Can I do anything with daisy-chained cat5 cable or is it worthless?

[Jeraden]

I'm a networking newbie, so forgive me if this is a dumb question, but I couldn't really find a definitive answer on the net anywhere.

I recently had my basement finished and on the initial layout I mapped out 4 places where I wanted ethernet ports positioned. The guy doing the basement said no problem and that he knew how to do it, etc, etc. After he was done, I discovered he daisy chained all the ports together and basically used one Cat5 cable to "network" the whole basement, which includes telephone. For coax cable he ran it to a central panel and I assumed he'd do the same for the cat5 cable but he didn't.

So my question is, can I do anything at all with this setup, or am I basically screwed as far as networking goes? Everything is sealed up, so I can't really re-do any of it. Can I at least network 2 of the ports together in this configuration, or does the fact that 2 of the wires in the cat5 are already being used for telephone render the whole setup useless?

 

[amdskip]

Telephone and data should not really ever be on the same cat 5 line. That guy needs to refund your money because he does not know what the heck he is doing at all.

 

[Jeraden]

Well I know that it "should not", but I just want to know if I can do anything with it or if I just need to go wireless. All the info on the web says you "should" do home runs and not daisy-chain, but none of them ever say what to do if it IS daisy chained.

He didn't connect the wires to the jacks (just connected the 2 phone wires), so I can't test it out before doing the jack wiring, which I don't want to do if it's not going to work anyways.

 

[martind1]

wait. this guy took a cat5 cable, strung it to one output, used 2 lines for the phone, then used the same wires and strung it to the next port?


This guy is a moron and did NOTHING right in this case. You can't use 2 wires of the cat5 for phoen and then expect to use the same line for ethernet.

also you cant daisy chain the wire in this respect and expect it to work for ethernet. easiest way is going back to a 'home' spot into a hub/switch.

Get him to do it right or get a refund cause you got screwed

 

[cmetz]

Jeraden, charge back. This is totally wrong and will not be useful for anything other than telephone.

 

[Jeraden]

alright, thats what I was afraid of.
There wasn't really a separate charge for doing the wiring per se, he just finished the whole basement at a set price. It's partially my fault for not doing the research on proper cat5 wiring techniques and spelling out exactly what I wanted to have done (like I did with the coax cables).

I know I can't get all the ports working, but I was thinking I can get at least 1 port working. My understanding was not all the wires in cat5 are used for data transfer, so I was thinking that because only 2 are used for phone, the remainder are enough to carry 1 data signal. Can I at least connect 2 of the jacks together? I have one port by my computer (where the router is) and another port in a separate room. At a minimum I'd like to just get those 2 ports connected so I can hook it up to the router. That would allow me to run xbox live over it without having to buy one of those wireless bridges. Would this work? If not, why not? Just trying to understand how this stuff works.

 

[martind1]

ok i believe you can transfer 10bt over 4(2? im all screwed up right now) sets of the twisted pair.

so that might get a port working. but not at 100bt which is kind of sucky. of course you coudl not try to use the phone and it might still work.


you gotta find out which cables he used for the phone line and work around that, overall i dont think this setup will have much luck since even if you can carry the ethernet inthat wire, it prob will get lots of interferenc from the phone line.

 

[JackMDS]

You don not need more than one Wire of CAT5 since you can plug a single wire to a Switch/Hub and cascade and get as many as you want.

The problem is Phone line. Phone Line's wires can not share the same Cable with Network; it is not a matter of having spare wire it is a matter of the ~100V.A.C trashing your Network.

Your solution is to disconnect the phone from the CAT5 and do something separate for the Phones.

 

[martind1]

Originally posted by: JackMDS
You don not need more than one Wire of CAT5 since you can plug a single wire to a Switch/Hub and cascade and get as many as you want.

The problem is Phone line. Phone Line's wires can not share the same Cable with Network; it is not a matter of having spare wire it is a matter of the ~100V.A.C trashing your Network.

Your solution is to disconnect the phone from the CAT5 and do something separate for the Phones.

we were talking about the individual twisted pairs inside the cat5 cable. not needing multiple cat5 cables.

 

[Jeraden]

I think I might be in luck then. The way the cat5 is daisy chained, the first jack is the only one I really need a phone on. There are several other phone jacks down there, but I don't plan on really using any of them. So I think I can just go into the first jack and terminate the phone there so the signal won't get carried on down the line.

The "router" jack is the 2nd one down the line. So I can just make that the starting point for the rest of the cat5 daisy chaining. If I do this, can I make all the other ports active, or can I still only get 1 active port since it will be sharing the same cable?

I'm not really concerned about 100Mbps vs. 10Mbps. This is primarily just to get gaming consoles online which won't really ever reach 10Mbps anyways since my internet service is only 1.5Mbps.

 

[martind1]

there is no way to get more than 1 computer onto this daisy chain.

 

[buleyb]

You can do 100mbps over 2 pairs of cat5, but thats not the point. Daisy chaining won't work because the Tx/Rx lines won't reverse like they should in a hub/switch.


did you tell the guy how to wire it, or tell him you wanted it done and he figured it out?


And yes, run separate lines for the phones (anything really, 2line phone wire, cat3, cat5, whatever you have excess of)

 

[cmetz]

Jeraden, you can get the first port working, and only if you remove the chaining to all the segments down the line. Twisted-pair Ethernet is not intended to work in a bridge-tap configuration.

 

[martind1]

Originally posted by: buleyb
You can do 100mbps over 2 pairs of cat5, but thats not the point. Daisy chaining won't work because the Tx/Rx lines won't reverse like they should in a hub/switch.


did you tell the guy how to wire it, or tell him you wanted it done and he figured it out?


And yes, run separate lines for the phones (anything really, 2line phone wire, cat3, cat5, whatever you have excess of)

I assumed he coudl rewire the ports fairly simply by takign off the plate.

though I shoudl have asked if he knew how to do that.

he would need to do that anyway since the phone might be running on the important wires.

 

[Jeraden]

I don't know how to do anything regarding networking really. Thats why I just discovered the problem now when I went online to look up how to wire it. The installer took one pair of the cat5 wires for phone and wired that to every outlet. He told me I still had all the other pairs leftover and could use those to wire them however I wanted. Apparently he had no idea what he was talking about, but it fooled me cause I didn't know anything either.

Unfortunately I'm not really sure where the daisy chaining goes after the 2nd port. I think it might be just easier to scrap it and get the wireless bridge.

 

[martind1]

yes wireless is an option..

there are guides to tell you how to wire ehternet, its easy.
also their are standards, you might have to ignore them of course

jsut make sure to find out what pairs the phone uses first so that you dont try to use them.