Wall Ethernet Setup

Jan 22, 2019
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I have a cat5e plug in my wall upstairs, and whenever I try to use it, the computer senses it as if nothing happened. The router is downstairs (not basement), the modem is in the basement as well as the wiring. The router is connected to the wall from coax and the psu, nothing else is connecting the router to the wall. Anyone know how to make this work?
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
From "cat5e plug in my wall upstairs"...what does that plug connect to? Where does it go?

Eventually, it needs to connect to the router.

And are you 100% sure it is a Cat5e plug (RJ45), and not simply an RJ11 plug, for a phone line.
 
Jan 22, 2019
4
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It is a network line, I checked in the house blueprint, and the wire runs down to the wiring down basement. Would I have to make it connect to the cat5e cable next to my router and plug the router into there?
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator


Blueprints don't necessarily reflect reality.

But...you need to somehow connect that cable to the one port on the router, or a switch connected to the router.
 
Even if it's connected, a lot of contractors mistakenly wired Ethernet as if they were phone lines. With phone lines, you can wire all the ports in the house together using the same wire. You cannot do that with Ethernet - each cable can only connect two ports.

So you'll have to check for that possibility too. How many ports are in your house, and how many in the network closet? If there's one port in the network closet but multiple ports in the house, then it was wired up wrong. When correctly wired, if you have 10 ports throughout the house, then there should be 10 ports in the wiring closet.

It's also possible that your basement is not the network closet. There may be another location you haven't found that's the network closet. You would need to install a switch there, and plug cables from the switch to every port coming into the network closet. Then when you plug the router in the basement into the wall, it gets a connection to the switch, and the switch distributes that connection to all the other ports in the house.