Ms S has just received her new wireless router, and is due to go live with the new provider on Monday.

Instructions say we must connect the router to the master 'phone socket (via the microfilter) then plug the router into a power socket.

Unfortunately, due to the placement of the master 'phone socket and the nearest power socket, this just ain't possible.

Can we connect the router to an upstairs 'phone extention cable instead?

So long as everything goes in through a microfilter you'll be ok. If you omit the microfilter for any router or any phone you might have signal troubles.

So so long as this phone extension cable still goes though a filter you're fine. If that means you need another filter, they can be found cheaply enough.

All advice is IME, YMMV, IANAL nor a Sparky.

HTH 😀

how long is the extension cable? it should work as long as the microfilter is on the master socket, just give it a go it won't harm the router

Ta, wired router works fine on the extension cable (which already has a microfilter attached) so we'll give it a go.

Advice much appreciated.

Might reduce the rate the the ADSL line will be able to run at. Depends on how far you are from the head-end DSLAM, how you're wired up internally, and a host of other factors you have no real control over.

Suck it and see. Get a mighty long mains extension lead and compare the bitrates you get.

The thing to remember is as soon as you have any problems, irrespective of what they are, or whether it has been working and then stops, they'll blame the fact that it's not plugged into the master.

It's Talk Talk. Tried 'phoning the service desk for an answer but the call centre chap didn't understand the question.

Phone the sales line after posting this and the pleasant young lady said the same as everyone above – should be OK.

If we have serious problems we'll just get the master 'phone socket moved.

Once again, thanks for your help.

There will be no reason, other than using a crap/knackered extension cable, why this won't work – it's probably how half the country wire up their routers (including me).

Me too,it works fine…..

Mine's on a secondary phone socket too, works most of the time, slow downs and outages tend to correspond to peak time demand. I just put that down to TalkTalk and being a long way from the exchange.

The reason the recommend plugging in to the master socket is they can't vouch for the quality of your domestic phone wiring. That can cause signal loss – reducing the speed the router can sync up to the exchange.

If you want to test it, plug it in to the Master temporarily, and connect to the router admin console with a laptop and check the speed.

Then do the same with the router connected at the end of your internal cabling.

I used to work for an ADSL chip vendor. When we were testing bitrates we were always very picky about the cables we used to connect the ADSL router to the jack socket.

Those were the days!