telephone setup on cat5, how about network too?

[wsl]

just moved into a house and the telephone is setup on cat5 cable using the blue pair, leaving the remaining 3 pair. i have read this is substantial for networking, but at what speed, considering 1 pair is in use by the telephones? and how would i connect the other 3 pairs to a cat5 jack that is suppose to use all 4? any downsides to setting it up this way? the one thing that confues me is that i have all 7 cat5 wires coming into a closet but i dont know which cable goes to wich phone jack in the house....any way to test and find out which cable goes to which room?
thanks, Ben

[Sterling_Aug]

Ethernet only uses 4 of the 8 wires in a CAT5 cable. Many people use the other two pairs for two telephone lines.

[GSalisbury]

http://www.swhowto.com/ is a nice discussion of wiring for data, phone and video.

It came from a reference in the langalist.

It includes descriptions of using cat5 for phone lines.

I think it's effectively done.

[doc1one]

Yep you can do it. To check the wiring in you home use a simple buzzer or low voltage light bulb. Attach the wiring of one of the cables White/blue Blue/white to the two leads of the buzzer go around the house with a battery and connect the White/Blue Blue/white to the battery at each location. Continue until the buzzer starts buzzing. If you are running from one computer to another computer you have to reverse the send/receive wires of one of the computers. If you are going into a hub you wire both ends of the cable the same.

Good luck.

[Nightblade]

Originally posted by wsl
just moved into a house and the telephone is setup on cat5 cable using the blue pair, leaving the remaining 3 pair. i have read this is substantial for networking, but at what speed, considering 1 pair is in use by the telephones? and how would i connect the other 3 pairs to a cat5 jack that is suppose to use all 4? any downsides to setting it up this way? the one thing that confues me is that i have all 7 cat5 wires coming into a closet but i dont know which cable goes to wich phone jack in the house....any way to test and find out which cable goes to which room?
thanks, Ben


First: you need to know the color code
Pair # : Tip : Ring (Tip being Negative / Ring is Positive)
1 : White : Blue
2 : White : Orange
3 : White : Green
4 : White : Brown

Second: to find out which wire goes where use a voltage meter that show resistance. Then open up the jack in the room you want to use short pair 2 (since 1 has dial tone on it) go to the panel in the closet and look for the short on the wires.

Now the difficulty comes in splicing the wires from jack "A" to jack "B" do NOT use wore nuts since they're not designed for this small guage solid copper wire and you'll lose signal integrity. You are going to have to find specialized connectors for CAT 3 / 5 wire i.e. 3M's Scothloks or you can use a punch down block or you can buy a RJ-45 connection crimper and buy a hub and place it in the panel. (Highly recommend if you want to connect multiple computers together)

Third: Your best bet is to place an additional jack for the network in the face plate for the network. I would wire them up in a straight through config.

RJ-45 Pin config:
1 - White of orange pair (W/O)
2 - Orange (O)
3 - Not Used (W/G)
4 - Blue (Bl)
5 - White of Blue Pair (W/Bl)
6 - Not Used (G)
7 - Not Used (W/Br)
8 - Not Used (Br)

Straight-Through Pins
1 -> 1
2 -> 2
3 -> 3
6 -> 6

Cross-Over
1 -> 3
2 -> 6
3 -> 1
6 -> 2

Crossover cables are need for 2 Computers to talk to each other (otherwise they're both talking and receiving on the transmit wires instead transmitting on the transmit and receiveing on the receive) If you use a hub you will not have to worry about this unless you try to connect a DSL/Cable modem to the hub or link a hub to a hub.

Now to CORNfuse you some more, since the Blue pair is used for the telephone. I would use the Green Pair as the Blue in the Network. So as far as the network is concerned just replace the Blue pair with the Green, and use the Brown instead of the Orange. This way is you get another phone line. The poor Telephone tech doesn't hose up your Ethernet Network.

So your netowrk would use Pin 1 of the RJ-45 would use the White of the Brown pair, and 2 would use the Brown wire of the brown pair.

You can pick up RJ-45 crimpers for $20 and up, a 10Mb Hub for around another $20 (100Mb are more), and some RJ-45 connectors and get an extra 20 ft of CAT 5 wire for around $10.