If you spend any time at all on the internet, which I’m sure you do since you’re reading this guide, you know the pain in a slow internet connection. However, you may have lost all hope for speeding up your DSL internet connection if you’ve tried software tweaks, different DSL filters, and all of the other different methods people have claimed to improve your internet transfer speed dramatically. What we will teach you in this guide, is a hardware change you can perform to speed up your DSL connection. This method improved our upload and download speeds significantly, as much as two times faster! However, this will not work for everyone. Read on to find out more.
First off, eXtreme Reviews and/or its employees take absolutely no responsibility for any damage, harm, or trouble you may get into while reading and doing anything this guide may say to do. Safety is very important so please be careful.
Ever since we had a DSL (Digital Subscribers Line) for our internet connection, we were never satisfied. Our transfer rates were atrocious. After performing several tweaks and installing software that claims to increase your speed, nothing ever boosted the connection dramatically. When we turned to our telephone provider, they never offered much help and seemed to know near nothing about telephones, DSL, or computers. As we will not state the name of the company, here’s a hint "Sh*tty Broadcasting Corporation" (take note of the capital letters).
Requirements:
In order to perform this guide, you are going to need a few things:
∙ DSL internet connection
∙ 1 x POTS filter (you can use an existing filter that you may have on any of your current telephones)
∙ Crimper
∙ Drill (optional depending upon the setup of everything)
∙ Wire stripper/cutter
∙ Screwdriver
∙ Telephone cable (almost any kind will do, make sure its good grade)
∙ 2 x RJ-11 modular plugs
Installation:
Now off to the fun part, what we will be doing is branching off a new cable directly from the telephone box outside, specifically for your DSL. This will prevent your modem from having to go through the house cabling; instead, it will go directly to the external phone connection outside. By doing this, the line quality will improve a great deal, especially if you live in an old house with old wiring. With an improved connection to the external phone line, your modem will get a much clearer signal, and therefore your internet connection speed should increase.
- To begin the installation, you need to find your telephone box where the line coming from the street intersects your house, usually mounted on the side/back of your house or in a basement/crawl space. You will need to open this box, if there is a lock or a special key is required, you may have to get the key or call your phone company. If you happen to be impatient, you can simply get a saw and chop the side of your box off, but watch out for live wires. Luckily, our telephone box was secured by just one flat head screw.
-
When you look inside the box, you should find the main telephone line which plugs into the main wiring block, from there, it goes into the house (see the picture below). What we did here was place the POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) filter between the main line coming in from the streets and the wiring block that connects to all of the phones in your house. The POTS filter, filters out frequencies to prevent distortion from occurring while talking on the telephone and using your internet at the same time. Connect the main block, to the phone side of the filter.

- Next, you need to run a new line for your DSL modem to connect to. If your telephone box we mentioned earlier happens to be outside your house and you wish to keep your DSL modem inside, you will need to slide a new telephone line through the existing telephone-wire hole, or you may be forced to drill a new hole. If your telephone box is located inside the house, you’re all set and you just need to run some wire from the box to your DSL modem.
- After you’ve run the telephone cable to the DSL modem, it’s time to put some plugs on the end of the wires so you can plug it in. We purchased a 10-pack of RJ-11 modular plugs from Radio Shack for only $3 (you only really need two plugs, but they usually come in packs of 10). Now, simply strip the ends of the telephone cable so there is bare wire exposed at both ends. Take note of the wire configuration and make sure the same colors are arranged in an identical pattern on both ends. Now use your crimp tool, and crimp a plug onto each end.
- With the wire near the telephone box, simply plug that into the DSL/HPN side of the filter. At the other end of the wire, plug it into your DSL modem.
- Now you will need to connect your DSL modem into your network, depending upon the setup of your house you may need to run some Cat5 cable to your computer or router.
- Everything is just about complete. You are free to remove any remaining POTS filters from your phone jacks located inside your house, since all those jacks are now filtered inside your telephone box.

Everything should be complete, if you experience any troubles go through and check all of your connections making sure your crimped connectors have identical wire configurations.
Conclusion:
After performing this tweak/mod, our DSL upload and download speed literally doubled. A direct line to the DSL modem caused the increase in performance. In this home, poor wiring and the use of improper wire can be partially blamed for such horrid DSL speeds we were receiving before hand.

If you’re on a dial up internet connection, we are pretty sure the performance for that can also be improved, but instead of connecting your telephone line to a DSL modem in this guide just connect it directly into your 56k modem, oh, and you won’t be needing the filters either. However, no testing was performed using a dial up internet connection. If you have any questions or comments regarding this guide, please feel free to contact Michael Larabel at Michael@extremereviews.net
Good luck and enjoy your new, improved Internet connection!
Please Note: This guide is for people who are experiencing troubles with their DSL and are unable to reach their maximum speed which their ISP allocates for them. If your line is already at its maximum speed with your ISP, this guide will not improve your connection any further.
|