I want to run 1 phone line and 1 10/100 Ethernet line over 1 cable; is it doable?

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RavinDJ

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I live in a condo and I would like to run 1 phone line and 1 Ethernet line (10/100 only; no Gigabit required, since I know it uses all 4 pairs) over 1 cable... I can't really open up the walls and it's running from 3rd floor down to the garage.

I know my phone line will use up 1 pair and I have 3 more pairs available. My question is... which two pairs do I need to wire for the 10/100 Ethernet line to work properly?

Or, would you recommend doing it another way? I tried wireless but it's a pain in the ass and I'd like to have a solid connection that never goes down... f*ck it... I'd be happy with just a reliable 10Mbps connection... I don't even need 100Mbps since the traffic will only be small file transfers and print jobs that are 5 to 25 MB at most.

Thanks!
 
Don't do it, but it will work.

100base needs 3,6 and 1,2 (Orange/OrangeW, Green/GreenW) The rest of the wires prevent interference. So you could say use the Brown/BrownW wires for telephone, but really run a second cable.

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I think there are even splitters available that will do this easily for you, but really, don't do it.
 
Yeah it's doable, four wires for ethernet and another four for the phoneline. I'm sure there's a bazillion and one sites that can show you the wiring for it. I'd recommend getting wallplates with spaces for two jacks one for ethernet and one for phone.
 
If you have to run cable anyway, you may as well just pull two lengths, it's not any extra work. If it's existing cabling though, it will work, but everyone is still going to recommend you pull an extra run.
 
Another vote for 'do not do this!'

Telephone ringing signals are a good >60VDC, combined with the electricity going down the line when you're talking, there will be plenty of interference issues, which potentially could turn the nice, reliable cabled Ethernet connection into little better than a standard WiFi connection. Ethernet is balanced, but balanced isn't perfect, it's only as good as the common mode rejection ratio of the receiver!
 
Yikes... thanks, guys. I didn't realize it was such a bad idea... but, yeah... it's already an existing line and I can't really run new wires... believe me... if I could, then I DEFINITELY would!!!

Hmmm... how else can I do this? Maybe a wireless range extender hidden somewhere on 1st floor to push the traffic from 2nd floor to garage. It's small traffic, so as long as it's always on... I don't really care about the throughput.

Then, install a wireless bridge downstairs and attach a 24-port switch in the garage so that there could always be high traffic movement in the garage.

What do you think?
 
You could run ceiling or floor track to hide the wire and just run CAT5 so long as your not doing more then 100 meters. You could also do what I did to get cable from my office on the second floor down to the 1st and pull up a bit of the carpet and then hide the cable in the space between the molding and the carpet. Its not that noticeable and easy to remove when your moving out if your only doing a single wire.
 
RavinDJ said:
Yikes... thanks, guys. I didn't realize it was such a bad idea... but, yeah... it's already an existing line and I can't really run new wires... believe me... if I could, then I DEFINITELY would!!!

Hmmm... how else can I do this? Maybe a wireless range extender hidden somewhere on 1st floor to push the traffic from 2nd floor to garage. It's small traffic, so as long as it's always on... I don't really care about the throughput.

Then, install a wireless bridge downstairs and attach a 24-port switch in the garage so that there could always be high traffic movement in the garage.

What do you think?
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If I may, why can't you use the old cable as a pull line for two more cat5 runs?
 
Then just use the one wire since you're stuck with it.

It's not great, but it'll serve your purposes.

Also, any coax in the walls? You could get some cheap MOCA adapters off ebay and use that for data.
 
Yeah, coax in walls... but, used for Cable TV (provided by Cablevision's Optimum TriplePlay).

I'll see if I can whip something out... if not, I'll go with the above recommendations. Again, it's only 1 phone line used for OUTGOING FAX only and data which has very little traffic requirements.
 
MoCA is specifically designed to interoperate fine with analog & digital cable as well as cable modem services. It's an option for you if you're willing to buy the hardware.

Or you could set up a fax server somewhere convenient and use that for sending your faxes :p
 
Already have eFax for incoming... this is for an HP Color LaserJet CM6040f MFP that I have... I use it for faxes and scanning and printing, so I definitely need the network connectivity.

I'll try it and post pics and update you guys on how it went :p

Thanks!!
 
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