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House has cat5, do i need a switch?

P

pood

Senior member
There's cat5 wired in all the rooms.

There's a central networking cabinet in the master, it looks like it's only a punch down block, do I need to get a switch?

How exactly do I connect the wires from the punch down to the switch?
 
Arcanedeath said:
Yes you need a switch and you use patch cables to go from the patch pannel to the switch.
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I haven't checked (not at the home), but do the patch panels have rj45 sockets on the back to connect each port to a port on a switch?
 
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It should be cat5,

Downstairs in the living room, the wall plates have coxial, phone, and cat5.

2 extra bedrooms has only RJ11 and coxial, but i took one wall plate off, 2 wires are not connected and wrapped around the cable, so I'm assuming that's cat5. Lol I should've really paid attention in my ccna class.


networking box: http://imgur.com/a5BQF
 
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pood said:
I've no idea, I'll go check tomorrow, but I got a feeling there's no switch, why do these home builders add cat5, but skip the switch??? Not like they're pricey.
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People have their own requirements when it comes to switches.
 
pood said:
I've no idea, I'll go check tomorrow, but I got a feeling there's no switch, why do these home builders add cat5, but skip the switch??? Not like they're pricey.
Click to expand...

Well today you are lucky to have two phone jacks actually connected (master bedroom and kitchen) without paying extra.

It's not the cost of the cable/devices, it's the labor time as well as the 'warranty' headache.

A lot of times you will have cat5 ran to all rooms and the 'closet' but unterminated. They may include a patch panel, but again chances are it's up to the buyer to terminate to it.

What really sucks is some of the time they don't label the cables properly.

In the end OP, without knowing what we are looking at, you will more than likely need to buy a switch, terminate to the patch panel, terminate in the room to a wall plate and then patch down to the switch.

Even better was seeing one house that had a patch panel/wiring closet, but they never ran power to it (private home builder and an example of you get what you pay for).
 
For each node to have its unique line with no collisions, then a switch is required. This is why switches were invented.
 
Took a look at the patch panel, there's no sockets for rj45, so how do I hook up each line to a switch?

Could it be just phone? I've taken apart one of the face plates that has sockets for phone, cat5, and cable. All 3 are connected.

How do I test if there's a switch?
 
That's one of those structured media boxes, probably from one of the box home improvement stores. Personally I hate those since they aren't very deep and are a bitch to work on when full. What I believe you have are the telephone bridge modules for that structured media box. You'd have to figure out which lines are which. Is green supposed to be telephone only or is blue supposed to be telephone only. My guess is that the different colored cables were meant to show one is telephone and one is data, but someone punched them both down to telephone bridge modules.

You'd need to pick up a 110 punchdown block (or the Data bridge modules for that structured media box), remove one or both of the telephone bridge modules (assuming you don't need either of them), then punch down the wires to the new 110 block. After that, you can use patch cables to plug into a ethernet switch or router. Alternatively, less optimal setup would be to remove the telephone bridge modules and terminate the wires to 8P8C CAT5e (or CAT6 if it is CAT6 wiring) connectors. Then you can plug the wires directly into an ethernet switch or ethernet router.

Also you'll need to check what each wire terminates to in each room. I assume there are CAT5e keystones and possibly CAT3 RJ-11 keystones at each faceplate. Could just be all CAT5e keystones. You want CAT5e keystones so you can plug your computers/game consoles/streaming media players/TVs/etc directly into the jack.
 
hawk82 said:
That's one of those structured media boxes, probably from one of the box home improvement stores. Personally I hate those since they aren't very deep and are a bitch to work on when full. What I believe you have are the telephone bridge modules for that structured media box. You'd have to figure out which lines are which. Is green supposed to be telephone only or is blue supposed to be telephone only. My guess is that the different colored cables were meant to show one is telephone and one is data, but someone punched them both down to telephone bridge modules.

You'd need to pick up a 110 punchdown block (or the Data bridge modules for that structured media box), remove one or both of the telephone bridge modules (assuming you don't need either of them), then punch down the wires to the new 110 block. After that, you can use patch cables to plug into a ethernet switch or router. Alternatively, less optimal setup would be to remove the telephone bridge modules and terminate the wires to 8P8C CAT5e (or CAT6 if it is CAT6 wiring) connectors. Then you can plug the wires directly into an ethernet switch or ethernet router.

Also you'll need to check what each wire terminates to in each room. I assume there are CAT5e keystones and possibly CAT3 RJ-11 keystones at each faceplate. Could just be all CAT5e keystones. You want CAT5e keystones so you can plug your computers/game consoles/streaming media players/TVs/etc directly into the jack.
Click to expand...

Just found out that there's ethernet cables hidden behind the wall plates with the ones that only have voice/cable. I bought a bunch of keystones from monoprice and wall plates with 3 slots. Going to get rid all voice jacks so I have 2 drops of ethernet.

110 punchdown block is leviton right? I was going to just get a patch panel from a different brand (whatever panel that has good reviews on amazon), but I suppose getting the 110 would make a better fit in the box?
 
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110 punchdown block is the industry standard for terminating data wiring at a demarcation point, server room, IDF, etc. There are various manufacturers of 110 blocks, Leviton being one of them. The only problem in your particular situation is that the wiring is the structured media panel. If you have a door that you want to cover that panel with, then you may have problems getting a standard 110 block to fit in there without sticking out too far. You may end up having to get the overpriced 110 punchdown block data modules designed for that structured media panel. You can probably get them at your local box home improvement store, as that is where the panel probably came from.
 
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