BT I-Plate

[Covenant]

I sent off to Amazon for one of these as my broadband can be a bit flaky-I get rebuffering problems with my Squeezebox Touch. Reading on the internet about it made me think it was what I needed;my main socket is down stairs and the router is upstairs at the opposite end of the house, the long crappy cable inbetween causes problems.
So my reason for fitting it wasn't broadband speed, which is a respectable 7.9 M/bps and an upload speed of 0.7M/bps. I was therefore surprised and chuffed to see its increased to 12.29 and 0.86M/bps.
It says that it may take up to two weeks to get the full benefit so I will let you know if there is any further improvement.
They cost less than £6 and take about one minute to fit. Worth thinking about if your broadband is iffy. :)

[Ali Tait]

Good to know,I have one on it's way from ebay.

[Reid Malenfant]

This is interesting, there are so many different things (well they look it to me :eyebrows:) that are listed on ebay under BT I plate that i have no idea which is the beastie in question :scratch:

[The Vinyl Adventure]

what is it

[lurcher]

Its a ADSL face plate with built in microfilter.

Now next time someone tells you how cables can't possibly make a difference in the digital realm...

[Reid Malenfant]

Can anyone supply a pic of what it is i'm looking for? :) Or better yet a link to one on fleabay :eyebrows:

Still using an external micro filter here, would be nice not to have wires & boxes dangling all over :lol:

[Clive]

http://www.shop.bt.com/products/bt-iplate---bt-broadband-accelerator-58LT.html

[Stratmangler]

Can anyone supply a pic of what it is i'm looking for? :) Or better yet a link to one on fleabay :eyebrows:

Still using an external micro filter here, would be nice not to have wires & boxes dangling all over :lol:

You'll still need the external filter on any telephones you have.

The iPlate is the bit in the middle in this picture http://www.thinkbroadband.com/images/iplate/bt-nte5-iplate-large.jpg
It attenuates RF apparently - all I'll say is that it increased my DSL speed by 300%+.
If your socket is badged Openreach you don't need an iPlate - it's already built into the socket.

[Clive]

Found this description on Amazon:

Product Description
Solwise Description - Standard domestic telephone wiring uses three wires to carry the signal between the master socket and the extensions. Two of these wires come from the outside and are connected directly to your local telephone exchange. The third wire is generated in your master socket and carries the 'bell' signal which is used to ring some old-fashioned telephones when someone calls you. If you have an ADSL service with each phone connected to a micro-filter then the bell-wire is completely redundant since a bell signal is generated in each micro-filter for the few phones which still need it. Now, unfortunately, this bell-wire tends to cause some degradation to the ADSL signal as it travels about your house. The Solwise solution to this problem would be to detach the front section of your master socket and disconnect the bell-wire(s) (from pin 3) and re-fit the faceplate. The BT solution is called the iPlate! This device places a filter on the bell-wire (which remember is not required!). (The best solution for ADSL wiring is based on a centralised master faceplate splitter such as our ADSL-NTEFACE models, please consider this option if you have ADSL signal quality issues.)

[Reid Malenfant]

You'll still need the external filter on any telephones you have.

The iPlate is the bit in the middle in this picture
Cheers Chris, thanks for the pic & information :)

& thanks to Clive to ;)

[Ali Tait]

I'm hoping it improves my connection as I am currently getting less than 3 Mbps down and only about 0.5 up.

[Reid Malenfant]

I don't think i'm going to bother tbh ;) Tested my connection earlier & i'm getting 6 Mbps download consistantly. I wondered why i managed to download a big 320 Kbps MP3 so fast recently, as far as i was aware i was paying for this "up to 8 Mbps" but i only ever averaged about a quarter of that, now it's more than fast enough ;)

:lolsign: Thinking about it i haven't had any problems for quite a while, i used to know when it was busy locally, now it's just fast....

Actually no, i will get one as it might be a benefit if & when things get very busy, there is always that important time when sods law might prevail :eyebrows:

[Stratmangler]

If you're close to one of the nodes (BT Exchange) then you may not see any benefit after fitting an iPlate - I recently swapped out an old BT socket for an Openreach one for a friend (I also reran/rerouted their telephone extension at the same time) and it made bugger all difference to the down/up speed.

I'm on the outer periphery of a BT exchange, which may well be why it's been of such benefit to me.

[Reid Malenfant]

I'm on the outer periphery of a BT exchange, which may well be why it's been of such benefit to me.
That's my thinking Chris, i'm less than a half mile from the exchange so i'm fairly close :) At least i think that's close ;)

There is always that time though that it might be important to you to have a responsive connection, £5.00 isn't a lot in all honesty (as a one off expense) to give you a possible advantage when things get more problematic :eyebrows: They all have to at some stage, everything does eventually :)

[Clive]

If the logic of how the I-Plate works (as shown in post #9) is valid then distance from the exchange is irrelevant. This is supposedly to do with RF picked up on the bell ringing wire. In my situation I don't have any extension wiring so in theory the I-Plate should be of no benefit to me. As has been said though the cost to find out is hardly expensive.

[Reid Malenfant]

Well i have jumped on the bandwagon, so lets see if i can get up to 8Meg speed soon after it arrives :) For just under £5.00 delivered as you say it's got to be worth a gamble :eyebrows:

[Ali Tait]

Mine came in the post today.Can't be bothered fitting it tonight,am too tired.

[Covenant]

Mine came in the post today.Can't be bothered fitting it tonight,am too tired.

Go on go on go on......

[Reid Malenfant]

Go on go on go on......
Yeah you know you want to, nothing like a good screw, in this case two :eyebrows:

[Covenant]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7w0ZyfkukUs

[Ali Tait]

Ok,curiosity got the better of me! I know for a fact that we are at the end of the exchange,and the difference iiiiissss






























































BUGGER ALL!!

[Clive]

It seems it's the bell ringing wire then....

Hope you're relaxing!

[Reid Malenfant]

Apparently it takes time for it to work :scratch: Why this should be i have no idea what so ever but speed increases over time so i have heard :eyebrows:

No doubt i'll find out by next Monday, knowing how first class post just doesn't appear to be as advertised these days :lol:

[Ali Tait]

Am now! Actually,thinking about it,the way to test this is connect your router to the main incoming socket and see if there is any improvement.If there is,then it's worth getting one.If not,don't bother.Seems logical yes?

[Covenant]

Am now! Actually,thinking about it,the way to test this is connect your router to the main incoming socket and see if there is any improvement.If there is,then it's worth getting one.If not,don't bother.Seems logical yes?

That makes sense.

[Stratmangler]

Am now! Actually,thinking about it,the way to test this is connect your router to the main incoming socket and see if there is any improvement.If there is,then it's worth getting one.If not,don't bother.Seems logical yes?

To be pedantic about it, you need to remove the first detachable faceplate part and connect the router to the socket test point inside.
If your extension cabling conforms to the regs then the extension cabling is connected to the frame on the removeable faceplate section.

[Ali Tait]

Did yours take time to improve Chris?

[Alex_UK]

My house already has one of these, and plugging the router into it is definitely better than an extension socket - but not by a huge margin with a modern house. I can't be arsed to explain the technicalities (not that I am that technical) but yes - it does take a few days for the best stable speed to be established between you and your ISP's kit in the local exchange.

[Stratmangler]

Did yours take time to improve Chris?

No, my increase in speed was immediately apparent.
It went from just over a meg to just under four meg, and has stayed fairly consistent ever since.

If I check the expected speeds with BT they say 2 meg, and as I've said, I'm getting nearly four meg, so go figure:confused:

Not that I'm complaining;)

[Ali Tait]

Mine's exactly the same-2.6meg.

[Stratmangler]

This is the best description I can find for how the iPlate works http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-mac/networking-and-wi-fi/general-networking/bt-iplate-465594/review

[Covenant]

The first couple of days use have been great-no rebuffering on my Touch and broadband zipping along at a steady 12.3M/bps.
I did used to get really bad days when I would lose the connection so I dont want to count my chickens too early but at the moment its looking like £6 well spent.

[Reid Malenfant]

Well the I-plate arrived inside of 24Hrs :eyebrows:

Installed & there is a slight but noticeable increase in download speeds, what is different is that the speed appears to be constant whilst download pretty big files :)

Worth the punt imo, things might get better yet as it's only been connected about an hour :lolsign:

[Ali Tait]

Glad it helps some folks.My other half works for Sky, and some time ago they were offering this free gadget to up your speed,so I guess it was an I-plate.Upon her asking if it would help us,they took a look and said "Na,sorry,you're too far away from the exchange"

Ah well. Only cost me 4 quid on fleabay.

[Ali Tait]

...Shame she only told me this last night after I had fitted it...

[Covenant]

4 quid! I was robbed!

[Ali Tait]

Check listings on ebay and sort by cheapest price & PP ;)

[Reid Malenfant]

Speed is definately improving as time goes by :scratch: I have seen 7Meg today which is about 1.2Meg faster than i have ever seen before ;)

I had a bloke from BT ring me about this new superfast broadband etc about a fortnight ago, he was saying about internet TV etc :eyebrows: I must have said "I don't watch TV" about 6 or more times before i managed to get through to him :doh:

Sorry m8, i'm just not interested :finger:

[Alex_UK]

Speed is definately improving as time goes by :scratch:

Mark - as I eluded to and from the link Chris (Stratmangler) posted:

"Fitting iPlate initially yielded negligible results - but that's partly because installing the BT iPlate changes your BRAS profile and it takes a few days for BT to decide what your consistently reliable ADSL connection is."

So basically, once your BRA size is established it will settle down! :eyebrows:

[Reid Malenfant]

So basically, once your BRA size is established it will settle down! :eyebrows:
:lolsign: No doubt Katy Price aka Jordan would have problems then :eyebrows:

[Ali Tait]

It would appear what Chris said is correct,I just happened to check my speed again,I'm now getting over 5! quite a jump!