get the Internet to my study via 500 MB/s Powerline adapters. Win.
 
Well good luck with "500MB/Sec" ;) but yah i'm looking at getting those powerline adaptors too, so if worst comes to the worst, i'll use them .
 
The guy who came to do mine swapped the master socket, which was downstairs in the hallway, with another socket which was upstairs.
 
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