Home Network: Purchasing a new home

[StarsFan4Life]

I go out for our final walk through tomorrow. I will take pictures of what I am talking about and hopefully get a close/clear enough picture of the patch/punch panel.

I think Ryland hired an outside company to wire this house.....so if all else fails, I will just call/email them and see what they did.

All in all, I am stoked about having cat5e in every room. No more phone line jacks, just ethernet and RG6 jacks! Plus it is all CLEAN looking!

 

[DisgruntledVirus]

Originally posted by: StarsFan4Life
I go out for our final walk through tomorrow. I will take pictures of what I am talking about and hopefully get a close/clear enough picture of the patch/punch panel.

I think Ryland hired an outside company to wire this house.....so if all else fails, I will just call/email them and see what they did.

All in all, I am stoked about having cat5e in every room. No more phone line jacks, just ethernet and RG6 jacks! Plus it is all CLEAN looking!

Except the ones that are just dangling

jk

 

[StarsFan4Life]

Lol....that will be fixed when Verizon does its thing...

 

[kevnich2]

Find out where that dangling cat5e cable goes to inside the house, that is where you'll need to put the FIOS router.

 

[boomhower]

I just want to say I envy you, a pre-wired house and FIOS!

 

[StarsFan4Life]

Ok, here are the pics. The final walk through took all but 5 minutes. The house is rockin and ready to go:

http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/355/img0023glc.jpg - Patch Panel

http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/518/img0024afq.jpg - Patch Panel up close

http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/3306/img0026kma.jpg - Media Closet

http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/7605/img0028djv.jpg - Cat5e wall outlets (two jacks per outlet)

Based on this, what the hell do I need to do next?

 

[racolvin]

omg ... tell the bastards to get in there and change out that patch panel in the closet to something with MODULAR JACKS. FFS, how the hell do they thing a homeowner is supposed to deal with a 110 block

 

[StarsFan4Life]

Since I have no clue about this patch panel....should I just terminate the ends and be done with it all?

 

[kevnich2]

No no, that 110 block looks like it's used for phones. I see nine possible phone jacks there. How many wall jacks do you have in the house? I am guessing you have 9 jacks, with 2 ethernet jacks per jack for a total of 18 cat5e cables. I'd say you have 9 cat5e cables that aren't punched down to anything that need put in a punch down block. That 110 block is used for phones though, it ties all of them together. That cat5e at the very top probably goes out to the outside and is one of your cat5e cables that is dangling, it would be attached to the phone par of your FIOS ONT.

 

[StarsFan4Life]

Where would those other 9 cat5e cables be?

 

[StarsFan4Life]

Now I am just worried that this house was just wired for phone....but see....we are not doing a lan line phone at all. We both have cell phones and our security system is wireless. If it is just these 9 cables, I have no choice but to terminate these and use them as the network cables, right (assuming that the other 9 cables are not hidden in the wall or something).

Guess I should figure all of this stuff out before FIOS comes or will he know what is going on just by looking at it?

 

[racolvin]

Originally posted by: kevnich2
No no, that 110 block looks like it's used for phones. I see nine possible phone jacks there. How many wall jacks do you have in the house? I am guessing you have 9 jacks, with 2 ethernet jacks per jack for a total of 18 cat5e cables. I'd say you have 9 cat5e cables that aren't punched down to anything that need put in a punch down block. That 110 block is used for phones though, it ties all of them together. That cat5e at the very top probably goes out to the outside and is one of your cat5e cables that is dangling, it would be attached to the phone par of your FIOS ONT.

Why would you think its used for phones? All the wires are punched down and the colors look correctly matched - look like perfectly fine punchdowns to me. It's just missing a way to cross-connect those to his switch, which is where the modular jacks would have come in to play.

 

[StarsFan4Life]

Originally posted by: racolvin

Originally posted by: kevnich2
No no, that 110 block looks like it's used for phones. I see nine possible phone jacks there. How many wall jacks do you have in the house? I am guessing you have 9 jacks, with 2 ethernet jacks per jack for a total of 18 cat5e cables. I'd say you have 9 cat5e cables that aren't punched down to anything that need put in a punch down block. That 110 block is used for phones though, it ties all of them together. That cat5e at the very top probably goes out to the outside and is one of your cat5e cables that is dangling, it would be attached to the phone par of your FIOS ONT.

Why would you think its used for phones? All the wires are punched down and the colors look correctly matched - look like perfectly fine punchdowns to me. It's just missing a way to cross-connect those to his switch, which is where the modular jacks would have come in to play.

So then how would I go from the patch panel to my gigabit switch that I will place in the bottom right corner of this media closet?

 

[DisgruntledVirus]

Originally posted by: StarsFan4Life

Originally posted by: racolvin

Originally posted by: kevnich2
No no, that 110 block looks like it's used for phones. I see nine possible phone jacks there. How many wall jacks do you have in the house? I am guessing you have 9 jacks, with 2 ethernet jacks per jack for a total of 18 cat5e cables. I'd say you have 9 cat5e cables that aren't punched down to anything that need put in a punch down block. That 110 block is used for phones though, it ties all of them together. That cat5e at the very top probably goes out to the outside and is one of your cat5e cables that is dangling, it would be attached to the phone par of your FIOS ONT.

Why would you think its used for phones? All the wires are punched down and the colors look correctly matched - look like perfectly fine punchdowns to me. It's just missing a way to cross-connect those to his switch, which is where the modular jacks would have come in to play.

So then how would I go from the patch panel to my gigabit switch that I will place in the bottom right corner of this media closet?

Being at work, imageshack is blocked so I can't see the pictures but I'm assuming that you have something like this., correct?

If that is the case, and everything is wired with Cat 5E (and you have some slack at the closet end of the runs) buy this to switch it over to modular jacks. You could do it with the punchdown (IIRC), but $36 and a few hours one afternoon is worth it IMO. This will make it easier to quickly see what cable is for what room and allow it to be changed quickly. This is all provided the cables they used were in fact Cat 5E and not Cat 3 (although that *should* work as well, just my not get as high of throughput among other possible issues).

 

[kevnich2]

Originally posted by: racolvin

Originally posted by: kevnich2
No no, that 110 block looks like it's used for phones. I see nine possible phone jacks there. How many wall jacks do you have in the house? I am guessing you have 9 jacks, with 2 ethernet jacks per jack for a total of 18 cat5e cables. I'd say you have 9 cat5e cables that aren't punched down to anything that need put in a punch down block. That 110 block is used for phones though, it ties all of them together. That cat5e at the very top probably goes out to the outside and is one of your cat5e cables that is dangling, it would be attached to the phone par of your FIOS ONT.

Why would you think its used for phones? All the wires are punched down and the colors look correctly matched - look like perfectly fine punchdowns to me. It's just missing a way to cross-connect those to his switch, which is where the modular jacks would have come in to play.

Because that's what a 110 phone punch down looks like. The OP can pull those out from the 110 block and put them on a ethernet punch down block but the one in the photo was intended for phones.

 

[kevnich2]

Originally posted by: StarsFan4Life

Originally posted by: racolvin

Originally posted by: kevnich2
No no, that 110 block looks like it's used for phones. I see nine possible phone jacks there. How many wall jacks do you have in the house? I am guessing you have 9 jacks, with 2 ethernet jacks per jack for a total of 18 cat5e cables. I'd say you have 9 cat5e cables that aren't punched down to anything that need put in a punch down block. That 110 block is used for phones though, it ties all of them together. That cat5e at the very top probably goes out to the outside and is one of your cat5e cables that is dangling, it would be attached to the phone par of your FIOS ONT.

Why would you think its used for phones? All the wires are punched down and the colors look correctly matched - look like perfectly fine punchdowns to me. It's just missing a way to cross-connect those to his switch, which is where the modular jacks would have come in to play.

So then how would I go from the patch panel to my gigabit switch that I will place in the bottom right corner of this media closet?

This is why I asked you how many total jacks you have in your house. If you have 9 jacks total, that means they pulled 18 total cat5e cables and you have 9 punched down into the phone 110 punch down leaving 9 cat5e cables...missing somewhere. Those are what you'd put in a ethernet data punch down block.

 

[StarsFan4Life]

So I guess the next thing I need to do is rewire the patch panel (new punch down) and make sure the outlet/jack side is wired for straight through standards....

 

[kevnich2]

For the OP, my suggestion if you don't plan on using any of the jacks for phone usage, you can pull those cables out of the punch down they are in and put them all in an ethernet 110 patch panel. What should have actually been done is put all the cat5e's in an ethernet patch panel, then just have a separate phone 110 punch down and use patch cables to select whichever outlets you wanted and use a patch cable to connect it from the patch panel to the phone 110 punch down block, but obviously that's not how they did this

 

[StarsFan4Life]

Originally posted by: kevnich2

Originally posted by: racolvin

Originally posted by: kevnich2
No no, that 110 block looks like it's used for phones. I see nine possible phone jacks there. How many wall jacks do you have in the house? I am guessing you have 9 jacks, with 2 ethernet jacks per jack for a total of 18 cat5e cables. I'd say you have 9 cat5e cables that aren't punched down to anything that need put in a punch down block. That 110 block is used for phones though, it ties all of them together. That cat5e at the very top probably goes out to the outside and is one of your cat5e cables that is dangling, it would be attached to the phone par of your FIOS ONT.

Why would you think its used for phones? All the wires are punched down and the colors look correctly matched - look like perfectly fine punchdowns to me. It's just missing a way to cross-connect those to his switch, which is where the modular jacks would have come in to play.

Because that's what a 110 phone punch down looks like. The OP can pull those out from the 110 block and put them on a ethernet punch down block but the one in the photo was intended for phones.

If I was to remove the 110 phone punch....why wouldn't I just terminate the ends and be done with it and plug it directly into a gigabit switch?

 

[StarsFan4Life]

If I was to replace the 110 phone punch with an ethernet punch down block (for home network), how much is that going to cost and where can I find one that will easily attach to my media closet in the picture?

 

[DisgruntledVirus]

Originally posted by: StarsFan4Life
So I guess the next thing I need to do is rewire the patch panel (new punch down) and make sure the outlet/jack side is wired for straight through standards....

And follow the TIA A or TIA B standard based on the other end. Easiest way to tell will most likely be to just take a look at the ends that are terminated hanging out of the wall and compare it to the A and B standards to find out what was used. The installer should have used the same standard for all the outlets.

Originally posted by: StarsFan4Life
If I was to remove the 110 phone punch....why wouldn't I just terminate the ends and be done with it and plug it directly into a gigabit switch?

You certainly could.

But, if you move equipment to another location and it's now not long enough you would have to get an adapter to extend the length. Stick with the patch panel method, it's the more professional way to do it.

Originally posted by: StarsFan4Life
If I was to replace the 110 phone punch with an ethernet punch down block (for home network), how much is that going to cost and where can I find one that will easily attach to my media closet in the picture?

I linked to one earlier, but don't know what media closet you have. The one I linked to should fit in a standard server cabinet, but don't know if yours is smaller or what (since I can't see imageshack at work).

Check monoprice.com (they have smaller ones like 8 and 16 that you could get multiples of to fit in that space as well), or newegg.com. They should be <$40 for a decent one. You can always get on ebay as well.

 

[kevnich2]

I would recommend against terminating the ends with RJ45 male ends. Better practice would be a patch panel. Is that a leviton box that you have there? Go to www.leviton.com and they have accessories you can get that will fit in there with no problem. I would definitely just punch them down into a patch panel though if you don't plan on using them for phones

 

[DisgruntledVirus]

Originally posted by: kevnich2
I would recommend against terminating the ends with RJ45 male ends. Better practice would be a patch panel. Is that a leviton box that you have there? Go to www.leviton.com and they have accessories you can get that will fit in there with no problem. I would definitely just punch them down into a patch panel though if you don't plan on using them for phones

My guess is this is the correct one for his media closet. Here is a PDF with dimensions. They are 19 inches wide, which if that is correct for your media closet then this will work instead at less than half the price the cost ($90 for the Leviton one and $40 for the monoprice one). My guess is it will fit vertically where the current patch panel is, but measure to make sure you have 19 inches of space.

Patch panel is the way to go though, and if you go the ebay route is $20 with free shipping. You won't get the punch down tool or caps like monoprice has (with the one I linked to at least), but it's about 1/2 the price, and pick those up from ebay as well. You'll stay under $30 shipped (I'd personally just do monoprice, but that's your call).

 

[bobdole369]

https://www.highlandsfibernetw...tall/f04-onq-phone.JPG

Sure looks like a phone 110 punch.

Your house is not prewired for ethernet, but for phone, however some douchebag put RJ-45's in instead of RJ-11/12's.

Here's a proper ethernet 110 patch panel.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi...ols_and_faceplates.JPG

And the front side looks like this:
http://www.racksolution.net/im...tch-panel-Enlarged.jpg

But usually not as many for your house.

Seriously - if that phone patch was installed what kind of rubes put the rj-45's on the other end? How do they expect anyone to plug a landline phone in? Make a cable themselves?

 

[kevnich2]

Originally posted by: bobdole369
<a target=_blank class=ftalternatingbarlinklarge href="https://www.highlandsfibernetwork.com/media/hfnvoiceinstall/f04-onq-phone.JPG">https://www.highlandsfibern....../f04-onq-phone.JPG</a>

Sure looks like a phone 110 punch.

Your house is not prewired for ethernet, but for phone, however some douchebag put RJ-45's in instead of RJ-11/12's.

Here's a proper ethernet 110 patch panel.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi...ols_and_faceplates.JPG

And the front side looks like this:
http://www.racksolution.net/im...tch-panel-Enlarged.jpg

But usually not as many for your house.

Seriously - if that phone patch was installed what kind of rubes put the rj-45's on the other end? How do they expect anyone to plug a landline phone in? Make a cable themselves?

Well technically an RJ12 phone cable WILL fit into an RJ45 female jack. Some say it bends the outer pins but I've honestly never seen that happen myself yet.