CAT-5 utp cable

Lennoxschips

I'm helping my sister totally rewire her place, as the old 1950s wiring has been totally gutted out.

What I'm doing is running CAT-5 cables from the utility closed (where the phone comes into the house) off to all the points in the house. My sister wants to get ADSL, so the modem/router will be placed here as well.

The idea is that if all the points are hooked up with CAT-5 and RJ45 wallpoints, that you'll be able to pick and choose which points you want as your phone connections and which ones you want for computer access, just by going to the utility closed and hooking up the correct wires.

Am I right in thinking that CAT-5 UTP cable can also be used for standard analogue phone points throughout the house? I know that a phone uses considerably less wires (UTP has 8), but I want to "future-proof" the house. Also, for wall points I'm hooking up standard RJ45 (network/ethernet) points. I noticed that a standard phone jack plugs into one of these (even though it doesn't use the full width) as well as an ethernet plug. Will a phone jack work through one of these points?

STaN

You could use CAT6 and that would really future proof it. And/or use wireless instead. Might work out cheaper/more effective seen as you get get 54Mb/sec access points now & PCI/laptop cards

Lennoxschips

Cat-6, how many wires are in that? 10?

Cal

You say you are installing Cat5 UTP and rewiring the house.

I hope you are not running the UTP (Unshielded) cables alongside the Electric cable. This could lead to interference from EMF. (electric and magnetic fields) If you are running the cables together you should use STP. (Shielded)

As for using the Cat5 for the phone - No problem.

I would advise bringing all the cables back to your central point and installing a patch panel. From there you can configure everything very easily in the future.

Cal

P.S. Don't worry about Cat6 when Cat5e will do Gigabit connec tions. When this is obsolete wireless should be well ahead by then.

Lennoxschips

A qualified electrician is doing all the electrics, I'm only putting in the CAT5 cables. It's a ground floor apartment, and he wired all the the electrics through the ceiling. I'm putting all the CAT-5 cables under the floorboards (there's a 25 cm deep "mini-basement" under the thouse). I'll be running the them through plastic tubing, to protect from moisture/rats etc.

I wasn't sure about electrical interference, but I decided to run the CAT5 cables as far away from electrics, just in case. Nice to know my caution was well founded.

Thanks for the tips about the patch panel, I'll look into one of those.

longword

Originally posted by Lennoxschips
Cat-6, how many wires are in that? 10?

Same number of wires but higher quality, good for a few hundred MHz more bandwidth. If you're buying a 100/300 meter box of the stuff there's not that much price difference between CAT5e and 6 these days so you might as well go with CAT6 Just In Case. What might a more important consideration is a non-PVC sheath - something a bit more friendly if the place goes up in smoke.

sirlinux

You should also consider running 2 cables to every point even if you only terminate one now, it wont cost you much more and provide you with good cover, for example phone and network point in a room.

Capt'n Midnight

10/100 uses two of the four pairs (Green - White - Orange, if you come up with a handy aide-memoir please let me know)

Telephone would usually be put down the middle blue pair.
(If you live in NI / UK they do some funny three wires stuff...)

Cat5e when propperly installed (no more than 1/2" untwisted at ends) will do gigabit... ( If you need more later tie a piece of string onto the old cable when you pull it out - you can then use the string to pull back fibre...)

Cat 6 is a pig to terminate properly - tolerances are much closer..
Wireless only goes up to 54Mb half duplex under ideal conditions. Gigabit is 20 times faster (40X if you are utilising full duplex) and can be switched ... - Future proofing would be to run ducts that could take fibre later on,

Network cables should never run parallel to power cables or alarm cables and if you have to cross them it should be at right angles.

And as for running a second unterminated cable - buy a second box of cable -, tape the ends together and it takes the same time to run a single cable..

Lennoxschips

sirlinux, Great minds think alike. That's what I'm doing. I've bought wall plates with two RJ45 outlets in them, and am going to run two CAT5 cables to each of them. One for the phone and one for the computer. Or two computers or two phones... whatever.

Telephone would usually be put down the middle blue pair.
(If you live in NI / UK they do some funny three wires stuff...)

I'm in Holland, the phone jacks here use four wires. I have no idea why! Handy enough though for people who want to run ethernet on existing phone wires. Maybe the Dutch telephone engineers just had foresight.