Keystone/Patch Panel Hack

[jorwex]

I recently moved into a new house that had an existing phone patch panel yet had cat5e throughout the walls, terminating in rj11 phone keystone jacks. The 8 conductors were spread across two phone lines at each jack.

Since I don't have a phone line, and was interested in networking two rooms together, I thought of a hack solution...

1) Disconnect the telephone input from the street to the patch panel
2) Replace each of the two room's 2x phone jacks with 1x rj45 ethernet jack
3) As long as I don't use ANY other room's jacks, treat the connection between those two rooms as just a patch cable

So I went ahead and did the necessary wiring, however I am not having success. My network devices detect link, but cannot establish a connection.

So my question:

As I have effectively branched out the two room's "patch cable" to every room in the house (the remaining phone jacks...about 5 across the whole house), could my problems be due to interference picked up from the rest of the house?

Or is it more likely my keystone wiring that needs more scrutiny?

Thanks all. Just wanted to ask before I pull my hair out troubleshooting the keystones.

 

[notposting]

From what I think you're describing, you need to join *only* the 2 rooms together at the phone panel, preferably with a couple jacks and a short patch cable there.

 

[jorwex]

good point

for the sake of argument (and since we may only be living here for a year), will the extra room's termination points cause the sort of interference I'm talking about...to the point where I'd notice a problem?

i set out to change as little as possible in case we left and i had to restore the state of things.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Are you Terminating all 4 pairs? make sure you do, and that your terminations are good.

 

[imagoon]

good point

for the sake of argument (and since we may only be living here for a year), will the extra room's termination points cause the sort of interference I'm talking about...to the point where I'd notice a problem?

i set out to change as little as possible in case we left and i had to restore the state of things.

Yes.

The lines will act like antenna / have signal reflections that will destroy connectivity. It is not "a phone" which can handle that.

 

[alkemyst]

Are you Terminating all 4 pairs? make sure you do, and that your terminations are good.

QFT...You will also need to do this as a cross-over cable if you are connecting two PC's or same type devices together. I'd first verify you get a good connection between the two machines directly and then add the wall jacks into the mix.