Home wired with Cat5e, TWC Cable Modem with RJ11 (connect, phone)
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Hi -
I'd like to start using our Cat5e wiring as actual data lines and not just for voice in our house so I can hard wire some components; 2nd computer, xbox, etc. I'm completely wireless right now.
Our house came pre-wired with Cat5e and there are single corresponding RJ45 jacks in each room which all terminate at an Eaton combo coaxial/RJ45 module in our hall closet. We don't have any RJ11 jacks, just RJ45's.
We have TWC Digital Cable and Digital Home Phone and have a TWC issued cable modem (Motorola) that has an Ethernet port and an RJ11 port. So, right now I have a phone cord plugged into the RJ45 jack from the cable modem and the ethernet going to my wireless router.
I know I need the following, but I can't figure out how my digital phone is going to hook into everything as I only have one RJ45 jack in each room.
You need more switches, not more routers. You can put a switch in every room if you want. Plug the switch into the RJ45 jack on the wall and then as many devices as you want into the switch. It's no problem to have a switch plugged into a switch.
Each of your RJ-45 wall jacks has 8 conductors in the Cat 5 wiring that goes to it. RJ-11 phone wiring needs two conductors and 10/100 Base-T networking only needs 4 conductors. You've got more than enough to do both jobs!
If you're willing to do (or pay for) some rewiring at the patch panel, you can have both networking and phone come out of the same RJ-45 jack. Once the wiring to the jacks is reconfigured, you can use these splitters in the RJ-45 wall jacks to have both network and telephone coming out of the same wall jack.
That's what I had done 9 years ago at my house and it has served me well, through 2 different internet providers and 2 different phone providers. The only drawback is that you won't be able to use gigabit ethernet through the modified jacks, since it requires all 8 wires in the RJ-45. Gigabit is probably overkill. It'll be years before ISPs deliver us more than 100 Mbit connections. You can still use the gigabit wirelessly.
That will be tricky to wire for the pinouts of the Phone and Ethernet on the same jack. As Bo pointed out, gigabit uses all 8 wires. If a gigabit device is plugged in, and the phone rings, you will likely fry that device.
Hey, thanks for all the replies. I do have a wiring box that the combo module sits in where all coax and ethernet cables run to. I attached a pic of the combo module.
I don't need every jack to be active, just 4 of the 8; Living room, master bedroom, kid's room, and bonus room. The bonus rooms is where I now have the wireless router, cable modem, and my hardwired computer.
I'm thinking I need to put the cable modem in the box so I can use one of the RJ45 connections for the phone as I only have single ethernet lines running from each room.
Would it make sense to get a wired gigabit router and put that on the wall next to the wiring box? I guess I would need to get an access point or can I still use my existing wireless router?
I feel like my cable modem is outdated with this RJ11 connection. Do any of you have digital phone and cable? How is your's connected?
It seems like my builder went on the cheap with only running one line...
i use to think so to, until i started distributing video to each room in my house over the network.
100Mb bottlenecks pretty quick when you're streaming 1080p video around the house.
The infrastructure to push video around like that must have cost you a fortune. I've priced HDMI-over-ethernet hardware and am seeing figures like $300 per jack.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.