Distance from master socket to router - how much difference does it actually make?

[katie279]

Title says it all really - I've seen lots of posts on forums saying you should put your router as close to your master socket as possible - what none of them say is how big a deal it actually is.

I've got mine about 6-7 metres away that I connect with an RJ11 cable.
It'd be a bit of a faff to move my router, but if it's worthwhile I'd be happy to do it.

So what's the brains of this forum say?

If I get 15Mb/s currently with a 6 metre run - if I reduced this to <0.5m would I expect like a 0.01mbps increase, a 0.5mbps increase, a 1mbps increase, a 10mbps increase etc etc etc!

Thanks in advance!

 

[Caged]

The length of a cable sort of does make a difference, but not purely because of the length - a 15m quality twisted pair cable will perform better than a 5m long flat phone extension cable. Whether the performance difference is noticeable depends on local issues such as interference, the quality of any extension wiring in use etc.

 

[katie279]

Hmm good point - it's certainly a standard 'old skool' type rj11 cable.... again you gonna give me a sense of how big a difference????

I can't quite gauge if this is a 'splitting hairs' difference or really something quite significant!

 

[TheVoice]

I use a 10m cable with mine so my router is positioned more centrally in my flat, it made no difference at all to sync speed vs the shorter cable it came with.

 

[bremen1874]

It is down to the quality of the cable. The length of any extension cabling is usually pretty insignificant compared to the length of BT's cable to the house. It only goes wrong when the incorrect type of cable is used. If you use something like Cat5e or CW1308 and terminate it properly there shouldn't be much difference.

Temporally moving the router to where the master socket is for comparison shouldn't be that big of a deal.

It's also worth knowing how fast the connection is supposed to be in the first place. If BT are quoting an expected speed of 50Mbps and you're only getting 15Mbps then there's something worth investigating.

 

[Mattus]

15Mbps suggests you are about 1500m from the cabinet, assuming the line is working properly. So I wouldn't think another 6m will make any noticeable difference, unless you are using really really bad cable.

If you have any phone extensions connected, you're more likely to improve your connection speed by disconnecting them.

 

[pp111]

Depends on the cable. I tried a 20m CAT6 cable and as you might expect saw no degradation at all.

 

[MagicBoy]

In OPs case it's down to the quality of the RJ11 cable. The main problem is poor quality extension wiring in the property, which was fine for an analogue phone in the 80s but isn't suitable for data.

 

[BowdonUK]

The cable that you connect your router/modem to the phone socket with isn't as good at shielding as an ethernet cable is.

So its better to have a shorter telephone cable and a longer ethernet cable than vice versa.

 

[bremen1874]

The cable that you connect your router/modem to the phone socket with isn't as good at shielding as an ethernet cable is.

So its better to have a shorter telephone cable and a longer ethernet cable than vice versa.

If the RJ11/12 cable is made using twisted-pair cable it really makes no odds.

Placing the router/modem somewhere convenient is more important than trying to avoid a few metres of extension wiring.

 

[Avalon]

Context is everything. In general, unless something is seriously wrong, an extra few meters will make bugger all difference. That said if for instance those extra few meters have junction boxes/taps or are aluminium or poor quality cable, it can help. I took an external feed in direct to a master socket, in doing so I removed roughly 10m of 60’s copper buried direct in concrete and a really shady external joint, in my case it pushed my mid range line speed up towards the high estimate on g.fast, but on FTTC it would have literally made no difference as I synced at the full 80/20 anyway.