[SOLVED] House wired for Cat5e..need help...

[Maliki2]

So my girlfriends house is wired for Cat5e in each of the bedrooms (total of 3), and 1 in living room. The drop points for the wires are in the basement. Upon going to the basement I found 4 terminated Cat5e cables and 4 terminated coax cables. There was also 1 non terminated Cat5E cable and one non terminated coax cable. I'm assuming the non terminated coax is the wire from the outside of the house. The thing I can't figure out is what is the 5th non terminated Cat5e cable for?

 

[jsmithepa]

Is going somewhere, ur job, if you MUST know what this cable is doing, is to find out where the other end is. Or u can simply ignore it, if u don't need it. Unconnected cables do no damage.

 

[Maliki2]

Thanks. Thats what stumps me. This is a new build. I'm not there but will investigate more when I get a chance. 3 bedrooms and 1 living room. Not sure why or where that would be going and not sure why they wouldn't have terminated that one as well if the others are teminated. Just driving me nuts while I sit at work and try to figure it out.

 

[jsmithepa]

Not sure why or where that would be going and not sure why they wouldn't have terminated that one as well if the others are teminated.

Gotta stop thinking everything people do have significance and purpose. The cable could had been left there because the prior owner thinks, before I close the wall, I can use another cable run, for... home automation, extra phone line, HVAC control, or even a spare who knows, then he forgot about it, or never get to the point where he decides what to do with the spare.

 

[Maliki2]

Well the prior owner would be me. Since it is a new house.

 

[bill001g]

Although almost nobody uses actual telephone lines anymore you would need one if you wanted to buy service from a provider that only has DSL. I could see the other wire going to some box near where all the other services come into the house. They would not terminate it because there are many different options when it is phone wire.

In any case finding where wires go is a massive pain. Although it is not as big a issue if they have not labeled the other cables you will have to figure which goes where. 4 you can brute force but say you had 20 or 50.

They make cable toners but the real powerful ones that can detect the signal though the drywall are quite expensive.

 

[jsmithepa]

Well the prior owner would be me. Since it is a new house.

Semantics. People come here all the time "I build this house" like with their own bared hands --hence know where every nail goes-- but in reality they mean bought it newly built, and still figuring out what's in it.

Like bill says, maybe an extra phone line going into the NID, the telecomm junction just outside or in garage.

Another idea is, if this is one of those your neighbors are exactly as yours, go over there see if they know!

 

[Rsh1667]

Look in the attic or crawl space it may have been a spare wire for future use. Did you look outside of the house? Could be out there by the demark.

 

[Maliki2]

Have not opened anything. We have one terminate coax which I assume is our cable since they spray foamed all the wiring where it went outside the house. That leaves me with 5 ethernet cables (not terminated), which would be one for living room, and 3 for bedrooms then that extra. I also have the coaxs for the bedrooms. Comcast comes out Saturday to install wireless so I assume they will just connect the coax to the modem then to router. I know its not exactly the best place for a wireless router.

 

[Wolfshadw]

My guess would be somewhere up in the attic for a local WiFi access point.

-Wolf sends

 

[nigelivey]

I'm going for under the floor............Rip up all your flooring, it's there somewhere!