Page 1 of 1

Request for Telephone/DSL Wiring advice

Posted: Mon Jan 23, 2012 9:37 pm
by toast0
Since my kid has started to crawl, he's found the phone cable between the wall jack and the DSL modem, and thinks it's a great toy. On the plus side, I have a basement under a good amount of the house, so cable access is relatively easy; on the minus side, there are a lot of options.

Existing phone wiring: several jacks throughout the home, home run (cat3) to the NID outside. Only two jacks are in use; one in the office (cordless phone and fax machine/wifi printer), other in the living room with dangly cable going behind the tv. Getting 6 mbps ADSL behind an RT.

Existing network wiring: patch panel and switch in the basement; two ethernet ports behind the entertainment center to a keystone plate with one spot unused. Linux PC in the entertainment center does routing/firewall/nat.

Option 1: pull a new home run (cat5 because I have a box of that) from the NID to the keystone plate, and terminate with a RJ-11 jack. (Option 1a: scavenge the run from an unused jack). DSL modem is still in the living room, but cable is secured from infant.

Option 2: pull a new home run from the NID to the RJ-45 patch panel; plug a RJ-11 cable in to go from the patch panel to the modem, and pull a new ethernet line to connect the modem back to the living room. (How bad is it to terminate a phone line on an RJ-45 patch panel?) Downside is I can't see the blinky lights without going into the basement and probably can't have my wife tell me which lights are blinking when things stop working.

Option 3: pull an ethernet (or two) to the fax machine/wifi printer (could be a wired printer), and move the modem there. (Would reduce to one jack in use, might count for something). Complication here is I do have to go into crawl space to access this jack.

Option 4: something I haven't thought of.

Thanks for your time and advice!

Re: Request for Telephone/DSL Wiring advice

Posted: Sun Feb 12, 2012 9:20 pm
by toast0
Went with option 2; everything seems to be working fine. :)

Did find some creative wiring at one of the unused jacks I de-wired:

Image I guess orange is almost red, and green is green; works for someone who doesn't understand twisted pair. Not sure what you'd do for a second line.

Re: Request for Telephone/DSL Wiring advice

Posted: Mon Feb 13, 2012 11:30 am
by dane
toast0 wrote:Went with option 2; everything seems to be working fine. :)

Did find some creative wiring at one of the unused jacks I de-wired:

Image I guess orange is almost red, and green is green; works for someone who doesn't understand twisted pair. Not sure what you'd do for a second line.
What you've ended up with here is a split pair though, which won't have the same performance as ones which are twisted. Instead, line "one" would generally be blue; look for the blue wire with white striping, and the white wire with blue striping. They'll be twisted together, which cancels out interference. Use these two instead. (Or, same thing, green/white, white/green, etc.) But taking one wire from one color and one wire from another on Cat-5 cable is not the best configuration.

Re: Request for Telephone/DSL Wiring advice

Posted: Mon Feb 13, 2012 2:19 pm
by kenlui
What Dane meant was you should follow wiring convention for twisted pair and your quad-wire pairs.

http://www.scheerfun.org/telco/ shows the proper pairing between legacy telco and twisted pair. Keep the pairs twisted.

Re: Request for Telephone/DSL Wiring advice

Posted: Mon Feb 13, 2012 8:00 pm
by toast0
Indeed, this was something a previous owner had wired (and I thought was bad enough to share). Definitely used the blue pair for the new line I ran.

Re: Request for Telephone/DSL Wiring advice

Posted: Mon Feb 13, 2012 11:05 pm
by kenlui
toast0 wrote:Option 2: ... (How bad is it to terminate a phone line on an RJ-45 patch panel?)
If you leave the RJ-11 connector there for an extended amount of time the ends will protrude and force pins 1 and 8 of your RJ-45 jack bent in a way which may prevent you from using it with an RJ-45 connector in the future. Best to use an RJ-45-to-RJ-11 adapter.

An alternative is using a Leviton 47609-EPM Telephone Patching Expansion Board that accepts RJ-45s. It has a 110 punch down block for up to 4 lines coming from the telco. This board uses T568A for the punch down but your patch panel can be wired in either -A or -B. In this case, the terminating jack accepting the phone would need the RJ-45-to-RJ-11 adapter.

Re: Request for Telephone/DSL Wiring advice

Posted: Thu Feb 16, 2012 11:50 am
by phonetek
kenlui wrote:
toast0 wrote:Option 2: ... (How bad is it to terminate a phone line on an RJ-45 patch panel?)
If you leave the RJ-11 connector there for an extended amount of time the ends will protrude and force pins 1 and 8 of your RJ-45 jack bent in a way which may prevent you from using it with an RJ-45 connector in the future. Best to use an RJ-45-to-RJ-11 adapter.
Yes, unfortunately I have seen RJ11connectors bend RJ45 pins too. Which is too bad. I'm sure the reason pair one is on pins 4 and 5 in the first place is so you can do exactly this. When I extend a circuit to a patch panel I like to use the last port. Typically it will stay this configuration forevermore anyway. And if someone does decide to use an JR11 line cord I have found it will hold the connector just fine indefinitely.

What I like to do when faced with Rj11-to-RJ45 is to just cut the RJ11 connector off one end of the line cord and crimp an RJ45 on it. Clean, and custom.

But this is my typical MO for SOHO installs... best of both worlds! --kinda
Image

Re: Request for Telephone/DSL Wiring advice

Posted: Thu Feb 16, 2012 7:57 pm
by toast0
kenlui wrote:
toast0 wrote:Option 2: ... (How bad is it to terminate a phone line on an RJ-45 patch panel?)
If you leave the RJ-11 connector there for an extended amount of time the ends will protrude and force pins 1 and 8 of your RJ-45 jack bent in a way which may prevent you from using it with an RJ-45 connector in the future. Best to use an RJ-45-to-RJ-11 adapter.

Thanks, I'll get an adapter (or crimp a rj-45 end onto a telephone cable), so my patch panel doesn't get messed up.