RJ45/RJ11 wall jacks - electrician unsure and so am I

Ardilaun

I am building a new house and I asked the electrician to install a phone line and cat 5 cabling for ethernet connection to internet. My thinking was that I could place my router in the hall. I could then connect my computer in the office to the wall jacks. I thought if I had the router in the hall it would be the best position for picking up wifi for phones as the office is in the far corner of the house.

The electrician was putting the wall jacks on yesterday but only had RJ11 phone jacks and when i asked him about the ethernet jacks he looked at me like I had 2 heads. He just thought I wanted fancy phone line i think and knows nothing about connecting to the internet and to be honest I am not much more knowledgable. He said he has installed cat 5 only as the phone line and says that the phone only uses 2 wires and the cat 5 has 8.

He's not sure and I'm not sure what is needed. The cat 5 cabling all runs back to the hall. Does he have to split the cable and put an RJ45 and RJ11 wall plate in the hall and is there such a thing? Would I need the same for the office or is there something that I can plug in to the RJ11 jack… that he has already put on... that splits the cable into RJ45 and RJ11. I have seen these splitters when I googled but they have a RJ45 plug whereas I would need a RJ11 plug.

I hope I have made sense and look forward to any advice

Jeffrey Lebowski

Hi Ardilaun,

you're not making an awful lot of sense. So I will make a few assumptions.

Sounds like you are getting ADSL for internet connection. wherever the phone line is terminated , you need to put a splitter which splits phone from ADSL signal.

the connection from the splitter to the ADSL router will be RJ11. The ADSL router will have a couple of RJ45 ports probably. The ports through the house should be cabled back to the router RJ45 ports. They need to be RJ45 on both ends.

Hope this helps.

Ardilaun

Thanks Jeffrey for your reply, I have not much of a clue about all of this

At present I am connected to an Eircom router using an ethernet connection and phone line. I was hoping in the new house to place the router in the hall as it's central and would help with picking up wifi for phones. I thought that I could connect the router to an RJ45 jack in the hall (that's why I asked electrician to install cat 5) and also to phone line (which is also the cat 5 cable I discovered yesterday). Then in the office I could connect my computer to an RJ45 jack on the wall that connects to the router in the hall. Am I deluded?

Jeffrey Lebowski

yeah that should work.

Ardilaun

Oh great

What type of wall jacks would I need for the hall and office. I know i need an RJ45 and an RJ11 but is there one that has both on the same plate? There is only one cable for both so I'm not sure if cable has to be split and separate jacks installed on the wall. I have had a search on the internet but not sure what I'm looking for. I would like to be able to print something off to give electrician as he's not sure what I want either. There's a pair of us in it

Thanks for all your help Jeffrey

smee again

An Rj11 fits in an Rj45 socket, it's backward compatible (although phone is analogue).

degsie

Get an electrician that is certified in data cabling. Sounds like the one you use is 'old school' and hasn't bothered to keep up with current trends. My 2c's.

ZENER

Maybe a better option would be to wire all the RJ45 ports back to a central patch panel (in a cupboard or the attic maybe ?) and install a 100MB Switch beside it. Connect the Router to the local RJ45 beside it and patch it across to the Switch in the attic. From there you can provide 'net access to all the ports (RJ45s) about the house and provide extra Wireless Access points in areas of weak Wi-Fi reception.

As mentioned above RJ11 plugs can connect into an RJ45 socket and the centre two wires on the RJ45 are the BLUE pair which match up perfectly with a standard analogue phone RJ11. So at any RJ45 in the house it could be possible to plug in a phone and have it work !

Lots of other reasons for this type of setup but these are the fundamentals.

Ken

smee again

It was daft to bring all the cat5 cables to the hallway, nowadays the thing is to bring them all to the attic or under the stairs like is done for the TV coax. This way you can join the blue strands for an analogue phone system or add an ethernet switch and crimp the cables with rj45's for ethernet throughout your house. Your electrician is in the dark ages.

cableguynick

HI Ardilaun

Connect all CAT5 cables to a RJ45 outlets and terminate the far end of the cables to a patch panel or a few RJ45 outlets. use a continuity tester to make sure all connections are correct. i.e. all 4 pairs are wired correctly
DO NOT PLUG A RJ11 PLUG INTO A RG45 OUTLET (it will bend pins 1,2,7,8) instead crimp a RJ45 plug onto the end of the telephone cable.
once all outlets are connected and tested. simply patch your telephone line to the appropriate patch panel outlet.
my suggestion is to locate your BB router/network switch beside the patch panel, making reallocation and installation of wireless AP's easy.

hope this helps

Regards

Nick

jamesd

cableguynick wrote: »

HI Ardilaun

DO NOT PLUG A RJ11 PLUG INTO A RG45 OUTLET (it will bend pins 1,2,7,8)

Havent ever come across this - Have you a link to proof?

cableguynick

@ jamesd

over 20 years experience in the industry, all data manufactures of CAT5/6 outlets have a warning on the outlets against plugging RJ11 into RG45 outlets!

here's your proof
http://www.nexans.no/Sweden/group/doc/en/RJ11v2.pdf

jamesd

cableguynick wrote: »

@ jamesd

over 20 years experience in the industry, all data manufactures of CAT5/6 outlets have a warning on the outlets against plugging RJ11 into RG45 outlets!

here's your proof
http://www.nexans.no/Sweden/group/doc/en/RJ11v2.pdf

Perfect - thanks for the link it was something I never knew.