Networking → Question about home phone cat5 wiring.

I bought a new house recently. When I first tried to hook up my DSL, I could only get it to work in one room and not the rest of the house.

When I pulled the phone jack plates off in the other rooms I found that the phones are wired with cat5, but only the one room closest to the junction is connected to it.

There are cat5 cables running from one room to the next but are not connected to each other. Kind of like a daisy chain that never got finished.

Can I safely (without losing DSL quality) splice each of these cat5 cable phone lines together in each wall jack to create a phone/DSL connection throughout the house? I want to move my modem and router closer to my main computer.

I hope that makes sense lol. And thanks in advance for any help.

Are you sure phone line wiring is done in a daisy chain? That is the way it used to be done years ago but for a long time now the FCC requires phone wiring to be home run back to a central point.

Specifically to your question you can connect wiring in a daisy chain. Since you are going to the trouble to modify your wiring I'd recommend installing a whole house POTS/DSL splitter. A splitter does a better job isolating voice from DSL and eliminates the need for inline filters at each non-DSL device.

With Cat5 you have 4-pairs to play with. Use the first two to wire all the jacks in an RJ-14 arrangement. This will support one or two active phone lines. Use one of the other pair for DSL. At the location you want to use the DSL modem install a second jack.

/tom

I have never heard of that FCC requirement...

»transition.fcc.gov/mb/inside.txt

»louise.hallikainen.org/F ··· /68/213/

/tom

tschmidt is right, but if the cat5 is in place you might consider putting the modem and router in the utility room and just using the cat5 to connect back.

The homerun requirement in the first linked document refers to MDUs only. didn't see anything about how the wires had to be run inside a single-family, or inside of an individual unit in an MDU for that matter.

here is what I would do go get one of these: »www.hometech.com/hts/pro ··· odnTEA0Q

then connect it to ur NID box then find out which wires you want to run for phone and dsl because once you do this all you need is 2 pairs going to phone and other one dsl because all you be doing with dsl part just transferring data from the splitter.

or you can do buy one of them splitters then connect new cat5 from there to your already placed cat5 then connect them by using these: »www.amazon.com/Pieces-Ye ··· UYTWJW/2 to your phone and dsl line.

because I had to redo the phone lines inside of my house that was built in 57' to cat5 so I ran cat5 to each room and split the pairs up for phone and dsl on single cat5 then back to that splitter setup.

Thank you all for the great replies.

The continuous-loop diagram on page six of this article shows exactly how the cat 5 wires are run:

»psc.wi.gov/thelibrary/pu ··· om19.pdf

Can I just install phone jacks along the continuous loop and not lose DSL quality? I am trying to move the DSL router/modem closer to my main computer.

Neither of those say anything at all about how the inside wiring MUST be run -- bus or star. And the first is entirely about CABLE TV systems. (i.e. don't use one cable loop to provision an entire apartment complex.)

The only reason cat5 is used in a star configuration today is because, a) cat5 is a commonly sourced material (meaning you stock only cat5(e) instead of both 3 and 5), b) few people actually use analog phone services anymore; they re-terminate the "phone" wires for ethernet, and c) it's much easier to troubleshoot. (there's also d) they can charge more because it's more wire, and e) it's easier to do once the drywall is up.)

You can, but the general best-practice is a "home run" for the DSL line. You'll have some sort of whole-home splitter at the NID (usually, it *is* the NID) with two pairs coming out of it. One is the "DSL" line and the other is the "phone". This way, you get the best signal to the modem and don't need a splitter at every phone.

I have one in the closet I was going to install myself, but the last time Bellsouth was out to fix my phone line, he hung one anyway.