topic Re: Longer cable required in Broadband

Longer cable required

Hadley87 — Sun, 01 Dec 2024 10:18:04 GMT

My recently purchased Sky superfast broadband with Max hub gives a good Wi-Fi signal on the ground floor where the hub is situated, an ok but weaker one on the 1st floor and nothing on the 2nd floor.

What would correct this, quite obviously it seems to me, is moving the hub to the 2nd floor but the cable it arrived with which goes from the main phone socket to the hub is only 3 feet long.

I have spoken to Sky technical and bought a cable from Amazon on their recommendation with didn't work at all. I bought a different one - didn't work. I bought a splitter- didn't work.
Does anyone know where I can get a longer cable?

Re: Longer cable required

TimmyBGood — Sun, 01 Dec 2024 10:45:30 GMT

@Hadley87 wrote:

the cable it arrived with which goes from the main phone socket to the hub is only 3 feet long.

'Phone' wall socket to router should be RJ11 to RJ11.

What have you been buying?

A 'splitter' won't work.

Re: Longer cable required

Hadley87 — Sun, 01 Dec 2024 11:28:54 GMT

Thanks for your reply.
That's the cable that Sky technical recommended and the one I bought but it has an RJ 11 on each end whereas the 3 foot cable supplied has a RJ11 on one end to go into the hub and a white conventional phone connector on the other which goes into the phone socket so RJ11 to RJ11 doesn't fit.

I then bought another cable with an RJ11 one one end and the white phone connector on the other. It all plugged in ok but didn't work - no broadband connectivity or phone signal.

The splitter, as the quite rightly pointed out, doesn't work.

Re: Longer cable required

FLC — Mon, 02 Dec 2024 17:37:43 GMT

It's a little ungainly but the safest way would be to use a standard BT extension cable on the end of the original cable.

If you don't want to to that, it's unclear if Sky's Hubs are agnostic to cable polarity. If not, you would need a crossover cable. This should be mentioned in the description of cable you buy.

However, if your master socket has a filtered faceplate, the extensions won't work for broadband without rewiring the master socket.

Re: Longer cable required

HadleyJohn — Fri, 06 Dec 2024 04:04:35 GMT

Thanks for reply. Very useful information.

Re: Longer cable required

Chrisee — Fri, 06 Dec 2024 07:35:16 GMT

@HadleyJohn if your phone socket has a standard BT phone socket rather than a rj11 connecter you should be using a standard DSL line filter which you can buy nearly anywhere for a few pounds.

These days modern systems have the filter built into the phone socket but sounds like you have older type. The filter separates the dsl signal from the voice traffic so broadband doesnt drop when someone calls the line. This is probably what you called a splitter as they usually have both a phone socket and a rj11 socket for tge lead to the hub.

Re: Longer cable required

Hadley87 — Wed, 11 Dec 2024 07:36:06 GMT

Thanks Chrisee for your excellent reply. You are exactly correct in your assumptions about the socket being old (very old actually) and what I refer to as a splitter. As soon as I return to Blighty - on holiday at the moment, I will try what you suggest.

Thanks again.