DSL help

Chillie · Post by **Chillie** » Thu Oct 06, 2005 1:24 am

I'm planning on getting DSL, but the way my house is configured I'm having a hard time figuring out where to make my connections. Help is greatly appreciated. Picture this: The computer is in the living room hooked up to the internet by dial-up. However, there is no wall jack in the living room so I have an 80 foot telephone line running along the walls hooked up to a jack in another room. That line is connected to my computer through a splitter by the pc which has a short telephone wire for the modem and a telephone hooked up to it.
I need some suggestions on what the best way would be to get DSL working. Can I just keep the 80 foot normal telephone line connected to the old splitter, put the DSL filter on the other side of the splitter and then connect it to the DSL modem or do you always have to have the DSL filter connected immediately to the wall outlet? Ideally, I want to have DSL on the PC in the living room as well as my phone and answering machine. Thanks for the help!!

Post by **YeOldeStonecat** » Thu Oct 06, 2005 6:54 am

The DSL splitters I've seen, are designed to plug into the rj-11 wall jack...male end is a short cable, and 2x female jacks on the dongle end of the filter, 1x unfiltered for the DSL modem, 1x filtered for your fax/phone. So if you're stuck having to use a filter, guess you'll have to get another long rj-11 cord to run into the other room. You don't always have to use a filter....matter of fact, I'd say I don't use them in setups any more than 15-20% of the time...only when needed. Fax machines will almost always have to have them installed, because they don't get along with the say DSL cranks up the signal on the lines. But most of the time, handset phones will not pickup that audible high pitch, so filters aren't always needed.

Splitters, I try to stay away from using those, they degrade the signal a little bit...if you need one and your DSL line will be fed through it, make sure it's a decent quality splitter.

You may get lucky...some DSL modems will have a pass through, pretty much like the old dial up modems we've seen in the past. The input jack, and an output jack to connect your phone/answering machine to...in which case you'll be all set, run your splitter after that so you have a pure single cable run feeding the DSL modem.

You may want to replace your 80 foot phone cable with one of higher quality, possibly even an rj-12 line, so your DSL signal will hold better on that long run. You don't want one of those typical thin guage phone lines pushing your DSL signal across 80'.

Chillie · Post by **Chillie** » Thu Oct 06, 2005 7:14 am

That sounds like a really good explanation of everything, though with some parts I'm having a hard time understanding. For example, is a filter the same thing as a splitter? What is it that you have to connect to the wall to get the dsl to work and what kind of wire do you connect to that which then goes into the modem? I just need to get it all straight before I decide to order. Keep in mind that I also have phones in 3 other rooms that need to be working properly. Just use your best dummy speak if you can! Thanks!

Post by **YeOldeStonecat** » Thu Oct 06, 2005 1:12 pm

A splitter is not the same thing as a filter. A splitter only does that..."splits", it's literally just a dumb Y splitter. A filter is bigger....and it actually "filters" "one" of the lines...and it leaves the other line "unfiltered"...the "unfiltered" line is the one you'd plug your DSL modem into, as you never want to plug your DSL modem into a filtered line. So a filter looks somewhat like a splitter...just a heck of a lot bigger.

The only thing you usually plug into your phone jack to get DSL is your DSL modem, or rather, the DSL phone cord used to plug in the modem. Generally you want this to be a higher quality phone cord, not some junky super cheap thin guage phone wire that has a couple of wires the width of a human hair...but you want a nice beefy phone line to carry that DSL signal.

BizWeb432 · Post by **BizWeb432** » Wed Oct 19, 2005 1:00 pm

It would probably be a good Idea, to not use that 80Ft. Phone Cord..
Verizon has a 14ft cord limit, when using there DSL.. It will work when you have a cord over 14 feet, but if it goes out of sync in the next week or month, or year, then you know it is that phone cord..