I'm currently helping my mom out in her future move to her new home (it's a tough transition, moving from the home my family lived in for 25 years). I'm trying to help out as much as possible, but have hit a little stumbling block.

She'll be moving to a very nice 5-story townhome which was only built about 5 years ago. It looks like they were a bit forward-thinking, and wired the whole building with Cat5. The only problem is that I don't know how to wire this the way I want it as I'm not familiar with this part of network wiring. I'd appreciate some help from you guys, and I'll try to give you as much info as I can, which is difficult because I've only been able to see the house twice, and only been in the "wiring closet" (utility room) once.

- there are no phone jacks in the house, just RJ45 ports
- it looks like only one jack is wired for a POTS conenction, and they just hooked up a DECT phone system to that jack to get phone service throughout the home
- everything appears to go to the basement into that closet, where the security system box is, along with the Verizon FiOS phone box (the ONT box is on the back of the home, but it looks like there's a VOIP box in this closet)
- I can't tell where the individual wires from the various jacks come out, but it doesn't appear like they are connected - does that make sense?
- I don't know the terminology, but there's a block on the wall where the used Cat5 connections come in, and it is mostly unused
- the only things that appear to be wired into this block are the cables that go to the whole-home speaker system which is using Cat5 wiring, interestingly

Does it sound like I'll be able to get all these jacks networked? There is no need for POTS, as my mom has Ooma. I just don't know where to start here. Is there something I need to do with that block? Do I need to get a patchblock? Can I just find where the wires [hopefully] come out in that basement closet, put connectors on those (I can do that much), and pop them all into a switch?

Thanks for any help you can offer.

I believe those punchblocks are used only for telephone. So I guess those cat 5 wires you see coming in there are used for telephone jacks somewhere in the house? If you don't need a telphone jack in the rooms you can likely yank the wires from the punchblock, connect them to a CAT 5 patch panel and then onto a switch from the panel via patch cords. You can skip the patch panel if you wish it just makes things neater.

Stu

If it's like what my new home had, it's really easy to do what you want. It came stock with every jack wired for phone, and an extra run of unused CAT5e on the left. I took everything off the included phone splitter, used a standard network cable crimper to add ends to the rest of the wiring, and plopped a 16 port switch inside the box.

On the wall jack side, I bought some plates and inserts, and just rewired them. The inserts work just like a punchdown, where you put the wires in the insert and a plastic tool to push it down.

A friend of mine wired his entire house with lots of CAT6, then bought various modules to pipe audio or video over CAT6 cable. Routing it was accomplished by going to the wiring closet, and using a coupler to join the two jacks together.

I know you said POTS is unneeded, but you can plug RJ11/RJ12 plugs into RJ45 jacks. You could also rewire a cable with an RJ45 plug on one end if you were concerned with bending the jack's outer pins.


No, I don't follow.


A punchdown panel, more-or-less like this? (There are many different sorts.)

Maybe a picture would help?

Generally speaking, in a setup like this, you'll have all of your jacks throughout the house terminated in the closet. It sounds like maybe the cables are run to the closet, but they're not actually terminated anywhere?

If that's the case, and you do have a punchdown block like I linked to above, you'll need to get a punchdown tool to terminate them. Usually, you terminate every jack, but you might not have every jack patched into a switch (or other communications device).

Then you generally have your switches and whatnot mounted along side that patch panel, and run short cables between the jack terminations and the device you want to plug into.

If/when I ever move, the sucker/buyer that buys my house is most likely going to have to rewire for tv. I've changed it to suit MY needs, and as such is nowhere NEAR standard.

Oh I understand, and as I said, That's how they have it wired now. They appear to have only wired one jack in the home for phone, and set up a DECT phone system on that jack so they didn't have to wire the rest of them (I'm assuming all of this).


I just meant that I estimate there are anywhere from 8 to 15 RJ45 wall jacks in the home, yet I saw nothing in the closet in the basement with 8-15 wires plugged in. But there's nowhere else in the house I can think of that they might return to...


It doesn't look quite like that. It looks more like those blocks you see in telephone closets, but this one is actually marked "Cat5."


That appears to be the case, but now I just need to find the jack.

I'll be getting into the house on Friday morning, so I'll take some pictures...

Sorry to bring this thread back, but I felt the need to update it now that the home has been officially purchased and my mom will be moving in tomorrow. I was finally able to look at the wiring for more than a couple minutes and have pretty much figured out at least what I need to do to correct things, even if I'm not so sure why things are the way they are at present.

First off, take all that stuff I said about the speaker system out of the equation entirely. It's a completely different set of wires. Simply speaker wires throughout the house.

I've attached pictures of the wiring and an example outlet that's actually directly below the main jumble of wires.

First off, I pretty much have a full count of Cat5e wires coming out of the ceiling. I count about 9 jacks in the home, and 9 or 10 wires total. These wires all come out of the ceiling, travel behind the wood panel attached to the studs, and back up the bottom front of the panel and into a patchblock (I guess). The really confusing thing to me is that every single cable only has 2 of 4 pairs terminated in the block. The other 2 pairs are simply wrapped back down around the cable as pictured.

But after seeing this I decided hey, that's fine, I'll just snip everything, run it back up a little ways to give me some slack, put some RJ45 caps on the ends, and plug them all into a switch.

The only thing I'm worried about at this point is whether all the actual jacks in the house are wired correctly. I worry whether all the pairs are terminated or if they're in the right order.

Anyway, I felt I should update this post. If you can think of anything at all that I might be overlooking, I'd appreciate a heads up. I'll be looking at a few of the wall jacks tomorrow and putting some of those caps on. Wish me luck!

The reason for this is possibly that you only need 2 pairs for 10Mb and 100Mb. Instead of cutting the wires, why not just loosen them and re-wire everything with all 4 pairs, and then just use stubs from the patchpanel to the switch. Then you can use GigE. In that case, also make sure that the jacks are wired correctly.

Edit: I noticed that they have used a 'wrong' pair in the wiring. They've used the blue pair, which normally is connected to pin 4 & 5. The 'correct' pair should be the green pair.

Stig

The reason you're only seeing two pairs of each cat5 cable terminated is because you're looking at a house wired for telephone use only. One pair for each of two telephone lines.

You can usurp the full set of wires for Ethernet if you like. Make absolutely sure you know the correct pair ordering when you terminate your jacks.

People never heard of cable management or even just being tidy?

I guess at least it isn't cable tie hell...

Don't just put RJ45's on, order a CAT5e patch panel and punch down tool from Deep Surplus. When it comes, sacrifice one of your patch cables and try it out a few times, it's not dificult but you'll get much better with a few practice goes. Mount the thing high enough to give you enough slack, and punch 'em down. Then you can use nice short disposable patch cables from the punch down block to the switch. You can tear up patch cables and make one that'll let you use the jack for phone if you want in the future.

The only issue that you want to be careful of is rewiring the jacks in the wall. If you've got enough slack when you take them out of the wall, cut the end off and punch them down again using the 568B guide that should be on the jack. If you don't have enough slack, you'll have to hope you can figure out a custom wiring pattern that keeps everything on the correct pairs.

Matthew

Isn't that white rectangular thing in the picture a punch-down panel? Maybe not I guess, it's hard to tell from the photo and I can't see the other side to see if there are any jacks on it. It's probably just a splicing panel I suppose.

Also to note, when punching down your wires, don't leave so much untwisted and unsheathed wire. It looks like ass.

Hmmm... I can't seem to edit of use the reply button in the forum right now...

Matthew, thanks for the tip-off to "Deep Surplus" - Now to find out how much they charge for shipping to see if it's worth any cross-border shipments or using my US mailbox. I could use a 24 port patch panel to replace my 12 and while I'm at it I can also use the hinged wall mount since I don't have a proper rack.

Right now I also need some random keystone bits, like a 2 unit Decora insert which Home Depot wants $6 for up here (57 cents at DS).

Actually, it's in violation of the Cat5 spec, which requires that the wires be twisted at a certain pitch. It's actually possible to make the cable fail to be able to support higher speeds by doing that. You see a lot of phone installers wire connections that way, though, as there's no requirement in POTS/tip-and-ring for any twisting at all.

Here are some nice little video demonstrations of some basic network cable installation. Punching down, modular jacks, running wire, making a plan, etc...

http://www.cablesupply.com/Tutorials/Video/

I find the narrator's voice eerily soothing.

And I'll say it again, damn, Deep Surplus has some awesome prices. Not on everything, but on a lot of stuff.

Yeah, Deep Surplus is my go to place for bulk wiring supplies. If I need something terminated, I usually look to monoprice. Home depot is always a store of last resort for me. At least at orchard supply they'll be nice to you while you pay those prices.

It looks like a 66 block to me, which are pretty much phone only. 110 blocks are punch down blocks for network wiring, but they're a pain to deal with.

There's a way to do it right, there's a way to do it wrong, and then there's a way to do it fast enough to get it prepared for the Fios guy coming the next morning.

Again, it all came down to the fact that the previous owners never let me in to take a look at the wiring, so I was going on about 2 minutes of inspection. If I'd had even a week to prepare I probably would have gone all out and gotten the patch block and everything. Instead, I had no choice but to wait until yesterday to check it out, with Verizon coming two days later.

I was just thankful that I had just enough Cat5e connectors for all the cables. I should have cut them back a tiny bit, but didn't want to lose the slack. Instead I unwound that insane wraparound on the cables you guys noticed (what was with that?), and just snipped the wires and put the caps on them. I'm actually pretty good at it

Then all I was able to do was plug all the lines into an 8-port switch, and bring a cable tester around the house to see if all the lines were wired correctly.

Really, all this was moot because we'll have wireless in the house. The problem was I need to put the main wireless router in the office three stories up, and I didn't know which line went where.

Anyway, it's all good now (fingers crossed).