House alarm dialer wired direct to phone line patch panel... Broadband filter needed?

Access

The dialer of my house alarm is wired directly into the patch panel for my phone line in the attic and is working fine. (Red + green)

I recently got broadband and all my phones are plugged into the small filters and then into the wall phone sockets.

Do i need to have a filter on my alarm phone line and also, come to think of it, do i need to have my sky + box plugged into a filter too?

Thanks for any info!

Stoner

well a lot of alarms like to be the first connection on a phone line, however your alarm may be sending out a test call every now and then, personally I would filter the line going into the alarm.

You could always check with your monitoring station, to see if there is an issue when the internet connection is on and off.

MickLimk

You need to put a filter on everything except the broadband connection and yep, that includes the alarm and sky box also.

If you don't, you may see your broadband speed reduced (modem syncing to the exchange at lower speeds) due to interference on the line from unfiltered devices. Sky boxes are notorious for causing this. You may also see your broadband cutting out completely whenever your sky box or alarm decides to dial out if left unfiltered.

Have a look over on the broadband forum as this has been covered many times there.

Access

Thanks for that lads,

Alarm only dials out when set off and is not monitored, it just rings my/wifes mobile and we can control it/listen in/reset it etc., so thankfully it doesn't dial out very often.

@ Micklimk: My wireless router is plugged directly into the wall phone socket, is this okay or should i have a filter on that too as a splitter filter came with it? (Phone & BB into one filter)

Since the alarm only dials out very rarely (if set off) and the sky box only dials out once a month for a few seconds (according to a sky tech), is there really any need for filters on these two devices or is it a case that they should always be filtered to prevent BB speed loss even if the devices are not dialing out most of the time?


Also, where is the best place to get these phone line filters?

Thanks in advance!

Stoner

Maplins have them off the shelf.


With your package you should have a splitter filter and a straight through filter. So you need to have the straight through filter between the wall socket and the wireless router.

I would still recommend testing the alarm system dialing out over a filter, just to be sure.

Access

excellent... cheers for the info!

MickLimk

Regardless of how often these devices (sky box & alarm) use the phone line, I would still install filters on them. As I mentioned previously, there is the possibility that using them without filters could affect your broadband connection speed or cause your connection to drop at random intervals.

I normally don't bother with any filter between the phone socket and the modem. A straight-through 'filter' is usually exactly that, just straight through and doesn't do much filtering! The reason behind this is that the modem utilises a much broader frequency range than a regular phone and applying any LP filtering between the modem and the phone line can stop it from working altogether. You won't do any harm by connecting the modem directly to the phone line.

Agree with Stoner with regards to testing the alarm with the filter installed.

Access

Will do, thanks again for the info.

Jnealon

If it's just a normal voice dialler then it may not have line seizure and can be connected to a normal filter. You mention a patch panel in the attic, is this of the krone push down or RJ11 variety. If you have a crimper you can make up your own leads to connect it.
If you need line seizure you can use this one. This is what I would recommend as I have fitter dozens of them

northdublin

an other option is to get the master phone plate from eircom with the adsl filter built into it. this unit filters your phone lines, has a separate rg-11 socket for your broadband and gives your alarm system priority over your phones......without cutting off your broad band as it only seizes you pstn line.
depending on the phone set up in the house it can be easy if you know what yer doing. i used to install a lot of them and have one here on my own phone system and never had a bit of trouble with it.:)

RoundyMooney

Yep, filter everything, is my advice, including sky boxes.

A friend who lives with their parents was recently forced to ditch their dsl, because of interference on the line, according to their technophobe mum. It turned out that they had mixed up their line filters.

If only they'd contacted me first