Please help make sense of my New Build network cabling setup

[JamesTae]

Hi guys. Newbie here hoping someone will be able to help. Please go easy on me and apologies if I break any forum etiquette here

I've just moved into a new build, and it appears to have some sort of structured wiring setup. The developer can't give me any detail on it (still pushing them), but in the meantime I'm hoping you can perhaps help me untangle (pardon the pun) what exactly the intended setup is, and how best to get my network set up.

There are 5 plates through the house - 2 in the front room, 2 in the master bedroom, and 1 in the second bedroom. Each plate has 2 coaxials (one marked TV aerial and the other marked Radio), and one telephone line jack.

In the cupboard under the stairs is a bunch of unterminated wires - 15 x coaxial, and 2 x cat5e's.

Outside, there are 2 unterminated coaxial cables. There is no telephone master socket installed in the property - an Openreach engineer is coming out soon to install one.


My questions are really two fold:

1. Any idea what this setup is supposed to be?
2. Where is the best place to install the master socket?


But they break into a few smaller questions:

- I've read online that cat5e could be used to wire the phone lines. Does this sound likely here? Is there a way I could safely check if this is the case?
- Would it make sense to install the master socket in the cupboard under the stairs (a bit more work for the engineer and more drilling through walls, and right next to a washing machine), or simply install it in the front room (further away from all this cabling, and from the master bedroom)?
- I can only account for 12 of the coaxial cables (2 x 5, plus 2) - why do I have 15?

The reality is that all I really want is internet, which most of the house will use over wifi. For a while, the wireless router will simply sit wherever I put the master socket. However, I'm not totally against learning how to make a more complex setup - so my smart tv could connect to ethernet, and I could get a digital aerial installed and ran to various parts of the house easily.

Any help building a sensible network here would be really helpful!

Thank you
James.

 

[ComputerSecurityGuy]

Hmm. Messy. I think you have a panel meant to run cable TV/sound/video through the house, not necccesarily ethernet. You implied that you also had phone cable on the plates. Not sure about that. Overall, a mostly obsolete setup at this point and not really all that useful.

I'm not sure what to say about where to put in the Ethernet lines. I might post a map of your house.

Also, while you can get IP phones, I would just get cordless ones. I also generally recommend VoIP lines these days (usually cheaper and easier to manage.)

 

[JamesTae]

Hmm. Messy. I think you have a panel meant to run cable TV/sound/video through the house, not necccesarily ethernet. You implied that you also had phone cable on the plates. Not sure about that. Overall, a mostly obsolete setup at this point and not really all that useful.

I'm not sure what to say about where to put in the Ethernet lines. I might post a map of your house.

Also, while you can get IP phones, I would just get cordless ones. I also generally recommend VoIP lines these days (usually cheaper and easier to manage.)

Thanks. Yeah, I definitely have phone line plates, but what cable it is I don't know - I was guessing that the 2 cat5e cables have been used for this. If this is the case, it may mean I could use one of the existing sockets as the master socket, and then use the extension loop from here to run the line into the cupboard, where (eventually) I would build a distribution panel to send this wherever else I wanted. Would that work?

 

[ComputerSecurityGuy]

Yes, if the connectors were Cat5e. And you would need to replace the plate with a RJ45 connector as opposed to a RJ11 connector to get it to work properly.

 

[JamesTae]

Yes, if the connectors were Cat5e. And you would need to replace the plate with a RJ45 connector as opposed to a RJ11 connector to get it to work properly.

The plates are actually all British telephone jacks, not RJ11s. I'm really puzzled about what the intention was here.

 

[ComputerSecurityGuy]

I didn't realize you lived in the UK. Got my connectors mixed up most likely. I suppose put simply I was saying that you would have to replace the plates so you could connect to the Cat5e cable, full speed, as opposed to using the telephone connection that would slow the connection between the ends of the Cat5e.

Alright that just was a mass of words as well. Simply, to use the Cat5e through the wall plate you would have to change the wall plate, because the connector on the wall plate isn't made for Ethernet even if the cable behind it is Cat5e.

I hope that makes some sense.

 

[JamesTae]

I didn't realize you lived in the UK. Got my connectors mixed up most likely. I suppose put simply I was saying that you would have to replace the plates so you could connect to the Cat5e cable, full speed, as opposed to using the telephone connection that would slow the connection between the ends of the Cat5e.

Alright that just was a mass of words as well. Simply, to use the Cat5e through the wall plate you would have to change the wall plate, because the connector on the wall plate isn't made for Ethernet even if the cable behind it is Cat5e.

I hope that makes some sense.

Thanks, I meant I was puzzled by the intention of the builders, not the intention of your post, which was clear.

I'm not sure I could do what you're suggesting though - If the 2 cat5e cables are indeed feeding 5 telephone connections, I presume they've done this by splitting the cat5e at each point? In other words, the cable behind the plate will be *part* of cat5e, but not the full compliment of the cat5e needed to put in a working ethernet plate. No?

 

[fowang]

You can tell the BT engineer where you want the master socket, they might moan about putting is somewhere that will take more work but its your house! Yeah you can use cat5 to wire your telephones to to be honest you can use speaker cable too! They only require a pair of wires to work. I have used cat5 to wire up phone sockets before. As for the faceplates these can be changed and you can install rj-45 plates if you want

 

[JamesTae]

You can tell the BT engineer where you want the master socket, they might moan about putting is somewhere that will take more work but its your house! Yeah you can use cat5 to wire your telephones to to be honest you can use speaker cable too! They only require a pair of wires to work. I have used cat5 to wire up phone sockets before. As for the faceplates these can be changed and you can install rj-45 plates if you want

Thank you. Perhaps I am misunderstanding you and COmputerSecurityGuy above then with the idea of switching the plates to RJ45. Doesn't an RJ45 cable need all the wires in a cat5e to work? Whereas, I thought, in my network, the cat5es will have been split up so that each telephone point is taking 2 wires from the cat5e cable. Unless there is a smarter way to setup the cabling so that there is enough wiring to switch to rj45.

Being a bit of a noob now, sorry.

 

[jsmithepa]

How come this is a new build and yet unfinished?

The coax is simple, all rooms coax converge into the JUNCTION (the bundle), and two of these COAX goes to this outside spot commonly known as the DEMARC. The demarcation is the place where carrier cables ends and customer wirings begin. Two coax for some old cable system which used 2 coax cables, or simply as a backup.

The 2 CAT5, they are currently intended to use for landline only. They use CAT5 because is widely available but it does not mean they will enable ethernet for you. Open the plates, look at the CAT cable, if you see all 4 cable pairs, there is a chance you can do ethernet. If you only see 2 pairs and 1 pairs, you are stuck with landline use only.

 

[ComputerSecurityGuy]

Yeah, they would have to split it. Since Cat5e is twisted pair they could use it for landline phone. If it isn't connected with all four twisted pair you can't use it for ethernet.

When you get down to it, the current wiring system isn't useful. You could use MoCA or related equipment to do internet on it, but it would be expensive and there wouldn't be much point if you were going to put in new ethernet cabling anyway.