Patch Cable using phone line

[nicetobnice]

Hi guys great forum
Hope you can help me out with my problem.
Here goes i have an existing bt telephone line system installed in my house with plenty of sockets scattered around the bedroom

I now know that I can do this and expect to receive 10BASE-T.
my problem is I'm not sure what the pin-outs on my bt plug to rj45 should be

i have 2 options
1 to use cat5 cable and cut off wire not to be used
2 use bt line 4 core

all i want to do is plug into the existing socket on the wall ?
can anyone help ?

 

[ScottMac]

Phone wire has no category rating.
In addition, phone jacks are usually "daisy-chained" (strung from jack to jack instead of home runs to a central point).
Also, most phone jacks are wired with less than four pair (two are common - red, green, yellow, black).

1. IF it works at all, it's going to suck; it's gonna suck real bad.
2. Most likely is that it won't work.
3. Considered wireless? Maybe Power Line networking?

Some additional details would be helpful for us to help you out.

 

[Red Squirrel]

If they used cable that has at least 4 wires it could work for 10/100. I don't know off hand what pins you need but you could look it up. I've never daisy chained ethernet before but I think it will work, basically it will be a single collision domain, like using a hub. It's not going to be pretty, but it could work.

Wireless would probably be better.

If you don't use the phone lines you could use the line itself to fish cat6 cable through and put proper keystones.

 

[kevnich2]

Hi guys great forum
Hope you can help me out with my problem.
Here goes i have an existing bt telephone line system installed in my house with plenty of sockets scattered around the bedroom

I now know that I can do this and expect to receive 10BASE-T.
my problem is I'm not sure what the pin-outs on my bt plug to rj45 should be

i have 2 options
1 to use cat5 cable and cut off wire not to be used
2 use bt line 4 core

all i want to do is plug into the existing socket on the wall ?
can anyone help ?

Let me see if I understand what you're wanting to do. You have existing RJ45 jacks in your house that lead to your phone system that is installed in your house that you want to convert from phone to being used for data as a long patch cable to plug your computer into? Correct?

 

[nicetobnice]

Thanks to you all for taking time out

I currently have home plugs installed but there slow ok but slow .
I really don't want to install cat5 cable all over my house so was wondering if I can utilise the existing phone line?

I have checked and the line isn't connected outside that's a bonus

I have just checked and I was mistaken regarding the cable' infact it has 6 cores
Rethinking will i be able to change the faceplates then plug in a normal patch cable ?

 

[Eug]

The easiest would just be to get HomePNA Ethernet adapters for phone lines.

 

[Eug]

Here's an AnandTech review of HomePNA over phone lines:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/860/

However, it seems the hardware is really hard to find now. Too bad. It works well.

 

[nicetobnice]

seems great but what is it and how do you intergreat it ?

 

[Eug]

Assuming you can find the hardware (which may be really tough, since it seems most is discontinued now), you just plug it in.

Basically what it does is take an Ethernet signal and convert it into something that can handle a standard 2-wire phone line system. Furthermore, branches in the phone line system are no problem, and you can plug in anywhere along the chain. Also, you can plug in multiple devices into the same chain, no problem.

No rewiring at all is required, and you can even run DSL and telephone off the same line. Basically, all you do is plug it in and go.

You can buy regular PCI cards and USB adapters, but what's the most flexible is to buy HomePNA phoneline-to-Ethernet bridges, which is just a box with a phone jack on one side and an Ethernet jack on the other.

I had this, and it worked perfectly:

The ports in the pic are:

To wall (ie. wall phone jack)
To phone (so you can talk on the telephone)
Ethernet (which connects to the Ethernet port on your computer, via standard CAT5e)

Unfortunately, like I said, this stuff is old now. Very hard to find.

Alternatively, do you have unused coaxial cable in the house? If it's not plugged into anything, you can use HomePNA 3.1 over coax. If it is plugged into cable TV, then you can still use MoCA. A lot of people use MoCA and apparently it works well. I've tried HomePNA over coax and it works well too, but in my house it's not appropriate because I have digital cable.

I've also tried powerline networking, which is hit-and-miss. Sometimes it works well, but sometimes it doesn't, and it usually depends on which circuits in the house are used. HomePNA over phone lines was much more reliable, but my HomePNA 2.0 equipment maxed out at 10 Mbps, whereas when powerline works well you can get over 30 Mbps or more. There is HomePNA 3.1 now, which is faster, but that's usually over coax.

However, in the end I just added Gigabit Ethernet all over the house, so now all of these technologies are superfluous for me.

 

[nicetobnice]

Thanks for that Not sure if I mentioned I do infact have 6 wires behind my bt faceplate

If 2 wires can achieve 10mb surely 6 can do better ?

 

[nicetobnice]

Maybe if someone can answer this question I could search for other possibility's

is there any way a patch cable can work with 6 wires ?

 

[ScottMac]

Thanks for that Not sure if I mentioned I do infact have 6 wires behind my bt faceplate

If 2 wires can achieve 10mb surely 6 can do better ?

It takes at least two pair (four wires). That, theoretically, could give you 10BaseT using commonly available SOHO equipment. HPNA could probably give you more, if you could find it.

Six conductors will only help if there are protocols that support it. There aren't to the best of my knowledge.

Daisy-chained jacks are a gut-wrenching series of impedance lumps and crosstalk. This is a bad idea. Try something different. Wireless or power would be your best choices.

Good Luck

 

[alkemyst]

If they used cable that has at least 4 wires it could work for 10/100. I don't know off hand what pins you need but you could look it up. I've never daisy chained ethernet before but I think it will work, basically it will be a single collision domain, like using a hub. It's not going to be pretty, but it could work.

Wireless would probably be better.

If you don't use the phone lines you could use the line itself to fish cat6 cable through and put proper keystones.

Chances are if phone line is the only option it was pegged down along the line.

For the OP, I am guessing the best step would be to re-homerun if needed and then put in wireless. I am doubting they really need full bandwidth in every room.

if they do, re-homerun it and then (since he said house) do an attic or basement/sublayer crawl and push it down.

I had to do this with my coax wiring. They had every room wired with craptastic cabling. All twist on connectors. Everyone of them terminated to a wall plate with another twist on connector.

In the attic was some 8 way splitter attached to 4 ways for each room. The problem was they didn't home run from the 8 way...they just carried it down the line from each 4 way splitter. Each room was stapled in. Somewhere along the line they re-drywalled the whole house. Really no need to staple this kind of stuff.

I had Comcast come out to fix. Those asshats just cut the cable at the roofline and patched RG6 into the RG59 and told me my attic install was good.

At least they ran the RG6 from the pole down to the box.

I put in a two way splitter (one to my internet and the other to cable TV) then a 4 way to cover the 3 bedrooms and my family room.

 

[Eug]

If you don't want rewire the whole house you could still put in a couple of strategically placed Ethernet runs and then run WiFi off of them to cover the whole house. That would give you better than 10 Base-T speeds. You can even run CAT6 on the outside of the house if you don't want to fish through walls.

 

[nicetobnice]

Guys just a quick update I have installed another router through the phone line with 4 wires and receive 10mbps i'm well pleased guys

been doing it since I arrived home from work

if you need any details let me no

 

[alkemyst]

Guys just a quick update I have installed another router through the phone line with 4 wires and receive 10mbps i'm well pleased guys

been doing it since I arrived home from work

if you need any details let me no

1-10mbps would be typical for this. In today's age many want 100-1000+mbps on the copper.

If 10mbps works, then problem solved without worrying about wiring.

 

[nicetobnice]

I've gone from 1mbps to 10 over the phone line without having to run any cables. Know I can stream video superb and still extend my wireless network

 

[alkemyst]

I've gone from 1mbps to 10 over the phone line without having to run any cables. Know I can stream video superb and still extend my wireless network

what are your plans for extending the wireless?

 

[nicetobnice]

Update

I didn't realise that the tx+tx- and rx-rx+ should be the same twisted pair so I have now changed both plugs and can receive 20mbps I'm really please.
As to the wireless question
This is my setup

downstairs cable modem and wireless router plugged into the rj45 wall socket upstairs out of the rj45 wall socket is a patch cable plugged into another router with the last ip number changed dhcp server turned off and wireless turned off.
into the upstairs router is a xbox dreambox pc and a wireless extender that also has the last ip number changed the wireless extender has the same ssid and password as the downstairs router
so now when walking around the house and in the garden the wifi is awesome