Fibre modem / router location question

[Gonzo]

We've had fibre (to the cabinet) broadband for a while now and the fandango BT Openreach socket is fitted just below a windowsill in the study at the front of the house. For 3 years, a tangle of cables has fed to the fibre modem and from there the ethernet cable to the router. I've situated the router on the landing for a better signal around the house given our old, solid walls.

Anyway, I'm gutting the study so want to sort the cables out. I'll be leaving the router on the landing 'cos it works brilliantly from there and I'll sort out it's own power socket.

My question is about where to put the fibre modem. It can go near the phone socket or near the router, I really don't mind which.

Basically, which is the best (or least worst)? A long telephone cable from the socket to the fibre modem or a long ethernet cable from the fibre modem to the router? I know long cables might degrade performance but I want to choose the option which will have the least impact.

 

[jonny5859]

I know this doesn't answer your question but have you thought about powerline adapters?

With these you can keep the modem and router together and extend the wifi signal throughout the house.

I have the main powerline beside the router and several adapters around the house, i even have one in the router room just to save me from running two cables from the router to the back of the tv stand for the sky box and surround sound(as it plays films from my home network).

I have had no problems with these and they can stream HD quality films to laptops/ipads without any issues and they are plenty fast for browsing..

 

[Gonzo]

Thanks.....but have tried them. We have an old house with seemingly fragmented wiring circuits. They don't work for me.

I have two wireless repeaters (for the very back of the house and the garden) and a couple of bridges for TV boxes but I just want to tidy up a bit.

Thanks anyway.

 

[Yorkiebarr]

The latest generation of BT Infinity equipment has a combined modem and router, so I would plan for this now, as when your current modem or router fails it will be replaced by the combined unit.

If you run high quality Cat 5 cable (8 wire) to the required location it will not impact on the line speed. If the filter is combined with the Openreach Master Socket , 2 wires will be needed for the unfiltered ADSL with a RJ11 socket and 2 wires for the filtered phone wiring.
See: https://community.bt.com/t5/BT-Infi...master-socket-move-will-this-work/td-p/491261

 

[ianf]

In the old days, when the ADSL ran all the way from the exchange to your house, a bit of dodgy interior wiring probably mattered a lot more than now, as the leg over copper is only a 100m or so in FTTC. In old ADSL having the router near the master socket was key. You can run a fair leg inside the house as suggested above now and it won't kill the bandwidth. There was a thread on this a while back... found it...

http://www.ukgser.com/forums/showth...ket-for-vdsl-(cable-broadband)?highlight=rj11

 

[Gonzo]

Thanks for that. Cat 5e seems to be the one to bury which means the modem stays near the phone socket for now.

And according to Wikipedia (yes, yes, I know) cat 5E cable is the ethernet style cable as opposed to the one that comes out of the Openreach socket. I'd was leaning towards burying this in the wall anyway.

However.....if the trend is towards combined routers and modems in the future, I would still need my router to be on the landing for wifi signal purposes so I would need to get the phone socket signal to it from the master socket. Which means I would be well advised to bury that sort of cable (RJ11?) as well to future proof myself.

Have I got that right?

 

[Yorkiebarr]

Not quite,
Cat 5e (e = extended) is a 1000meg cable specification and contains 8 wires. RJ11 is a rarely used (fax and modems only) plug/socket type that will also fit in the more common RJ45 (Ethernet) size.

Run Cat 5 to your required location. Use 2 wires for the phone and 2 wires for the V/ADSL modem. As it is difficult to obtain RJ11 sockets you can use the RJ45 (Ethernet) size.