House wiring best practices?

[penql]

Hi,

after a frustrating week with no internets, now better but not yet super ( yay sonic, boo at&t, thanks Claire & Joseph & all at sonic support) I want to make sure that my side if the mpoe is as good as it can be. Can you recommend a good resource that explains the best ways to set up simple house wiring - 2 phones & fusion, what do splitters/filters do, where to put them, what kind of wire etc.

TIA

Mark

[kenlui]

https://secure.dslreports.com/faq/bells ... Procedures

[penql]

Thanks!

[phonetek]

That's an interesting link kenlui, Thanks for posting it!

Mark, Are you thinking about running the cables in the wall and putting the jacks on a flush mount faceplate? It really makes for a clean install. If you've never done it before, it can be a little tricky without some special tools. But I might be able to give you some tips to help you get it done.

I like the idea of placing a splitter at the NID instead of having filters all over the house. Then you can run the filtered phone and the unfiltered DSL signal over the same cable if you happen to want your modem and a telephone at the same location. Nowadays I just run CAT5e cable for voice service.

This outlet happens to have an Ethernet cable too. But you can see how I "split" the 1 voice cable to 2 jacks.

[penql]

Thanks phonetek, looks great! - Yep, splitter at the NID is my plan. I put ethernet all over the place when we had a house remodel about 12 years ago, then they invented wireless - heh, lotsa unused cable down there now, so I figured I would run a short cat5 wire from NID/splitter to the patch panel for the ethernet, put my modem & router there, I dunno, really I don't know what makes sense except I don't want to be in this pickle of having my inside house wiring (ca. 1923 house, wiring looks dicey but isn't really) be an excuse for ATT to blow off my ticket (do you sense a little peevishness there?).

Issue #1 now is which splitter to get, where from.

Mark

[wa2ibm]

I got some of these. They seem to work very well.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dl ... 249wt_1046

Since it's on eBay, you may have to look for other entries if the entry I pointed to sells. out.

[kenlui]

Issue #1 now is which splitter to get, where from.

Which to get depends how your NID looks like. If it's a modern one where you have internal modules, get an internal splitter. If you have an older one without modules, get an external one. There are just a few manufacturers so as long as you get one that meets your specs it should work. Just get one that's good for ADSL2+ for Sonic Fusion/legacy ADSL1. As wa2ibm and the DSLreports link recommend, eBay is a good source.

[phonetek]

Sounds like you have a great start with all the CAT5 runs already. Good plan to extend Fusion from the NID to your patch panel and then distribute from there. Is your fusion bonded? If you wanted to skip the expense of a splitter you can just put your filters inline at the patch panel on the ports you use for phones. That would keep the clutter at the patch panel.

There is some concern about possible damage to your CAT5 jacks by plugging in regular telephone line cords --It works fine for the phones but may, or may not bend some pins in the jacks over time. That could be a problem if you ever wanted to use it for Ethernet again. Here is a discussion if you're interested: viewtopic.php?f=10&t=388

If you're concerned, You could swap out the CAT5 jacks for a 6p6c voice jack if you want to preserve the data jacks. Or, in a pinch I've made all kinds of splitters and adapters to keep existing infrastructure in tact yet still use the cabling for all kinds of mixed purposes. You could even run both voice AND Ethernet over a single CAT5 if needed...

[kenlui]

If you're concerned, You could swap out the CAT5 jacks for a 6p6c voice jack if you want to preserve the data jacks. Or, in a pinch I've made all kinds of splitters and adapters to keep existing infrastructure in tact yet still use the cabling for all kinds of mixed purposes. You could even run both voice AND Ethernet over a single CAT5 if needed...

These days, I would only allow 8P8C connectors to the wall. You lose too much flexibility if you ever wanted to replace your regular phones with VoIP then you're stuck with having to re-punch RJ-45s. Since GbE switches is so inexpensive, you won't be able to use it on a Cat 5 that has one of its pairs commandeered for telephone.

[phonetek]

These days, I would only allow 8P8C connectors to the wall. You lose too much flexibility if you ever wanted to replace your regular phones with VoIP then you're stuck with having to re-punch RJ-45s. Since GbE switches is so inexpensive, you won't be able to use it on a Cat 5 that has one of its pairs commandeered for telephone.

Ideally, each location would get at least 2 cables. 1 voice and 1 data, minimum. Which seems to work ok for residential and small business. I prefer at least 1 voice, 2 data. And often run 2/2 in a commercial setting if warranted.

Just this week I cabled a gas station/Convenience mart. Phones, Fire Alarm, Burglar Alarm, Pump Monitoring, Credit Card, Customer ATM, and FAX were all still POTS based. The POS system, Managers PC, and Security DVR were IP based. Some of that stuff is available in an IP solution, but they didn't choose that route for whatever reason.

I like the idea of completely modular cabling systems. But for many deployments it would require a huge number of "drops". You end up with a bunch of 8P8C cables serving nothing but 2C devices. One 4 pair cable can serve 4 POTS devices.

here's one cable split to 3 devices at the Managers desk. So, 3 cables instead of 5. The security guys slipped in behind me and added cables to my location, so I had to get creative with the faceplate...