Cat5 Phone Jacks, but what do I do?

[unspeakable]

I have Phone Jacks in my house, and I recently opened one of them up to be greeted with a cat5 cable. I though great, because now I can use Ethernet, but then I noticed that some of the cables coming out of the cat5 cable were not connected to the phone jack. All the solder points for the phone jack had a cable connected, but some cables from the cat5 one weren't connected. What can and should I do.

 

[kanewolf]

Ethernet wiring uses all 8 wires. Phone uses either two or four. You would have to change out your wall plates to ethernet ports and reattach the wire. BUT, that does you no good unless the other end of those wire(s) is somewhere you can put an ethernet switch. So your next step is to see what is on the other end of the wires.

 

[13thmonkey]

I couldn't tell the difference between a bit if cat5 coming out of the wall and telephone cable. Expect things to fail if you start messing with it.

 

[unspeakable]

So there are four wires soldered to the plate and another 4 set of to the side. Thanks for you help

Update: also how would I find out what is on the other side of the wall. I Know how to replace the phone jack with an Ethernet jack, but how would I find out if it works.

 

[kanewolf]

There is no definite answer. It depends on your house construction. Is there a basement? Can you see the cable coming down into the basement? Have you checked other phoen ports? They may be daisy-chained. If that is the case, you can't use them for ethernet. Is there anywhere in the house with a lot of cat 5 cables coming to the same spot? What does your outside phone access box look like? Without being at YOUR house, it is difficult for anyone to help you.

 

[13thmonkey]

So there are four wires soldered to the plate and another 4 set of to the side. Thanks for you help

Update: also how would I find out what is on the other side of the wall. I Know how to replace the phone jack with an Ethernet jack, but how would I find out if it works.

Phone cables can also be 4 pairs, does that mean it is functionality cat5? I doubt it, internal telephone cables would have a much greater ability to cope with a poor signal to noise ratio, compared to actual cat5.

I could be wrong and it could be the same stuff.

 

[unspeakable]

I found the exact same sanerio in a different room. I do not have a basement, but we have a garage

In the garage we don't have anything but a fuse box. Any possibilities that it is in the attic?

Found it outside, but I can't figure out how to open the casing

 

[bill001g]

You may be out of luck. To use as ethernet the jacks must all run indvidually back to a central location. Most phone lines are daisy chained together. A indicator of this is if there is more than 1 wire in the box behind the jack. They will have spliced the cables together for phones. Phones that run back to a central location will have only a single cable, these you have a much better chance to convert to use as ethernet.

Now what I have seen someone propose doing when he had daisy chained phone jacks was to place a switch in every room to act as the splice rather than twisting the wires. I don't remember if he ever posted back if he was successful.

 

[unspeakable]

Thanks to everyone who responded. I opened up the box and saw cat5 cables daisy chained together so I can't use it for Ethernet. Gotta start running 50ft Ethernet cables round now. Thanks