Does my Eircom eFibre modem / router need to be connected to main phone socket?

This is quite a tricky one. Eircom says that your new eFibre fibre broadband modem / router must be connected to your main telephone socket but that they can move this socket by a few metres if you request it. They don’t seem very keen on moving the socket however and it seems to me that moving it isn’t always a great choice – if there are no suitable sockets to move it to then they must messily chase a cable from your main socket up the stairs and over doors etc. to a new socket, and if there are existing sockets they can’t be sure of the quality of the in-place wiring and warn that you could suffer a drop in broadband ‘power’ (whatever that is!) if you choose to use it.

Typically the normal DSL modems could be placed at any telephone socket within your house, you would just use the DSL filter adapters as appropriate. This allowed broadband customers to connect wired printers and NAS devices etc. directly to the router’s Ethernet hub. Now if this router must move to the main socket (which is often just beside the front door) then you may have a problem!

I think that one of the reasons why ericom want the modem plugged into the main socket is that they have built the vDSl filter into the module at the from of the socket – this removes the need for a separate filter but means that all other sockets within the house do not have the vDSL signal. I think that they also want to avoid going near the house’s internal telephone wiring as they can’t be sure its quality (which is fair enough).

Fibre Boradband Socket with built-in vDSL filter

So how can you connect your existing wired network into your new fibre broadband router if they are physically separated in this way?

Well, one relatively cheap and simple solution is to use an Ethernet over powerline adaptor to run an Ethernet connection from your modem’s hub to your hub elsewhere in the house over the mains wiring – no need for running any cables or for fighting with WiFi bridges etc. just plug one end into your eircom router and the other into your wired network.

Here is a 500Mbps device that PC World has for about 54 euro:

http://www.netgear.com/home/products/networking/powerline/XAVB5201.aspx

Powerline in place