Phone line network

[Isaiah]

Can I use phone line for my network(CAT 5)?


Thanks

 

[Workin']

No. Not if you want to run at Cat 5 speeds.

 

[Isaiah]

Ok Thanks

 

[Stealth1024]

CAT5, used for Fast Ethernet, is composed of 8 wires, grouped in 4 twisted pairs. This way, any interference is essentially canceled out. Phone wire is only composed of 4 wires, 2 wires per line.

 

[cz]

Actually you can but not at the speed and the distance that you might want.

Stealth is right that CAT5 has 4 pairs of wires. But only 2 pairs are used for networking and other 2 pairs are for phones actually. Usually you house phone lines have more than 2 pairs. My place has 4 pairs installed. You can check the CAT5 wiring diagram. You see that only line 1,2,3, and 6 are used for networking. If you can fined two spare pairs of wires you can make your own CAT5 connector. But phonelines might introduce more noises so speed will suffer.

 

[R0b0tN1k]

The un-used pair is located in the middle of the jack...the same place the phone lines use. It is made this way to prevent you from frying your networking equipment if it is accidentally plugged into the phone system. Do not run phone and LAN over one cable. the phone lines are at 50V DC on hook, and can reach as high as 100V AC when it is ringing...network equipment tends to stop working when fed that kind of stuff.

 

[jmcoreymv]

I believe Robotnik is right, the other wires are meant for a digital phone system like the ones generally found in corporate offices.

 

[Isaiah]

ok thanks
If I do use phone for my network, How long can a phone line go?

 

[cz]

May be 50ft the maximum and you can get up to 10Mbit assuming you have good quality phonelines in your place. Good quality means each pair of wires are tightly twisted to each other.