Test Socket... What is it?

Soldato
Joined
19 Jul 2004
Posts
4,087
Location
Shoreham by Sea
I suppose I could find out if I looked more but Im lazy...

From what Ive read in peoples posts, its either just the main socket where the connection comes into your home or its another socket inside the actual box on the wall?

Can anyone else explain this clearly? :p
 
testsocket.gif


Test socket is behind the faceplate. :)
 
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So the test socket is that socket I can see there?


Whats the point in having that faceplate anyway? At my old house, the filter was built in to the socket so I can see a reason for a faceplate there but if there isnt a filter built in, why bother having that extra faceplate? :|

Just seems like a pointless extra thing thats plugged in for no reason :|
 
Haha same thing i thought, basically the frontage wires up any other boxes in the house, if you plug direct into the test socket none of the other phones in the house will work. So all i did was plug direct in and use a trio pack of phones that just use 1 phone connection (into the test scoket) and then adsl is in there awell. My upstairs phone box doesnt work now but:

A) I dont know how to rewire the frontage to make it better
B) Its hidden by the curtains with the front hanging off so dont matter anyway
C) I get an extra 1 meg going through the test socket
 
Its not specifically a test socket, the faceplate also plugs into it.
The faceplate is separate as it acts as a demarc between the home and BT. You are allowed to take off the faceplate so that you can install your own phone extentions around the house. The part behind the faceplate belongs to BT and your not permitted to open that up. It's all something that OFTEL setup some years back as originally BT sealed the master socket which meant if you wanted hard wired extentions you had to pay loads of money for a BT engineer. Nowadays you can get plugin extentions but they are not as neat as proper fixed ones.
If you get better ADSL speeds plugged directly into the main socket then it probably points to faulty/inferior extention cabling.
 
a lot of people seem to be getting more speed even if they dont have extensions :|
 
You can buy a replacement front panel for the BT master box from a competitor which has the ADSL filter built in. It also has internal connections for extensions on both the voice side and the ADSL side of the filter.
 
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