The Effects of Ring Wires and Extensions & praising RSL

[KevinR]

I've posted elsewhere on the forum about some of my adventures with my existing extension cabling and testing with Neo's Router Stats Logger. I thought I'd post some graphs to show some of the usual ADSL theories with real information and to show what the RSL can give you with a small amount of excel work.

I sampled the data at ONE minute intervals as I was unsure about whether it is a realtime value, a minima (since last sample?) or an average (since last sample?). By collecting the data so frequently I hoped to minimise the router's own impact on the analysis.

What the router had spotted:


What the Master & Test sockets showed in a quick daytime test:


There was something very weird going on at about 9am on Weekdays, where the noise margin seemed to adjust to the average level encountered overnight if the absolute lowest level was very low. Eg. 7db or 8db. There was also a huge amount of noise from the evening until the morning.

This is a detailed log of noise with the Ring Wire pair still in place, showing all of that in detail:


This logging caught the strange change in DS Margin happening at 09:06. Note how it resembles the average overnight level

On here and on ThinkBroadband we always say to disconnect the ring wire to get an improvement. Since this line is Fixed Rate we can actually see the change in DS Margin rather than the reciprocal change in the sync speed (or profile). The graph is below.

This is with the Ring Wire pair disconnected at the Master Socket faceplate (only):



Sometimes its been advised to detach the Ring Wire at each and every extension to reduce the aerial effect as much as possible. This installation provided a good opportunity to investigate this.

This is after disconnecting the Ring Wire pair in both extensions (3 pairs of connections):


The above improvement is huge, but its important to know what the line could be capable of. Below is an extended test (overnight) in the Test socket behind the master faceplate. Its interesting that there are still some strong spikes. I've never seen data collected at this small an interval so its interesting to speculate on how common this is.

How GOOD the line is at the Test Socket:


I hope you find this interesting and useful as a full worked example for a line. If anyone wants to see the raw data or graphs I can email them on request.

[Alan]

Nice work KevinR

Very interesting and revealing

[thechief]

Excellent stuff! Any pics of how to detach the ring wires?

[eMuNiX]

Excellent stuff! Any pics of how to detach the ring wires?

Should just lift out of terminal 3, they are only pushed in, no screws.

Little tutorial with images from the Skyuser forum, there was a video posted somewhere but I can't find it. My dad gained a couple of gig by removing the ring wire.

[KevinR]

VISUALS:
The best visual examples of ring wire surgery I already know about are:

Kitz's typically well written page.
This page at Draytek which has exceptionally clear images.

As my test results imply (its hard to be conclusive since every day/night is different) it can also have an effect if you detach any ring wires at each of the extension sockets too.

The main benefit of ring wire surgery is on an Up To rather than a fixed rate product as it will allow your line to run at a far higher speed. In my case there was little point upgrading while the margin was bouncing so low (-2db) overnight on 2Mbps.

TWO WIRES:
Also people often talk about the ring wire (on BT pin 3). The companion wire of the pair is sometimes connected also (on BT pin 4). The second wire is really only there for completeness, except I think in some PABX setups. I made a point of disconnecting both.

This leaves just the phone & broadband signal on the connector, BT pins 2 & 5.

If your setup is wired normally the phone signal wire will be BLUE (pin #2) and its return wire WHITE & BLUE (pin #5). The ring wire is usually ORANGE and its return WHITE & ORANGE.

CARE:
When you detach the wire(s) bend it/them back carefully as we don't want them touching any of the other connections. If you want to be thorough then put a small snip of electrical tape (or even selotape) separately on each of them. In general we don't cut the ring wire off since a future resident might need it if they have an old model of phone.

WHEN IT IS NOT NEEDED:
If your extensions are already wired from (the filtered terminals of) a filtered master faceplate or are wired via an ADSL splitter (dongle) then any ring wire issues should already be isolated from your broadband. And clearly your router cannot be on that circuit as its after a filter!

OTHER CIRCUIT ELEMENTS:
Extension Cords: Ordinary plug in phone extension cords can also be a problem as they are often of low quality, with extra attenuation and more noise. They are often not proper twisted pair cable which also attracts a lot noise. They also usually contain a Bell Wire pair, which will reintroduce some noise. Its best to eliminate these unless they are only on the telephone side after the ADSL filter/splitter.
Router Cable: The cable that comes with router and ends in rj11 connectors may also have the same flaws as an normal extension cord. Some are good quality, but if you still have noise this is an area to consider. They are usually either too short or too long for your installation. If they are long then a shorter quality replacement might make a difference.
Extension Wiring: If your router has to be at the end of (some of) the household extensions its often advised to make sure these are wired with high quality twisted pair phone cable (usually 2 pairs of cores, but only connect one pair on pins 2 & 5) or use CAT5/CAT5e ethernet cable (again using only one pair).
Filtered Faceplate: To separate your broadband wiring from your normal extensions is often recommended. Fit a filtered master faceplate to your master socket and reconnect your existing extensions to (the filtered terminals or front socket on) that. This can also be achieved by plugging the extension setup in via an ADSL filter/splitter if your extensions are not hard wired. Using a filtered faceplate is neater, and allows hidden extension wiring. When the extensions are connected via a filtered faceplate (or a splitter) you no longer need ADSL filters at each of your extensions.
Router not near Master Socket: If your router has to be a long way from your master socket then run a separate extension using high quality phone or CAT5e cable, and take that the shortest possible route to the router. Or locate the router close to the master socket and use ethernet cable(s) and possibly an ethernet switch (or wireless) to link to your PC(s). If you have normal extensions as well then use a filtered master faceplace (or an ADSL filter/splitter), and connect the ADSL extension/router to the the unfiltered adsl terminals/socket and the phone extensions to the filtered phone-only side.