RJ11 to RJ45

cletus

So, I initially posted this in the DIY forum, got some advice, but think I might now need the specialists

Recently we converted the box room in our house to an office. The computer up there is on our WiFi network, but the is an RJ11 face plate in the room. I began to ponder the possibility of replacing this with an RJ45 faceplate. I figured this would most likely require pulling new cable (if this is even possible), but I thought first step was to remove the faceplate and have a gander at what was behind.

Turns out there are two cables running into the back of the face plate. They would appear to be cat5 or cat5e, which leads me to my first question; is it possible to tell the difference between the two without having it printed on the sheath?

Both cables are using two wires, connected together, in two terminals. The only other phone socket I have is in the hall, where my router is. I had assumed, and the guy from Vodafone didn't disabuse me of this assumption, that the hall socket was the primary socket, am I wrong?

I've attached a photo of the back of the faceplate in the upstairs room (office), if it's of any use.

https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/attachment.php?attachmentid=472050&d=1549139033

Any and all suggestions, comments and advice is welcome
Attachments

cletus

Having received some advice, I had the following questions:

Right, back again with a few more questions. Had a look at videos for wiring RJ45's. Have sourced a punchdown tool, but it seems like parallel wiring both wires like the RJ11 wouldn't be an option.

It would seem that they are parallel wired in order to continue on to some other termination point (speculation, as I don't recall seeing another phone socket in the house).

So, questions.
How would I go about wiring these to RJ45 without losing whatever continuity they were originally set up with.

How do I determine which of the two phone sockets in the house is the 'master' socket?

Should I take all these queries over to the Net&Comm forum, see what those boys make of it?

tsue921i8wljb3

cletus wrote: »

Having received some advice, I had the following questions:

Right, back again with a few more questions. Had a look at videos for wiring RJ45's. Have sourced a punchdown tool, but it seems like parallel wiring both wires like the RJ11 wouldn't be an option.

It would seem that they are parallel wired in order to continue on to some other termination point (speculation, as I don't recall seeing another phone socket in the house).

So, questions.
How would I go about wiring these to RJ45 without losing whatever continuity they were originally set up with.

How do I determine which of the two phone sockets in the house is the 'master' socket?

Should I take all these queries over to the Net&Comm forum, see what those boys make of it?

To be honest with you it's going to be awkward.

I suspect the socket in your hall where the routers located is your master socket. One of those cables in your picture will be fed off it on the blue pair. You would need to disconnect the blue pair from the master socket and terminate it on an Ethernet faceplate.

That leaves the question of where do you put the faceplate in the hall. If you have VDSL fibre broadband you can't replace the socket as it isolates the external cabling from the internal wiring. If it looks like this you likely have VDSL

[IMG][/img]http://www.ridgesolutions.ie/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/efibre_socket_with_filter.jpg


Also the phone cabling is set up a a "daisy chain" where one point is connected to the next. This is unsuitable for Ethernet where a star topology is used with one central point, usually a switch, connected directly to each outlet.

You could use one of the cables in your photo to have an Ethernet connection from the router in the hall, with the proviso of the VDSL faceplate already discussed, but the second cable in the photo is of no use really as it goes from your office to room unknown.

To get Ethernet and legacy voice on the same cable is technically possible I believe but I have never done it and would require using on two pairs for Ethernet (limiting you to 100Mb) leaving the voice on the blue pair.

cletus

Mckenna Huge Scavenger wrote: »

To be honest with you it's going to be awkward.

I suspect the socket in your hall where the routers located is your master socket. One of those cables in your picture will be fed off it on the blue pair. You would need to disconnect the blue pair from the master socket and terminate it on an Ethernet faceplate.

That leaves the question of where do you put the faceplate in the hall. If you have VDSL fibre broadband you can't replace the socket as it isolates the external cabling from the internal wiring. If it looks like this you likely have VDSL

[IMG][/img]http://www.ridgesolutions.ie/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/efibre_socket_with_filter.jpg


Also the phone cabling is set up a a "daisy chain" where one point is connected to the next. This is unsuitable for Ethernet where a star topology is used with one central point, usually a switch, connected directly to each outlet.

You could use one of the cables in your photo to have an Ethernet connection from the router in the hall, with the proviso of the VDSL faceplate already discussed, but the second cable in the photo is of no use really as it goes from your office to room unknown.

To get Ethernet and legacy voice on the same cable is technically possible I believe but I have never done it and would require using on two pairs for Ethernet (limiting you to 100Mb) leaving the voice on the blue pair.

Thank you for the reply. Couple more questions if that's ok. What is the purpose of two cables in the office? I would have assumed that running one cable from the hall to the office would have sufficed?

The socket in my hall is the same as the socket in your picture, but I don't actually have a landline. I took the front of the socket off in the hall, and it seems the wires used were extended with black and yellow wires (couldn't explore more as I had two small boys complaining about the loss of internet).

So to sum up, I am unlikely to find a second unused cat5e cable behind the hall socket that can easily be wired to a RJ45 faceplate?

tsue921i8wljb3

cletus wrote: »

Thank you for the reply. Couple more questions if that's ok. What is the purpose of two cables in the office? I would have assumed that running one cable from the hall to the office would have sufficed?

The socket in my hall is the same as the socket in your picture, but I don't actually have a landline. I took the front of the socket off in the hall, and it seems the wires used were extended with black and yellow wires (couldn't explore more as I had two small boys complaining about the loss of internet).

So to sum up, I am unlikely to find a second unused cat5e cable behind the hall socket that can easily be wired to a RJ45 faceplate?

From looking at it there are two cables in the office as one is likely coming from the hall feeding the phone socket in the office. The second is feeding another phone socket somewhere (at least it should be unless whoever wired it left it in the wall). This is the daisy chain I was referring to. Can you ask the person who did the cabling if they remember?

If you take off the socket in the hall is there one of the grey Ethernet cables behind it connected on the blue pair (it's unlikely to be unused)? If not you have some other wiring configuration going on. It's hard to say from one picture what the layout of your homes cabling is.

cletus

Mckenna Huge Scavenger wrote: »

From looking at it there are two cables in the office as one is likely coming from the hall feeding the phone socket in the office. The second is feeding another phone socket somewhere (at least it should be unless whoever wired it left it in the wall). This is the daisy chain I was referring to. Can you ask the person who did the cabling if they remember?

If you take off the socket in the hall is there one of the grey Ethernet cables behind it connected on the blue pair (it's unlikely to be unused)? If not you have some other wiring configuration going on. It's hard to say from one picture what the layout of your homes cabling is.

Thanks again. I won't be able to ask whoever wired up what's happening, unfortunately. To my knowledge, there is no other phone socket in the house.

Would it be ok to take a picture behind the hall socket and put it up, see if it makes any more sense?

I sort of assumed that the cable coming into the house would feed the modem, and that the cable in the office would terminate behind the hall socket. Considering I'm not using a landline at all, I thought I might be able to use it

tsue921i8wljb3

Yeah. Put up the picture and we'll see if we can solve it!

cletus

Right, took a couple of pictures, dunno if they'll shed any light on the situation

cletus

And a few more

cletus

Last ones

cletus

Ok, so it was bugging me whether I had another phone line or not. Turns out there was one behind the bed in the spare room.

Same setup as the office one, two cables, parallel wired

tsue921i8wljb3

I've no idea what way the wiring is done there to be honest. I'm not going to go advising you to disconnect cables without knowing what they are for.

Also as I said earlier you should not replace that VDSL faceplate as it should be isolating your internal cabling from the external line. Messing about with it could lead to issues with your internet connection. So without replacing the faceplate you have nowhere for an Ethernet socket assuming you managed to figure out which internal cables were safe to disconnect.

cletus

Navi, thanks very much for your time. I'll leave well enough alone, so.