I hope to move into a bungalow around the end of January.
The entrance is to one side of the building, about halfway up.
I would have expected to find the incoming BT line not far from the front
door. I would want to position my wireless router there

BUT, I found a hefty (ugly) double socket on what formerly was the rear
wall of the lounge. There is a conservatory on the other side of wall.

Is it likely that this is the oroginal site of the master socket?
Unfortunely, owing to the lockdown I cannot arrange get in there to
scratch around.

--
Mint 20.0, kernel 5.4.0-45-generic, Cinnamon 4.6.7
running on an AMD Phenom II X4 Black edition processor with 8GB of DRAM.

On 13/11/2020 13:09, pinnerite wrote:
I hope to move into a bungalow around the end of January.
The entrance is to one side of the building, about halfway up.
I would have expected to find the incoming BT line not far from the front
door. I would want to position my wireless router there

BUT, I found a hefty (ugly) double socket on what formerly was the rear
wall of the lounge. There is a conservatory on the other side of wall.

Is it likely that this is the oroginal site of the master socket?
Unfortunely, owing to the lockdown I cannot arrange get in there to
scratch around.


It's possible but without physically checking you cannot be certain.

It much depends on where the nearest BT/OR network connection point is
which is not always at the front of a property.

If it's an older property the M/S could be anywhere.

On 13/11/2020 13:40, Jack Harry Teesdale wrote:
It much depends on where the nearest BT/OR network connection point is
which is not always at the front of a property.

If it's an older property the M/S could be anywhere.

They do sometimes get installed in the most crazy places. My BT master
socket is in the loft!

On Fri, 13 Nov 2020 13:40:22 +0000, Jack Harry Teesdale
wrote:

On 13/11/2020 13:09, pinnerite wrote:
I hope to move into a bungalow around the end of January.
The entrance is to one side of the building, about halfway up.
I would have expected to find the incoming BT line not far from the front
door. I would want to position my wireless router there

BUT, I found a hefty (ugly) double socket on what formerly was the rear
wall of the lounge. There is a conservatory on the other side of wall.

Is it likely that this is the oroginal site of the master socket?
Unfortunely, owing to the lockdown I cannot arrange get in there to
scratch around.


It's possible but without physically checking you cannot be certain.

It much depends on where the nearest BT/OR network connection point is
which is not always at the front of a property.

If it's an older property the M/S could be anywhere.

Yes indeed, my phone line comes in through the bathroom window (shades
of The Beatles - Abbey Road). Obviously the master socket cannot be
there so the cable runs to a master socket in the hall with an
old-style GPR lozenge in the bathroom, which is there to stay.

Mike Clarke formulated the question :
They do sometimes get installed in the most crazy places. My BT master socket
is in the loft!

Nothing crazy about it being installed in the loft, that's where mine
is. It comes in overhead, so rather than have it exposed going down the
wall, often pulling adrift due to weather, I installed it in the loft.
Main router next to it, then extension sockets and LAN wired via an
internal route to where needed.

The cable down the wall outside, looked unsightly and was forever
snapping and needing repairing. It has not required repair in the 40
years since then, though the drop wire was replaced in a general area
upgrade around 12 years ago.

In message , at 14:31:17 on Fri, 13 Nov
2020, Mike Clarke remarked:
On 13/11/2020 13:40, Jack Harry Teesdale wrote:
It much depends on where the nearest BT/OR network connection point
is which is not always at the front of a property.
If it's an older property the M/S could be anywhere.

They do sometimes get installed in the most crazy places. My BT master
socket is in the loft!

They were often installed in the hall, near the front door, which was
apparently regarded as the obvious place to put a sole phone instrument
in a house.

When my line from the telegraph pole was replaced three houses ago (it
had been damaged by rubbing on a tree) by agreement with the engineer
they wired it instead around the side of the house and fitted the master
socket in the 3rd bedroom at the back, which I was using as an office,
and was the obvious place for an ADSL router to be situated.

One house ago, the master socket was in the cupboard under the stairs,
next to the electric meter and distribution board. But the house had
been built from new with phone wiring from there to numerous rooms.
--
Roland Perry

In article ,
Roland Perry wrote:
They do sometimes get installed in the most crazy places. My BT master
socket is in the loft!

They were often installed in the hall, near the front door, which was
apparently regarded as the obvious place to put a sole phone instrument
in a house.

Where the phone was installed makes little difference to where the line
comes into the house.

--
*Taxation WITH representation ain't much fun, either.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On 13/11/2020 14:47, Harry Bloomfield wrote:
Mike Clarke formulated the question :
They do sometimes get installed in the most crazy places. My BT master
socket is in the loft!

Nothing crazy about it being installed in the loft, that's where mine
is. It comes in overhead, so rather than have it exposed going down the
wall, often pulling adrift due to weather, I installed it in the loft.
Main router next to it, then extension sockets and LAN wired via an
internal route to where needed.

But in this case it had been installed in the eaves where there was
hardly any headroom in an *unboarded* loft where you needed to lie on
the rafters to connect anything to it.

Fortunately the previous owner had installed extension sockets in more
convenient places around the house but the problems arises when you have
broadband problems and your ISP casually tells you to plug the router
directly into the test socket. After grovelling around in the loft and
managing to provide a suitable mains supply you also need to run a very
long temporary network cable through the house to where the desktop
computer is.

In message , at 11:15:35 on Sat, 14 Nov
2020, "Dave Plowman (News)" remarked:
In article ,
Roland Perry wrote:
They do sometimes get installed in the most crazy places. My BT master
socket is in the loft!

They were often installed in the hall, near the front door, which was
apparently regarded as the obvious place to put a sole phone instrument
in a house.

Where the phone was installed makes little difference to where the line
comes into the house.

On the contrary, internal wiring was rare. Phones were positioned close
to the hole in the wall/door|window frame through which the wire came
from outside.
--
Roland Perry

Roland Perry wrote:
On the contrary, internal wiring was rare. Phones were positioned close
to the hole in the wall/door|window frame through which the wire came
from outside.

And presumably the hall was a good place the bell could be heard throughout
the house.

Theo

In article ,
Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 11:15:35 on Sat, 14 Nov
2020, "Dave Plowman (News)" remarked:
In article ,
Roland Perry wrote:
They do sometimes get installed in the most crazy places. My BT master
socket is in the loft!

They were often installed in the hall, near the front door, which was
apparently regarded as the obvious place to put a sole phone instrument
in a house.

Where the phone was installed makes little difference to where the line
comes into the house.

On the contrary, internal wiring was rare. Phones were positioned close
to the hole in the wall/door|window frame through which the wire came
from outside.

The hallway was a very common place for a phone once. Regardless of where
the line came in. Doesn't take long to run phone cable round skirting
boards and architraves. ;-)

--
*Never underestimate the power of very stupid people in large groups *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

In message , at 15:10:23 on Sat,
14 Nov 2020, Theo remarked:
Roland Perry wrote:
On the contrary, internal wiring was rare. Phones were positioned close
to the hole in the wall/door|window frame through which the wire came
from outside.

And presumably the hall was a good place the bell could be heard throughout
the house.

Yes, that too. Eponymous Alexander Graham would have approved.

--
Roland Perry

In message , at 15:46:43 on Sat, 14 Nov
2020, "Dave Plowman (News)" remarked:
In article ,
Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 11:15:35 on Sat, 14 Nov
2020, "Dave Plowman (News)" remarked:
In article ,
Roland Perry wrote:
They do sometimes get installed in the most crazy places. My BT master
socket is in the loft!

They were often installed in the hall, near the front door, which was
apparently regarded as the obvious place to put a sole phone instrument
in a house.

Where the phone was installed makes little difference to where the line
comes into the house.

On the contrary, internal wiring was rare. Phones were positioned close
to the hole in the wall/door|window frame through which the wire came
from outside.

The hallway was a very common place for a phone once. Regardless of where
the line came in. Doesn't take long to run phone cable round skirting
boards and architraves. ;-)

But normally they'd drill direct into the hallway, to avoid running any
internal cables.
--
Roland Perry

Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 11:15:35 on Sat, 14 Nov
2020, "Dave Plowman (News)" remarked:
In article ,
Roland Perry wrote:
They do sometimes get installed in the most crazy places. My BT master
socket is in the loft!

They were often installed in the hall, near the front door, which was
apparently regarded as the obvious place to put a sole phone instrument
in a house.

Where the phone was installed makes little difference to where the line
comes into the house.

On the contrary, internal wiring was rare.

I think not! Every house Ive ever lived in has had spaghetti wiring
nailed to skirtings, architraves etc, connected to a junction box by the
cable entry point to the house.

Tim

--
Please don't feed the trolls

In article
,
Tim+ wrote:
Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 11:15:35 on Sat, 14
Nov 2020, "Dave Plowman (News)" remarked:
In article , Roland Perry
wrote:
They do sometimes get installed in the most crazy places. My BT
master socket is in the loft!

They were often installed in the hall, near the front door, which
was apparently regarded as the obvious place to put a sole phone
instrument in a house.

Where the phone was installed makes little difference to where the
line comes into the house.

On the contrary, internal wiring was rare.

I think not! Every house I‘ve ever lived in has had spaghetti wiring
nailed to skirtings, architraves etc, connected to a junction box by the
cable entry point to the house.

We had ours installed in the early 50s, Party line. The overhead cables
came in at the back of the house. Internal wiring took it to the hall.

--
*On the other hand, you have different fingers*

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

In message
,
at 17:52:44 on Sat, 14 Nov 2020, Tim+ remarked:
Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 11:15:35 on Sat, 14 Nov
2020, "Dave Plowman (News)" remarked:
In article ,
Roland Perry wrote:
They do sometimes get installed in the most crazy places. My BT master
socket is in the loft!

They were often installed in the hall, near the front door, which was
apparently regarded as the obvious place to put a sole phone instrument
in a house.

Where the phone was installed makes little difference to where the line
comes into the house.

On the contrary, internal wiring was rare.

I think not! Every house Ive ever lived in has had spaghetti wiring
nailed to skirtings, architraves etc, connected to a junction box by the
cable entry point to the house.

That's to fit additional phones, rather than the original one near the
cable entry point!
--
Roland Perry

In article ,
Roland Perry wrote:
I think not! Every house I‘ve ever lived in has had spaghetti wiring
nailed to skirtings, architraves etc, connected to a junction box by the
cable entry point to the house.

That's to fit additional phones, rather than the original one near the
cable entry point!

Are you saying then every phone was fitted where the outside line came
into the house?

Be a bit odd, since when our phone was fitted in the 50s, the outside line
was two wires from the pole to the house. Converted to a single cable
there. They also had to pick up a local ground for the party line.

--
*The e-mail of the species is more deadly than the mail *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

In message , at 00:51:35 on Sun, 15 Nov
2020, "Dave Plowman (News)" remarked:
In article
,
Tim+ wrote:
Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 11:15:35 on Sat, 14
Nov 2020, "Dave Plowman (News)" remarked:
In article , Roland Perry
wrote:
They do sometimes get installed in the most crazy places. My BT
master socket is in the loft!

They were often installed in the hall, near the front door, which
was apparently regarded as the obvious place to put a sole phone
instrument in a house.

Where the phone was installed makes little difference to where the
line comes into the house.

On the contrary, internal wiring was rare.

I think not! Every house I€˜ve ever lived in has had spaghetti wiring
nailed to skirtings, architraves etc, connected to a junction box by the
cable entry point to the house.

We had ours installed in the early 50s, Party line. The overhead cables
came in at the back of the house.

Very unusual setup. What did the outside cable soar over - your back
garden and someone else's and their front garden, to a pole in the next
street?

Internal wiring took it to the hall.

At least that's a conventional place to install it.
--
Roland Perry

In message , at 11:15:03 on Sun, 15 Nov
2020, "Dave Plowman (News)" remarked:
In article ,
Roland Perry wrote:
I think not! Every house I€˜ve ever lived in has had spaghetti wiring
nailed to skirtings, architraves etc, connected to a junction box by the
cable entry point to the house.

That's to fit additional phones, rather than the original one near the
cable entry point!

Are you saying then every phone was fitted where the outside line came
into the house?

I would never dare say "every" on Usenet.

Be a bit odd, since when our phone was fitted in the 50s, the outside line
was two wires from the pole to the house. Converted to a single cable
there. They also had to pick up a local ground for the party line.

Most usually the outside cable would come from the pole to a bracket
fixed to the house on or just below the eaves above the front door. Then
down the outside of the wall, through a hole, and inside to the phone
point (in those days a hard-wired one).

Occasionally, eg if the house's front door wasn't facing the street,
they'd first go round the side of the house to above the door.

--
Roland Perry

In article ,
Roland Perry wrote:
We had ours installed in the early 50s, Party line. The overhead cables
came in at the back of the house.

Very unusual setup. What did the outside cable soar over - your back
garden and someone else's and their front garden, to a pole in the next
street?

Open land to the back of the house which was the last in the street. Pole
in the corner between the end of our garden and those at right angles in
the next street. All the houses in our street (built in the 1930s) had
phone lines entering the back of the house, as did others surrounding this
bit of open space.

But I've seen telephone poles at the back of houses in London too. For
example, if you had rear access to a garden either side of a service road,
it could be easier to run the main telephone cable down that than in the
road at the front of the house.

--
*Black holes are where God divided by zero *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

In article ,
Owain Lastname wrote:
On Sunday, 15 November 2020 at 12:10:00 UTC, Roland Perry wrote:
We had ours installed in the early 50s, Party line. The overhead
cables came in at the back of the house.
Very unusual setup. What did the outside cable soar over - your back
garden and someone else's and their front garden, to a pole in the
next street?

Seems to be more common in Scotland - I think most of the houses I've
lived in have a pole in someone's bacl garden or tenement drying court,
and the wires go over the back gardens rather than over the road at the
front. There are no poles in the street.

Occasionally one gets an Openreach person asking for the back passage to
be opened so he can get access to his pole.

Makes sense when you think about it. Houses were generally built with the
best 'finish' to the front. Better quality bricks or better dressed stone.
So why ruin the look of the street with ugly telephone poles and wiring?

--
*Wood burns faster when you have to cut and chop it yourself.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote:
The hallway was a very common place for a phone once. Regardless of where
the line came in. Doesn't take long to run phone cable round skirting
boards and architraves. ;-)

Friends of mine used to live in a 1980s/90s tiny two bed flat. The master socket was
still in the hall, despite the hall being only about 2m long and the height
and width of their front door.

A terrible place for a phone, but extension sockets had been invented
by then. And actually turns out to be a sensible place for the wifi hotspot


Theo

In article ,
Theo wrote:
"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote:
The hallway was a very common place for a phone once. Regardless of
where the line came in. Doesn't take long to run phone cable round
skirting boards and architraves. ;-)

Friends of mine used to live in a 1980s/90s tiny two bed flat. The
master socket was still in the hall, despite the hall being only about
2m long and the height and width of their front door.

A terrible place for a phone, but extension sockets had been invented by
then. And actually turns out to be a sensible place for the wifi hotspot


When I moved in here, the line came in via the frame of a 1st floor
window. Closest to where the outside line hung from the brickwork. With
surface wiring everywhere. ;-)

Got rid of all that at re-wire time. But with hindsight, not a bad place
for the router and Wi-Fi. Although the worst place here is the kitchen in
the rear addition. So have an extender in the hall just outside it.

I fitted the first router - before Wi-Fi - in the cellar. Easiest place to
run wires to for the cabled LAN.

--
*Some days we are the flies; some days we are the windscreen.*

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On 14/11/2020 17:52, Tim+ wrote:
Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 11:15:35 on Sat, 14 Nov
2020, "Dave Plowman (News)" remarked:
In article ,
Roland Perry wrote:
They do sometimes get installed in the most crazy places. My BT master
socket is in the loft!

They were often installed in the hall, near the front door, which was
apparently regarded as the obvious place to put a sole phone instrument
in a house.

Where the phone was installed makes little difference to where the line
comes into the house.

On the contrary, internal wiring was rare.

I think not! Every house Ive ever lived in has had spaghetti wiring
nailed to skirtings, architraves etc, connected to a junction box by the
cable entry point to the house.

Tim


Not here!

Two phone lines comes into the loft, one from BT and the other from
Virginmedia.

There is not a single phoen socket anywhere in the house, rather, there
are over 50 network sockets instead. All the cabling from these network
sockets are Cat6 screened twisted pair and all of them go to a patch
panel in the loft.

The phone lines go to a 2nd patch panel of which there are 16 RJ45
sockets all wired in parallel.

a set opf 1m long white patch leads then connect the phone patch panel
to the network patch panel and some RJ45 to RJ11 adapters are atytached
to the phones and plugged into a network socket.

ALl the cables are all buried in either capping and plastered over or in
stud & partition walls.

S.

On Sun, 15 Nov 2020 14:44:54 +0000, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

When I moved in here, the line came in via the frame of a 1st floor
window. Closest to where the outside line hung from the brickwork. With
surface wiring everywhere. ;-)

Got rid of all that at re-wire time. But with hindsight, not a bad place
for the router and Wi-Fi. Although the worst place here is the kitchen
in the rear addition. So have an extender in the hall just outside it.

This house had similar. The line came in via the window frame in the
largest bedroom - in use as a living room by the elderly mother of the
lady of tyhe house (she could get upstairs, daughter couldn't due to
severe foot problems).

We weren't going to waste all that space for a bedroom, so we made that
our 'office'. The equipment rack (servers, VDSL router etc.) is in the
corner. The cable from the socket to the router is less than a metre.
From the router to the firewall systm - less than that.

--
My posts are my copyright and if @diy_forums or Home Owners' Hub
wish to copy them they can pay me £1 a message.
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK: http://www.mirrorservice.org
*lightning surge protection* - a w_tom conductor