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No phone line only ethernet

  • 08-08-2020 12:35pm
    #1
    Registered Users Posts: 76 ✭✭


    We got our house rewired before moving in and I had the electrician put cat6 to the living room and the upstairs office.

    He's left 3 cables coming out under the stairs with cat6 heads on and labelled "phone", "front room", "office". He told me the "phone" is connected to my phone line and that's the one that should go into the router.

    I just got my eir Broadband router and it only has ports for DSL which is the regular size phone cable.

    Do I need to get the electrician back out to change the head on the phone cable? Or is there some other solution to this?! Can one of the LAN ports on the router be used as the phone line in?


Comments

  • Registered Users Posts: 688 ✭✭✭hurikane


    Depends what the original electrician did.

    Do you know where your phone line comes into the house?

    Is the cable marked phone connected to a phone line?

    Network cables use RJ45 jacks and phone lines use RJ11. The DSL router will have a RJ11 port for the phone line that’s carrying the dsl.

    Phone can run across a network cable but it really depends on what the electrician did.


  • Registered Users Posts: 36,162 ✭✭✭✭ED E


    If its a cable then you need it reterminated.

    If its a socket then an RJ11(smaller) head fits into the RJ45 socket(Larger) and will connect the two pins you need if done correctly.


  • Registered Users Posts: 76 ✭✭thesto


    ED E wrote: »
    If its a cable then you need it reterminated.

    If its a socket then an RJ11(smaller) head fits into the RJ45 socket(Larger) and will connect the two pins you need if done correctly.

    It's a cable, connected to the phone line and terminated with an rj45 head.

    If rj11 fits into a rj45 socket - could I put a rj45 coupler on the cable and then plug the rj11 phone line into it, then into the modem?

    Would there be any benefit to getting the cable properly terminated with a rj11 socket?


  • Registered Users Posts: 76 ✭✭thesto


    hurikane wrote: »
    Depends what the original electrician did.

    Do you know where your phone line comes into the house?

    Is the cable marked phone connected to a phone line?

    Network cables use RJ45 jacks and phone lines use RJ11. The DSL router will have a RJ11 port for the phone line that’s carrying the dsl.

    Phone can run across a network cable but it really depends on what the electrician did.

    need to speak to the electrician so, i can see the phone line coming into the house from the outside but only things visible in the house are the 3 cat6 cables (male) coming out under the stairs, and the cat6 ports (female) in the living room and office.

    He said the "phone" cable was connected to the phone line but I've no idea why he terminated it with a cat6 head


  • Registered Users Posts: 36,162 ✭✭✭✭ED E


    thesto wrote: »
    It's a cable, connected to the phone line and terminated with an rj45 head.

    If rj11 fits into a rj45 socket - could I put a rj45 coupler on the cable and then plug the rj11 phone line into it, then into the modem?

    Would there be any benefit to getting the cable properly terminated with a rj11 socket?

    Coupler might add a small bit of untwist and thus a small degradation. With ethernet you've usually got headroom so it doesnt matter, with xDSL it can be an issue but should be quite a minor loss in sync rate.

    I'd give it a shot and only go further if you're unhappy with the rates you get.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 1,079 ✭✭✭dam099


    If you are using a coupler you could also get a cable with RJ11 on one end and RJ45 on the other rather than having a RJ11 plugged into the coupler. I needed to use Ethernet sockets for my phone line to get it to where I wanted and when I researched it saw some suggestions you can get alignment issues when plugging RJ11 into RJ45 so got two of these (you would only need one I think).

    https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01MTEWGVD/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1


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