NBN FTTN connection - granny flat/outbuilding

[NikkstaaNoooo]

I am a NBN FTTN customer. The modem is connected directly to wall in my mum's house. I live in a granny flat at the rear of the main house. The house has an existing phone line which runs from the main house using the second pair to the granny flat. The granny flat previously had a separate phone number/account to the main house when my gran lived in it. There is no current account on that line. I just use my mobile.
I want to be able to connect to my broadband via the phone jack in the granny flat so that I can connect pc via ethernet as WiFi is awful even though it is only a short distance away and nothing that should cause too much interference.
Anyway, I keep getting told I will need to get an installer to run cat cable to the flat. I don't see why I would when there is already an existing line or a Telstra technician will need to come out. It is fibre to boundary only then copper cabling. Surely the phone line on the second pair can just be set up to replicate the number on the account for the main house (just like having an additional phone jack in a study for example). So if the phone rings in the main house, it also rings in the granny flat.
I think I could possibly need a second modem or a router from the wall in the granny flat however. Although the wall plate has the ability to plug ethernet cable directly into it in addition to a phone.
Could someone please give me a clear solution for FTTN specifically using the existing copper lines. I have had very little help via phone and chat. I don't want to pay for technicians to come out if it is not necessary. Just think of it as being a separate phone line in the main house like a home office number but the office is outside and has its own electricity/gas connections. Thanks in advance

[petfy]

What is the distance to be spanned.

Generally you are looking at a wifi repeater for small distances, or Ethernet cable for large distances (up to 100 mtrs). Save yourself some money by running your own Ethernet conduit between the two.

[cf4]

Unlike analogue phones were you can have several phones connected to the same copper pair, you can not have two modems working on the same copper pair.
You would need a separate copper pair from the granny flat back to the Node.

You could try and get a separate FTTN connection for the granny flat.

If you don't want to pay for a separate NBN connection the only alternative is run LAN cable from Modems current location to Granny flat or to move modem to granny flat and have a Electrician or Technician with a Austal license join the exiting phone socket in granny flat to phone socket in house. Using the second option there will be no internet or phone in the house.

[mazinoz]

I agree. Depending on distance, if wireless is not powerful enough and you have a separate electricity account to the house, so can't use ethernet over powerlines, LAN cables or FTTN-granny flat are the only solution. Your setup is analogous to having two separate houses. If you go with the ethernet option you should consider waterproof cables and perhaps digging a small ditch to hide / protect the cables.

[NikkstaaNoooo]

The phone socket in the granny flat has a LAN port built in. Mum has old school wiring (x 4 wires - red/black and blue/white). Granny flat has new wiring (x 6 wires and the blue/white have been connected to green/yellow but all of the wires seem to be connected to some part. I am assuming extra wires must be for data transfer. The old wiring seemed simpler LOL red black one line and blue white granny flat line... Don't worry, I am not attempting to rewire myself. Anyway, could a suitably qualified electrician rewire it so the same line is connected to granny flat and then we can plug directly into the phone's LAN port?

Or, If I did move the modem to the granny flat, had the phone line rewired back to the house, could I not just install a splitter for a second phone in the house. I read in the FTTN NBNCo site that you could add secondary phone connections but a splitter is required because we do not have the connection box like the other NBN set up, In any event, I don't need to have a phone in the granny flat so if the LAN port in the phone socket would work after rewiring, then that would be ideal.

If the LAN port won't work, I was thinking I might just hit Telstra up for the modem they are providing with their home bundle because I just discovered they sent me out the Gateway with the old wifi technology. The new one might provide a more stable wifi connection to connect to.

In the meantime, I might just feed the cat cable I bought a few weeks ago, through the existing conduit (now we located it) back into the house and plug it straight into the modem as a temporary fix for now until I chat to the sparky and see what he comes up with.
Thanks for the replies.

[cf4 · Accepted solution]

---

@NikkstaaNoooowrote:
The phone socket in the granny flat has a LAN port built in. Mum has old school wiring (x 4 wires - red/black and blue/white). Granny flat has new wiring (x 6 wires and the blue/white have been connected to green/yellow but all of the wires seem to be connected to some part. I am assuming extra wires must be for data transfer. The old wiring seemed simpler LOL red black one line and blue white granny flat line... Don't worry, I am not attempting to rewire myself. Anyway, could a suitably qualified electrician rewire it so the same line is connected to granny flat and then we can plug directly into the phone's LAN port?

Yes a suitable qualified electrician rewire and you could plug modem directly into phones LAN port in the Granny Flat.

---

@NikkstaaNoooowrote:
Or, If I did move the modem to the granny flat, had the phone line rewired back to the house, could I not just install a splitter for a second phone in the house. I read in the FTTN NBNCo site that you could add secondary phone connections but a splitter is required because we do not have the connection box like the other NBN set up, In any event, I don't need to have a phone in the granny flat so if the LAN port in the phone socket would work after rewiring, then that would be ideal.

---

A phone double adapter can be plugged into modems LAN port and then separate pair can be used to send the phone service back to the house via a second phone socket in granny Flat. The phone socket in house would need to be disconnected from the street wiring.

Existing

Street Cable Pair----------House Phone socket--------Modem----Phone

New

Street Cable Pair------------------------------------------Granny Flat Socket------Modem-- --Phone
                                                                                                                                    I
                       Phone----House Phone Socket------Granny Flat Socket 2----------------I

---

@NikkstaaNoooowrote:

If the LAN port won't work, I was thinking I might just hit Telstra up for the modem they are providing with their home bundle because I just discovered they sent me out the Gateway with the old wifi technology. The new one might provide a more stable wifi connection to connect to.

The new standard uses the 5G band which is faster over short distance but is not as good as the 2.4 G band over large distances.

The cheapest option is to install the LAN cable between house and Granny flat and plug in a second WiFi router in the Granny flat configured as a WIFi access point.

---

[NikkstaaNoooo]

Distance from my couch to the modem in the house would be no more than 15 metres. I have a WifI repeater but it won't hold the settings, it keeps reverting back to its factory ip address because the Telstra wifi signal keeps dropping and then I have to reset pc network settings and reboot the modem in order to connect to my original SSID.

I did a little investigating and it looks like there are frequent occurrences of DNS name resolution failure, connectivity drop outs and high latency issues.

I am just gonna run cat cable through the existing conduit and plug directly into the mode for the time being.

I think I need to have a discussion with Telstra about the connectivity issues though and get them to fix my service. For the first two months of my contract, there was no issue with wifi to the granny flat, we even got 5G. Now it is just awful. The only thing that has changed is whatever Telstra did in late Nov/early Dec when they announced the changes re: speed following the ACCC matters and told me they were giving me unlimited data, which is of no benefit to me when I can't connect half the time and when I do, it takes ages to load up a website. Only another 19 months to go under the contract LOL.

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

Regards,

Nikki

[cf4]

There might be a fault on your line. Could you post your modem line fault stats.

On the F@st 5355 they are located at
Advanced > Gateway Settings > Device Information > Statistics > xDSL

On the TG799, TG800 and Frontier they are located at
Advanced > Broadband > DSL Diagnostics

[NikkstaaNoooo]

Thanks @cf4

I think I will just run the LAN cable for now and see how that goes.  

I am going to give Telstra support a call too, to have a look into the wifi issue. When I first signed up with Telstra in late August, there was no issue with wifi to the granny flat but since December, it went down hill.  Regardless, I still need the cable so I can hardwire a couple of devices.

Thanks for your help.

[NikkstaaNoooo]

Thanks @cf4

I think I will just run the LAN cable for now and see how that goes.  

I am going to give Telstra support a call too at some stage, to have a look into the wifi issue. When I first signed up with Telstra in late August, there was no problem with wifi to the granny flat and it was fast enough; but since December, it all went down hill. 

Thanks for your help.

[NikkstaaNoooo]

Sorry, I didn't see this before I posted my last response .

Fault stats as requested:

Status                        UP
Connection Time       5d 20h57m20s
DSL Downstream     28.0 Mbit/s
DSL Upstream         6.4 Mbit/s

                                      Downstream        Upstream
Packets                                  0                         0
Bytes                                 180,08 MB               0
FEC Errors                            2741                   923
Code violations (CRC)             3                        0
Loss of frames [s]                                 0
Errored Seconds                                  2
Severely Errored Seconds                   0
Re-synchronisations                            0

There appears to be some sort of issue going on.
Thanks for looking into this.

[cf4]

Those stats look normal. It is only if there was a lot of severely errored seconds or resynchronisation that you would suspect an link problem.

In December there was a firmware update to the Gateway. Did the problem start occurring in February. There is a firmware update being released know that might fix the problem.

[mazinoz]

Just a thought but the decline in wifi speeds, disconnects could be due to a neighbour hacking / leeching on your wifi. I even had one setup the "Guest" wifi on my TG797, which would not have affected my wifi but was a bit unnerving. I developed a strong interest in wifi security, especially since there are 7 blocks of units nearby. They also had a go at bluetooth hacking after wifi hacking was reported. Love VPN!

[NikkstaaNoooo]

Problem started at the end of November/beginning of December and for about two weeks after it was virtually unusable. It was so slow it couldn't load pages and timed out. To do anything other than simple web browsing was impossible. It was incredibly frustrating when trying to use cloud bookkeeping software where you are continually saving/loading after data entry.
Now it just plays up intermittently. The speed fluctuates dramatically. It will suddenly drop to 1mbs and then go up to 15mbs, then spike to 25mbs then back down to 7mbs.
I reckon it has definitely gotten worse this month, but the problem was still there before. I am a bit clueless as to how it all works and what is normal and what is not. All I know is, it is annoying! Technology hates me.

[cf4]

Next time it happens check the link stats. It might be an intermittent fault and will only show up in the stats when it was happening. The stats you posted were for the previous 5 days and would have only showed up problems in the link during those five days.