BT home hub

capt_slog

I'm having this 'fitted' soon. Having had broadband and a router for some years, I thought it was just plug it in and connect it to the PC and phone lines, but this need an engineer to visit for the instal.

So, what do they do when they come to fit it?
At the moment, the wire into the house isn't near next to the router, will they need to move the BT house main socket?
etc.

I want to have thing ready in case they want to put wires in to get to the PC, basically make it as easy as possible so that it works and they won't have to return to fix it later. If this means making holes and running conduits (only a couple of metres) then I can do this before they show up.

Ta

ballysmate

The engineer will replace the phone socket plate where the router is to be plugged in. No biggy.

arran77

Ballysmate wrote:

The engineer will replace the phone socket plate where the router is to be plugged in. No biggy.

Yep, they'll be there for less than 5 minutes

capt_slog

At the moment i have a cable running through a couple of walls from the master socket to the an extension near the PC, the router is plugged into this extension. Will that stay about the same with the BT Hub just replacing the present router?

arran77

I'd think so.

southdownswolf

Capt Slog wrote:

At the moment i have a cable running through a couple of walls from the master socket to the an extension near the PC, the router is plugged into this extension. Will that stay about the same with the BT Hub just replacing the present router?

arran77 wrote:

I'd think so.

It may do AFTER the engineer has gone ;-)
The engineer may insist on the home hub being plugged into the master socket directly, but nothing to say you can't move it once he has gone.

arran77

southdownswolf wrote:

Capt Slog wrote:

At the moment i have a cable running through a couple of walls from the master socket to the an extension near the PC, the router is plugged into this extension. Will that stay about the same with the BT Hub just replacing the present router?

arran77 wrote:

I'd think so.

It may do AFTER the engineer has gone ;-)
The engineer may insist on the home hub being plugged into the master socket directly, but nothing to say you can't move it once he has gone.

I think you're right actually, when we had a problem with our phone the BT engineer who came out refused to work on it until our phone was plugged directly into their socket rather than via the extension lead we were using :roll:

mikeabanks

If it is for BT Infinity (fibre to cabinet) then it may need an extra cable(not phone extension) running to near the router and an extra box.

upperoilcan

Capt Slog,I'm assuming that you are switching from copper cabling over to Fibre ? (Exchange to cab)

If so a modification to your master will be required.

CiB

You'll probably find that your current router - actually a combined modem + router - is replaced with a modem on the wall at the master socket and a router connected to it with a short length of CAT 5 [ethernet] cable. If needs be you can move the router further away with a longer LAN cable to site it in a more suitable place.

Assuming that BT do what Plus Net (BT offshoot) did when we upgraded.

capt_slog

Ah the plot thickens.

Thanks for the replies so far, and yes it is for BT infinity which I understand is 'fibre to cabinet'.

I'm hoping that I might be able to persuade them to move the master socket to near the PC and so was thinking that if a lot of the work (such as drilling walls for cables) is done for them, they might be more persuadable.

jimmythecuckoo

Someone at work is still waiting from October for an Engineer.. hope you have better fortune.

mfin

Okay, this is how it works if you are talking about BT Infinity being put in and at the moment you have ADSL...

At the moment the Socket has one hole, into which you put an ADSL Filter which has two holes, one of which you put the adsl cable that goes to your router and the other hole you stick your phone in.

When Infinity is installed they replace the faceplate of your master phone socket with one that has two holes, the same holes that you had on the back of your ADSL filter.

A Homehub5 will connect simply with its 'adsl' cable into the one hole on the faceplate, the other hole the phone goes in.

The best way of wiring to another room is to now leave the router next to that master socket and run a Cat5 from the router to the room with the computer in... you can then plug the computer in, or plug that one cable into a switch/hub and plug your computer and other network devices into that hub. (buy a gigabit switch).

Or you could use powerline adapters, a wireless bridge or a wireless card in your computer.

If you are with BT and getting Infinity, a homehub5 will be given to you. Like many other routers it has an EWAN port into which you could plug a Fibre Modem, but it doesn't need it, it can do it down the ADSL cable as Homehub5 has a fibre modem built in. (ask nicely at the end of the install if you can have a fibre modem as you are going to use a different router soon and the guy should get you one from the van if you're nice, then you'll have one in case you ever need it... this fibre modem is what BT Openreach engineers give to non-bt people and to people who aren't using the supplied free Homehub5. The homehub5 is good, I have a Billion router which wasn't cheap, and it can not do more than 62mbps via it's ewan port with a fibre modem, the Homehub5 hits 78mbps at my house, so the Billion with a Fibre Modem would not have given me all of the speed, although not far off for most people's use.

Hope some of that helps.

mfin

Capt Slog wrote:

Ah the plot thickens.

Thanks for the replies so far, and yes it is for BT infinity which I understand is 'fibre to cabinet'.

I'm hoping that I might be able to persuade them to move the master socket to near the PC and so was thinking that if a lot of the work (such as drilling walls for cables) is done for them, they might be more persuadable.

I think they only offer to run Cat5 for you (as in my previous post), I could be wrong, but I seem to remember this is the case. If you can get them to move a master socket for nothing, do it of course.

Like someone else said, they might put a Fibre modem in at the socket, run Cat5 and put the Homehub5 in the room required, connected via the EWAN port.... if they run that cable, I'd leave the router at the master socket and use the Cat5 run to go into the computer, or into a switch then the computer. Same cable run, different way of connecting it up, there are slight disadvantages but potentially it's a little tidier 'box' wise.

andyrr

We (my Dad) had Infinity/HH5 fitted a few weeks back. Engineer would only place the hub close to the master socket and as the PC was relatively distant (upstairs) we were kind of forced into running wireless. This wasn't great so moved PC downstairs - also not great. In the end an engineer came after the original install, probably with the intention of investigating the other wiring issues that the engineer had noted, and he installed a pair of mains adaptors. I'd been considering getting these but a) Wasn't totally sure how well they'd work and b) Was a bit miffed that we were going to spend this money when it us just trying to actually get back to our original levels of performance. Fortunatley BT did this with no extra charge and they seem to work well.

capt_slog

Thanks all.

The engineer is coming tomorrow and I am clearing things out of the way and drilling holes to make it easy. The Homehub came yesterday, so everything looks set.