| The i-Plate (iPlate) is a filter for use on ADSL Broadband lines to improve the speed & stability of the connection. Since they're easy to install yourself, there are no costly engineer visits required. When connected to the master socket, the iPlate filters the 'bell wire' which used to be needed to make our old-fashioned analogue telephones ring. However, with today's touch-tone phones, this bell wire is now redundant and its presence in a master socket actually causes digital interference on the ADSL line.
Some lines have seen up to 4Mb increases in speed although improvements of 1.5Mb were found to be more typical in a benchmark survey of 36,000 filtered lines. Since the iPlate also helps to make ADSL connections more stable, there can be Broadband performance benefits even when line speed is not noticeably increased. The same benchmark study of 36,000 lines showed that filtered lines typically had 20% fewer re-trains (lost connections) and a 45% reduction in error rate.
A good way to tell if your line is likely to benefit from bell wire filtering is to compare Broadband performance test results when the modem is plugged into the master socket, versus plugging it into an extension socket. If you see an improvement in broadband performance when the master socket is used, this is a good indication that an iPlate will help. |
