Help identifying what I've got here

[SFS]

Hi everyone-
I just purchased a home and during the inspection, the inspector dinged the house for using an extension cord as permanent wiring. The extension cord went to power this network of cables and boxes (see link). My realtor said not to worry about it because the sellers will probably be taking the components with them and you won't need the extension cord anymore. I'm not sure they will as this appears to be a home network of some kind and they may not need it at their next home or may just forget about it. I'm assuming this is a CAT5 network, but there are also coax cables in the pic. Can someone help me understand what sort of system this is and what everything is. Thanks for any help. I may ask the sellers to keep everything here if we may want to use it in the future.

https://imgur.com/a/utBgmY0

 

[Fallen Kell]

Holy crap that looks like an old school cat 5 punchdown block:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod...e=punch_down_block-_-9SIA00Z3FP5761-_-Product

Given the AT&T box, I think that might be used for the internal phone wiring, but it could be used for 10 (not 10/100) ethernet (basically the point of the punchdown would be to allow multiple lines to be run in the house, but allow you to keep some of those lines dark and just connect the ones needed to your switch/router). The rest is a coax cable and a netgear switch/hub/router.

It is hard to tell just from that picture as you would need to see where the ethernet cables are all going. You can't see if they are going from the netgear box to those 2 white breakout boxes or if they are going to the punchdown block.

 

[Fallen Kell]

Also, I agree with the inspector here in that it shouldn't be using an extension cord to that. There should really be an outlet installed next to that as it will be needed to at a minimum power the coax splitter/amplifier, as well as either a similar AT&T device (looks like it might be a local battery/VOIP converter box), and/or your own ethernet switch/router to connect wired networking in the house (they may or may not leave the netgear switch, but most of the rest is required for the home's internal wiring).

 

[ch33zw1z]

you got a mess, inspector is correct...needs a permanent drop.

 

[Fallen Kell]

Yeah, the more I look at that, the more it is a mess. I sure hope that some of the splitting of the ethernet cables that you can see in the bottom right are being used for a jury rigged POTS/phone connections, and/or security lines. That is completely out of spec for anything above CAT3 networking, and even then, I don't think the length of those exposed twisted pairs meets any kind of specification (other than phone line).

I also don't think the punchdown block meets CAT5 spec (even though it is labled as such in the pic). Those blocks have too much exposure to interference to meet compliance if I recall, which is why cables are terminated into something like a keystone punch down connector (to minimize exposed lengths of the twisted pairs), like seen in the following:
https://www.computercablestore.com/how-to-terminate-punch-down-style-keystone-jacks

 

[ch33zw1z]

Yeah, the more I look at that, the more it is a mess. I sure hope that some of the splitting of the ethernet cables that you can see in the bottom right are being used for a jury rigged POTS/phone connections, and/or security lines. That is completely out of spec for anything above CAT3 networking, and even then, I don't think the length of those exposed twisted pairs meets any kind of specification (other than phone line).

I also don't think the punchdown block meets CAT5 spec (even though it is labled as such in the pic). Those blocks have too much exposure to interference to meet compliance if I recall, which is why cables are terminated into something like a keystone punch down connector (to minimize exposed lengths of the twisted pairs), like seen in the following:
https://www.computercablestore.com/how-to-terminate-punch-down-style-keystone-jacks

Yea, if it's going to be used by OP, and rework and upgrade of the existing infrastructure is needed.