New house has what looks like two independent wired networks. No documentation. Any ideas?

[mephiston5]

Most of the rooms have ethernet and coax network wall ports. The person I bought the house from didn't use them (he was not the first owner, who had the networks installed during the construction of the house), so he knew nothing about it.

I am afraid I am a little out of my depth here, both in terms of understanding what I have and how to use it.

Here is a picture of the junction box in the garage. The yellow paper details which wires go where within the house. What is somewhat confusing to me, why are three different colored ethernet wires (maybe the pink is phone wiring and not ethernet)?

Here is a picture of an access point within the house. Only some the ethernet wires (and some speaker wire) is accessible here.

Any idea on what I need to do to connect my cable modem and router to this beast? Can I attach my router to the network via the access point cables within the house?

Any help you can provide would be great.

Thanks.

 

[mrblotto]

are those blue cables cat5/5e? The internal wires seem to look like only 3 colors (grey,black and white) which is a little confusing to me. Then again, my eyes aren't the greatest.

Edit: just looked up 'Channel Vision'. The 2 top 'panels' appear to be telephone and/or VOIP panels:

http://channelvision.com/product/4x8-110-telephone-distribution-module-c-0432/

WTH, was the person who installed this running a colocation/agile space? lol

looks interesting to say the least. Good luck to you!

 

[mephiston5]

Yes, the dark blue wires are cat5e.

 

[mnewsham]

He's got enough coax and phone lines for a small to medium sized apartment building

 

[gbeirn]

Blue and gray are phones. You can rip out the patches for them and replace with an ethernet patch panel if you don't need the phones anymore. Might need to replace the wall jacks or re punch them down but the wires can be reused. Pink might be ethernet. It's hard to tell, what are the silver boxes below that patch panel?

Router can go anywhere there is an ethernet cable. Plugging it into one of the wall jacks will feed it back to that closet and into the patch panel and into your switch and back out to the other ports.

You'll need a few parts but the wiring can be reused and you won't need to re run that.

 

[mephiston5]

Yeah, I don't need those phones. I wonder what this guy was doing with that many phone lines.

For reference, here is a picture of one of the wall panels that are everywhere.

For what it is worth, the white coax cable feeds the signal from my cable company, so at least I have that part figured out. I will try attaching my router to the network and will let you know how it goes.

 

[mephiston5]

He's got enough coax and phone lines for a small to medium sized apartment building

Funny thing is, this is just a four bedroom house.

 

[gbeirn]

Yeah, I don't need those phones. I wonder what this guy was doing with that many phone lines.

For reference, here is a picture of one of the wall panels that are everywhere.

For what it is worth, the white coax cable feeds the signal from my cable company, so at least I have that part figured out. I will try attaching my router to the network and will let you know how it goes.

You've got the right jacks, you might need to take them apart and see how they are pushed down. You'll want the pink and gray punched down with the 586B and then put a patch panel and have all the other ends punched down the same 586B standard In that wiring closet. You'll then jumper the RJ45 from the patch panel to your switch.

 

[mephiston5]

You've got the right jacks, you might need to take them apart and see how they are pushed down. You'll want the pink and gray punched down with the 586B and then put a patch panel and have all the other ends punched down the same 586B standard In that wiring closet. You'll then jumper the RJ45 from the patch panel to your switch.

Forgive my likely stupid questions, I see the patch panel in my network closet, but I don't seem to see a switch? Am I just missing it or blind?

 

[Kartajan]

nvm.

 

[gbeirn]

Forgive my likely stupid questions, I see the patch panel in my network closet, but I don't seem to see a switch? Am I just missing it or blind?

You'll need to get a switch, there isn't one there.

 

[mephiston5]

You'll need to get a switch, there isn't one there.

Thanks! I wanted to make sure I was not crazy.

 

[boomhower]

Not going to be a fun job but I'd buy a line toner and trace/label every line. Then you know exactly what you are working with.