Cat5E phone line converting it to LAN; how?

[Morphx2]

So I just realized that the builder installed Cat5E lines for the phone lines in the house, which arent used at all; we have no phones. So I would LOVE to switch it to use the internet instead for nice LAN speeds!

How would I go about this? I have the crimper tool already, is it just a matter of putting the end connector on it with the correct colors?

Would it be cable modem -> router/empty ethernet space -> wall?

 

[RealBeast]

You are quite lucky if you got wired for Ethernet instead of phone lines. Cable modem to router to all of the Ethernet runs wherever they converge (you may need an 8 or 16 port switch to connect them all depending on how many there are).

Best to use 568B standard and crimp connectors on all the lines. HERE is a good page on attaching your connectors. The in wall connectors should already be connected, but best to pull them off and check that they were wired for all 8 wires, even though only 2 pair (4 wires) are used for gigabit Ethernet -- just needs to be the correct 4. Easiest thing to do on most wall connectors is just attach the wires as shown on the connector for 568B.

The most common wall connectors are Leviton and they actually have the correct color pattern printed on the connectors, just use the 568B and not the A.

 

[Morphx2]

i was trying to figure out where they actually converge; any hints on finding the spot?

 

[RealBeast]

Most likely at the phone box on the exterior or in the attic if you have a single story. Otherwise they usually converge in a common point behind a panel somewhere, you would just have to look behind all wall panels in closets and the like.

If you don't have an Ethernet line tester, the low cost alternative is a pair of dual end alligator clips and a 9 volt battery at one end then use another set of clips and a 9V light bulb at the other end to figure out which lines go to which rooms. Just connect the same color pairs to test their location.

 

[Morphx2]

ok, ill give it a shot tomorrow, look around, and let ya know

 

[Morphx2]

The builder of the house says there is no phone box inside the house

Any ideas?

I did see one cable going inside the house, but after that I have no idea where it might go (if it even is the phone line, but probably is)

 

[RealBeast]

The lines have to all have a common point. I suspect that all of the cables must converge at the box on an outside wall where the phone line comes in. Take a look inside the phone box on the outside wall, possibly near your electric meter. Sometimes you just have to look everywhere and get lucky.

 

[Morphx2]

Will do. 5 more hours of work. I'll take pics later too and see if we can figure it out

 

[tomatthe]

One thing to watch out for is phone lines wired inline which you can't do with Ethernet. I've done this same setup on two different houses and its a really nice way to go about it, but I would keep that in mind. In both locations I had phone lines that the same wire was running so say a phone jack on one side of the room, and then it wrapped around to the other side of the room for another phone jack. I believe Gbit Ethernet actually requires all 4 pairs not just the two pairs, but you can run 100Mbit with just 2 pairs. In the situations that I ran into with the inline wiring I basically split out 4 wires from wherever the switch was to the first jack using say the Orange / Green / Orange White / Green White, and knew how I had wired these into the port on the starting end and matched them as need be at that jack. The remaining wires had a different head on them at the switch, and at the first jack in the room I connected them to the wires that went on around to the other outlet so that both outlets then had 100Mbit which was the best I could do. This goes against all wiring codes, restrictions, etc, but works fine for basic home networking.

As RealBeast mentioned there is very likely a gray box on the outside of your house that looks something like the one in these pics.

http://pre-wire.tripod.com/interfaces_and_protectors.html

You will have to undo all the wiring in that box and trace all the lines into the rooms they run into which I guess is fairly obvious.

 

[RealBeast]

Yes, while 1000Base-T requires four twisted pairs, you can just leave one cable out of the Ethernet and use it for a phone line that goes to a base station (such as a Panasonic DECT 6.0 unit that wirelessly connects up to 6 distant units over a 1.9GHz frequency that has great distance performance). Then use all the rest for your Ethernet network.

 

[jsmithepa]

Before you get too excited, do you have at least 2 pairs of wires sticking out of the wall? 'cuz that's minimum for ethernet. Phone connection requires 1 pair only. And then, if the junction is outside in a little box, how are u going to get your modem/router to this spot?

 

[Morphx2]

I don't know, but I found this

http://imgur.com/a/yUDF4

 

[RealBeast]

Before you get too excited, do you have at least 2 pairs of wires sticking out of the wall? 'cuz that's minimum for ethernet. Phone connection requires 1 pair only. And then, if the junction is outside in a little box, how are u going to get your modem/router to this spot?

Well the OP says that he has CAT5e, which will suffice: "So I just realized that the builder installed Cat5E lines for the phone lines in the house, which aren't used at all; we have no phones."

Don't worry about the lines converging outside, that can be overcome.

 

[Morphx2]

There are two cables in the phone line box

 

[RealBeast]

Then there must be a "homerun" line to where the rest of the lines converge. The trick is figuring out where that spot is located.

Do you have an attic? Lines are often run to a common point in an attic to allow access yet protect them from the weather.

 

[Morphx2]

No attic. I will call the people who wired the house tomorrow, it's a 2 yr old house, I'm first owner. Has two floors though

 

[RealBeast]

I don't know, but I found this

The]http://imgur.com/a/yUDF4

The coaxial line are for cable TV. I see no evidence that the phone lines converge outside, which I would not expect. They are usually inside somewhere to protect them from the elements.

 

[RealBeast]

No attic. I will call the people who wired the house tomorrow, it's a 2 yr old house, I'm first owner. Has two floors though

Any information that you can get will help. In a 2 story the lines are usually behind some innocuous cover panel that can be located anywhere in the house.

 

[jsmithepa]

http://imgur.com/a/yUDF4

All I see here is the Comcast Cable TV hookup, no obvious "phone."

 

[Morphx2]

Yes, I saw the same. One of the wires that goes into that big tube is blue and looked like a possibility of a cat5, but the writing is all scratched and painted it's hard to see

 

[Morphx2]

I found something interesting

The phone jack downstairs in the kitchen has two wires

The one upstairs in the bedroom has one wire

And there are no other phone jacks in the house

Is it possible that with the two downstairs, one goes upstairs?

 

[Morphx2]

im going to guess that is the place of convergence

Basically upstairs jack to downstairs jack, then the second cable goes somewhere else to a mystery location

the two cables are tied together in the same jack too.

 

[RealBeast]

If they actually did wire with CAT5 then each room should have a blank plate with the wires behind it, since you have no other phone jacks. It would be very unusual to run CAT5 and not create an access to it in most of the rooms and then just cover it up with a cover plate.

Are you sure that the builder ran Ethernet cable? How did you get that information?

 

[Morphx2]

Well, the cables say CAT5e. I looked in the other two rooms and there were no blank plates which I found odd too

 

[DerekVGH]

It's actually fairly common for phone line installers to wire phone jacks in a home using loops, where there is one wire that travels from jack to jack and then runs to a point where the phone service comes in to the house, like a mechanical room. The installer can use either flat cable (4 or 6 or even 8 conductor) or Cat 5e cable for this - either will work.

What some installers don't understand is that Ethernet requires home runs for each jack - it doesn't work as a looped install like an analog phone system will. Thus, an installer or builder can say that the house is "wired with Cat 5e" even though it is totally useless for creating a home network. I've had to explain this concept to homeowners when they want to use their existing Cat 5e wiring for a network. They're not too happy to learn that I would need to pull all new wiring in order to set up a wired network for them because the phone installer looped the wiring instead of home-running it.