[selowitch]

I hear that it's possible to split your phone signal into telephone and DSL at the demarcation point inside the telco side of your home's network interface device (NID). This way, you don't need to put filters on all of your telephones and you might get a clearer signal and/or slightly better DSL performance. Now, I know that there are commercially available devices for $30 or so, but isn't it possible to simply use one of these in-line filters provided by my ISP?

I have a bunch of these anyway. Couldn't I use a cheap splitter and have the cable going for phone pass through this filter, and leave the DSL one alone?

[free lunch]

Yes, you should be able to do that, ie. put a simple splitter on the entry point of the phone line into the house and then run the phone tree downstream from that splitter. Only question is whether the splitter can handle the load (electrical, not data) if you have a lot of phones connected.

In many apts. (like mine) this may not work since the phone lines (if the apt. has multiple phone jacks) are often split somwhere inaccessible to the tenant.

You do have to run phone cable from the splitter to the DSL modem or designate on jack as DSL only though in this scenario, which may or may not be inconvenient in your situation.

[Dork.]

I've done this. I asked the telco for a box (I forget what they called it) that basically acts as a filter and splitter for the entire house at once. It's a heavy-duty box, which requires you to screw the wire into terminals, and it's built to be installed outdoors, too. (So I'm sure the Telco installs it outdoors when asked (and paid!) to do so.) My DSL modem is in the basement, so I left the one extension in the basemet unfiltered, and filtered the connection to the rest of the house. (The previous owner of the house had every phone extension wired into a single terminal strip in the basement, which made this easy.)

I wouldn't mess with anything on the Telco's side of the NID, though. Do it on your side.

[selowitch]

Hmmmmm. Well, I took the slightly more expensive route and ordered one of these puppies. Probably could have gotten away with one of these cheesy filters your ISP gives you for free, but I guess I can't afford to fool around with loss of performance. While a dedicated indoor DSL/POTS splitter may be overkill for a simple residential situation like mine, I guess what I really want is something a bit more robust.

Also, as "Dork." suggested, this is designed to work on the consumer side of the NID, which I agree is wise, esp. for a telecom newbie like me.

Now, how do I figure out which cables/wires to connect to this sucker? My phone connections in this old house are really a messy hack job. God knows where it's all going. My needs are so simple, really, only four phone jacks + DSL, all on the same line. I think I'm going to rewire the whole thing using four of the eight wires inside of lengths of Cat-5e cable. See this thread.

Has anybody wired telephones and DSL using a single 110 patch panel?

[as2]

You should try something like this if it's available in the US...

http://www.broadbandzone.co.uk/shop/...sedfilter.html

http://www.dynalink.com.au/modemsads...?prod=MFDSL004

[ghporter]

From what the web site you linked to shows (the PDF in the description), it looks like you can either plug in a phone cord from the master incoming line, or connect the red and green (equivalent) wires to the T & R (tip and ring) screw terminals. After that, connect the branch for voice phones to the "Phones" end (either with terminals or by plugging into the jack) and the branch for the DSL modem to the ADSL section (again either terminals or jack).

[Dork.]

Originally Posted by selowitch

Hmmmmm. Well, I took the slightly more expensive route and ordered one of these puppies.

That'll do nicely. The thing I got from my Telco/DSL provider is closest to the "Outdoor DSL Splitter" on that page.

The way I understand it (and remember, even though I'm an electrical engineer, "1" and "0" are the only numbers that exist in my professional world), The DSL connection uses high-frequency signals on that phone line, and all the box does is use a low-pass filter to screen that stuff out while letting the voice frequencies through. My box only filters the voice line, and the data line is pass-through, so that I still have access to the phone line via the data line if I use one of those small line filters.

Then again, maybe the products labeled as "splitters" do exactly that, and split the signal so that the only the LF signals are on the voice line and only the HF signals are on the data line....