Question Home network

[Janz3n]

Recently purchased my house that's wired for Ethernet in each room. I'm looking to get it working and have done my research. I have 8 Ethernet ports throughout the house. All the wires run into one closet on the main floor.

I have purchased the following.

8 port unmanaged switch
12 port wall mount patch panel
10 1' Ethernet cables
Punch down tool

My plan is to mount everything neatly to a board and screen it into the wall. As I was about to start I forgot that all 8 wires run into the basement utility room and now I'm lost. All 8 wires in the basement room go to nothing and I don't understand why. Do I need another patch panel and switch in the basement? I guess I'm confused as to what I do in the basement. I'm guessing if I book up the wires to a patch panel to switch to router in the upstairs closet nothing will work since all the wires in the basement aren't connected. Any help would be great.

I was in contact with the person that wired the house and offered to connect it all last year but he has been ignoring me and I gave up.

 

[COLGeek]

Just to be clear, you have 8 sets of ethernet cabling terminating on the main floor and 8 others in the basement. Is that correct?

Do you know if the 8 ethernet ports in the rooms are actually connected? Are there also phone jacks in those rooms?

 

[Janz3n]

Just to be clear, you have 8 sets of ethernet cabling terminating on the main floor and 8 others in the basement. Is that correct?

Do you know if the 8 ethernet ports in the rooms are actually connected? Are there also phone jacks in those rooms?

Correct 8 up and8 down. All ports in rooms are connected to Ethernet cable. No phone jacks.

 

[Janz3n]

I do remember being told it was wired this way to put the router either upstairs or downstairs which is wire the wires are downstairs as well.

 

[bill001g]

Ethernet is point to point. The wires from each wall jack can only go one place. There have to be 8 more wall jacks or something very strange is going on. So lets say all 8 wires from the rooms run to the main room. That means the 8 wires in the basement connect to something else.

A ethernet jack can not connect to 2 locations. I would take the plate apart and see what is inside. Maybe there is a second cable in each jack.

 

[Janz3n]

Ethernet is point to point. The wires from each wall jack can only go one place. There have to be 8 more wall jacks or something very strange is going on. So lets say all 8 wires from the rooms run to the main room. That means the 8 wires in the basement connect to something else.

A ethernet jack can not connect to 2 locations. I would take the plate apart and see what is inside. Maybe there is a second cable in each jack.

I did inspect behind the wall plates. Only one wire per room. I may break down and send the guy that wired it a message.

 

[jsmithepa]

A ethernet jack can not connect to 2 locations. I would take the plate apart and see what is inside. Maybe there is a second cable in each jack.

Unless the prior owner had this nifty idea, hey split the cables, so the junction can be in the closet or basement as later to decide. Of course no-standard.

OP, so your #1 task, find out and label the 2 heads to those snakes.

Well I sure hope they were wired for computers, 'cuz sometimes they are for home automation/alarms, multi-room audio, landlines.

 

[Janz3n]

Decided to quickly punch down all 8 in the closet, connect one port at a time and go around the house with a laptop and cable. Figured out only the upstairs wall ports are working so I'm assuming the wires go from the upstairs closet to the basement then run to each room in the basement. What I don't get is why there are 8 wires in the basement if there's only 3 wall ports down there. Unless there's another I don't know about. Or is the 4th wire for something else.

So my question still stands I guess, how do I hook the wires downstairs together? And how do I know which one goes to which?

To clarify. This was was originally built by the builder for himself and family. He decided part way through to sell it instead and ended up building another house next to me for himself. This made it easy to find the guy that wired the house but like I said, he offered to do this for free if I pay for parts but after contacting him twice and still no response I decided to just do it all myself.

After completing this project my next is to get all the built in speakers hooked up and purchase an expensive receiver.

 

[COLGeek]

Could the extra cables be for a home security system?

 

[Janz3n]

No, I know for sure there's no security system.

 

[Janz3n]

This is where I'm at for today. Needs some cable management still.

 

[Janz3n]

I found another wall port in my master bedroom next to the bed. Still doesn't explain the 8 wires downstairs. I'll be hooking the rest of the cables up to the patch panel on the weekend in preparation for figuring out the basement wires but I don't think I'll be able to do that without any special tools.

 

[bill001g]

There are cable locator toner devices. Today I just can't find the link to cheap device I like. You will find lots on amazon. You plug a sender unit into one end of the cable and then use the detector to see which wire you hear the signal on. They have some really expensive units that put out a lot of signal and you can follow the wires in the walls. I never could justify spending more the unit I bought cost like $15.

 

[Janz3n]

There are cable locator toner devices. Today I just can't find the link to cheap device I like. You will find lots on amazon. You plug a sender unit into one end of the cable and then use the detector to see which wire you hear the signal on. They have some really expensive units that put out a lot of signal and you can follow the wires in the walls. I never could justify spending more the unit I bought cost like $15.

That's not a bad price. Although I'm in Canada so it's likely to be double that. I was hoping to not have to use that. I was thinking of just connecting all the wires together since it doesn't really matter if how they match up in the end. What do I use to connect the 8 wires together to ultimately make 4 wires from basement ports to closet upstairs.

 

[bill001g]

It depends what you mean connect. With ethernet you need electronics ....ie a switch...to connect different connections. You could just plug all the cables into a switch and you now have everything connected to everything else.

If you mean you just want to say splice the wires together to make one long continuous cable between 2 location that depends on how fancy you want to get. You can just brute force strip off the insulation and connect the correct colors together. You want to minimize the amount of wire you untwist. They also make small punch down splice things. Kinda like a keystone jack except it is used to connect 2 wires. You can also I suppose put it into a patch panel and then run a short ethernet patch cable between the 2 ports.

 

[Janz3n]

Yeah I'm not sure what I want to do. I'm going to track down the installer again and ask him what he was thinking.

As for the 9th Ethernet port in the master bedroom that's making things more confusing. Is it possible it's a telephone line? It would be the only one in the house. I took a look behind the wall and it looks like blue cat5e. Says cat5e on the port.

 

[digitalgriffin]

Decided to quickly punch down all 8 in the closet, connect one port at a time and go around the house with a laptop and cable. Figured out only the upstairs wall ports are working so I'm assuming the wires go from the upstairs closet to the basement then run to each room in the basement. What I don't get is why there are 8 wires in the basement if there's only 3 wall ports down there. Unless there's another I don't know about. Or is the 4th wire for something else.

So my question still stands I guess, how do I hook the wires downstairs together? And how do I know which one goes to which?

To clarify. This was was originally built by the builder for himself and family. He decided part way through to sell it instead and ended up building another house next to me for himself. This made it easy to find the guy that wired the house but like I said, he offered to do this for free if I pay for parts but after contacting him twice and still no response I decided to just do it all myself.

After completing this project my next is to get all the built in speakers hooked up and purchase an expensive receiver.

Expensive receiver is not the way to go here. Even my $5000 11.2 receiver isn't designed for whole house audio even though it supports 4 zones. There are specialized house amps for this.

 

[digitalgriffin]

Yeah I'm not sure what I want to do. I'm going to track down the installer again and ask him what he was thinking.

As for the 9th Ethernet port in the master bedroom that's making things more confusing. Is it possible it's a telephone line? It would be the only one in the house. I took a look behind the wall and it looks like blue cat5e. Says cat5e on the port.

Telephone lines would have at most 6 wires (6 pins). (RJ25) But most are single and double pair (RJ11, RJ14 respectively)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registered_jack#RJ11,_RJ14,_RJ25_wiring

 

[bniknafs9]

What is your problem with the wires ? if the keystones are connected they should work

 

[Janz3n]

Expensive receiver is not the way to go here. Even my $5000 11.2 receiver isn't designed for whole house audio even though it supports 4 zones. There are specialized house amps for this.

I'll need a 2 zone that can play two seperate audio at the same time. One for the living room tv speakers and then 4 out door speakers in the covered porch. From what I've been looking at it's going to be around $1000 canadian or more for a Yamaha network receiver. Iv read the Yamaha app is the best and I planned on using a tablet to control it all. If you have any suggestions I wouldn't mind hearing.

 

[Janz3n]

What is your problem with the wires ? if the keystones are connected they should work

Hard to explain. I have a closet on the main floor with 8 cat5e wires. I have 8 more in the basement that aren't terminated. I terminated all 8 in the main floor and only the main floor ports work which makes me think the 8 in the basement need to be connected to essentially make 4 wires that connect the remaining 4 in the main floor to the 4 ports in the basement and I'm not sure how to connect the 8 basement wires.

 

[jsmithepa]

Go with what u know. If your main floor closet is where the modem is, and those 8 cables, you verified are connected to rooms, then ignore what you see in the basement.

 

[Janz3n]

when all 8 wires are terminated to the patch panel and connected to the router only the upstairs ports work, non of the basement ports work and i think its because the 8 wires in the basement should be connected to gether to make 4 wires.

 

[jsmithepa]

Please use correct terminology. A CAT CABLE has 4 pairs of twisted wires/8 wires total, per cable.

In ethernet, a full cable, with all 4 pairs SHOULD be used for a single connection. If this is not the case during your verification then the prior owner did something non-standard.

 

[Janz3n]

Sorry. I'm talking cables not wires. 8 cables in the basement that if connected together would make 4 cables.