Is this home capable of being wired for internet with existing lines?

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Usurp

Weaksauce
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Nov 27, 2006
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Hi all,

I apologize for the coming lengthy post beforehand.

I was in the process of wiring my parents home for internet service. I have been over many time and noticed that in every room they had wall outlets with phone/internet/cable jacks. I took a trip into the basement to see what they had for wiring and they definitely had a ton of ethernet and coaxial cable run with connections terminating near their fuse panel but I couldnt see any phone line. However, upon closer inspection, all of the ports on the wall outlets are phone outlets and it looks as though all but one of the ethernet cables are being used to run the phone lines and not internet.

Basement Fuse Panel


Wall Outlet


Inner Wall Outlet. Here you can see a single ethernet cable wired into 4 phone outlets.


Ethernet Wiring Bundle



In the last photo, you can see the single blue ethernet cable (cable farthest right) not wired together with any of the other cables while the rest of the cables are wired together with each colored wire grouped with like colors. This is the first time I am attempting a project of this magnitude and I am wondering how, if at all, I can maybe wire the home for ethernet using the existing cabling.

I am assuming that I could simply disconnect the phone wiring from one room and wire that all into a single ethernet connection in the room which would result in that room losing phone service, however, how would I have any clue what I need to change in the basement? If it can even be done at all? I have no idea where that lone blue ethernet cable terminates since there are literally zero ethernet ports wired into the actual wall outlets nor do my parents know if one exists.

Has anyone ever seen a wiring job like this? Is it common? Why the hell does each room have 4 phone jacks? Any help would be appreciated on this.
 
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I would like to know who did that shi**y wiring and setup. If it was me on that last photo I would to the correct wiring for that and dont twist all wires together like that. Yes the home can be be setup for internet after you correct all wiring from the shi**y setup. Like sorting all the ethernet cables out again and spit the ethernet cables into internet and phone lines and I know it sounds like pain in the as* but It can be done correctly if you have the time to do like that. Internet only needs 4 colors of the ethernet to work and telephone only needs 2 colors from ethernet to make it work correctly so you can take most of the voice jacks out and replace it with one ethernet jack and one voice jack on single ethernet cable. If you do that make sure you write down what colors for internet and telephone so it doesnt mess you up when you fix the shi**y setup.
 
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LMAO! I like how they are just together using marrette connectors. Hahaha. Yes, you could say have two phone lines and one ethernet jack using one Cat5 cable, but they you are limited to just 100mb since you need all 4 pairs for gigabit.
 
Holy crap! NEVER allow electricians to touch ethernet wiring. I've seen this and worse several times.
If your parents are not using POTS then simply rewire the outlets with Cat5e or Cat6 keystones to replace the RJ11 phone jacks. Separate the ends by the panel and install a punch-down panel. An easy way to do this would be to mount a punchdown panel onto the plywood (along with the cable modem and router). Then some ethernet jumpers between the router and punchdown panel and you are in business.
 
MinPins said:
Holy crap! NEVER allow electricians to touch ethernet wiring. I've seen this and worse several times.
If your parents are not using POTS then simply rewire the outlets with Cat5e or Cat6 keystones to replace the RJ11 phone jacks. Separate the ends by the panel and install a punch-down panel. An easy way to do this would be to mount a punchdown panel onto the plywood (along with the cable modem and router). Then some ethernet jumpers between the router and punchdown panel and you are in business.
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ive seen this more than million times also, you know what is also worse, they run FKING speaker wire beside all the power wire to make it look nice and neat in the wall WTF.

Electricians should NEVER EVER RUN ETHERNET or SPeaker cable OR HDMI / data cable AT ALLL!!

To the OP this looks fixable :) Id personally cut and trace every cable with a toner, then use a nice punchdown after re-moving it from the electrical box and re-mounting a punchdown off the side if possible.
 
Here is an example of an electricians work. Notice anything wrong in this picture?

img190.jpg
 
That is a whole new level of fail when it comes to Ethernet cabling in that first group of pictures. If it can't be sorted properly I'd literally use that crap as pull cables to get proper cables through the walls. I'm not sure I'd want to spend the rest of my life toning that out...
 
MinPins said:
Here is an example of an electricians work. Notice anything wrong in this picture?

img190.jpg
Click to expand...

besides the obvious untwisted pairs......LOVE that near 90deg turn on the coax. they invented right angle connectors for a reason bro....:rolleyes:
 
honestly guys nothing wrong with any of these. electricians do that all the time, ive done that with phones as well to finish a job quick.

phone stuff who cares, networking you gotta care.

but to the OP, yes CAT5 is used for Phone or Network in these times.
 
marley1 said:
honestly guys nothing wrong with any of these. electricians do that all the time, ive done that with phones as well to finish a job quick.

phone stuff who cares, networking you gotta care.

but to the OP, yes CAT5 is used for Phone or Network in these times.
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yup, I saw it all the time too as a dsl field tech.

wire nuts pretty much never caused any issues with POTS.

and yes, those can be used to wire network runs.
 
I've even seen them wire in-wall and in-ceiling speakers in series!

OP, on second thought I would add a second piece of plywood just to the right and wire all of your network stuff there: a 12 port patch panel and mount the cable modem and router to it as well. Probably make room for a coax distro setup on it also.
 
MinPins said:
I've even seen them wire in-wall and in-ceiling speakers in series!

OP, on second thought I would add a second piece of plywood just to the right and wire all of your network stuff there: a 12 port patch panel and mount the cable modem and router to it as well. Probably make room for a coax distro setup on it also.
Click to expand...

some have dual voice coil and you can actually do that.

but yeah the times I go into jobs and shit is done without common sense is crazy.

some electricians dont do home run cat5, it goes from one box to the next....
 
So THAT'S WTF a wire nut is... can't say we use that term here in Canada. I'm just used to calling them marrette connectors.
 
In any room where you want Ethernet, cut off all the exposed wiring (back to the gray sheath or just before it) and just start over fresh as if you had just run the cable to that room. Put an RJ45 jack on the end as you normally would.

Finding the other end will be a little more complicated. First you'll need to separate all the individual cables from the big bundle. The easiest way is probably to put a jack on each cable and simply use a network tester, but if you want to keep phone lines in some rooms, you'll need to remove the jacks and reconnect the ones you want to use for phone (possibly switching to a 110 block instead of wirenuts). If you don't want to mess with putting a jack on every cable in the basement just for testing, you could even do something as simple as connecting a battery to one pair of wires in a room, and putting an LED on the same pair in the basement. Or twist the two wires of a pair together at the jack and use a multimeter to ohm it out in the basement. That simple continuity test will show which cable goes to which room. Label each cable (so you never have to go through this again) and connect them to a patch panel, once again cutting off all the exposed, untwisted wire and starting fresh.


Usurp said:
Why the hell does each room have 4 phone jacks?
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"Hey, this cable has 4 pairs, and each phone line only needs 1 pair. We might as well run 4 phone jacks off each cable. They'll love being able to plug in their phone, answering machine, fax machine, and modem (in each room) all at once!"
 
InvisiBill said:
"Hey, this cable has 4 pairs, and each phone line only needs 1 pair. We might as well run 4 phone jacks off each cable. They'll love being able to plug in their phone, answering machine, fax machine, and modem (in each room) all at once!"
Click to expand...

Nothing like cutting edge 1991 technology!
 
MinPins said:
Nothing like cutting edge 1991 technology!
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Good point, how long has this wiring been in place, it could be CAT3 which is only rated for 10BaseT.

Might want to verify that it's rated at least CAT5 before putting much effort into running 10/100+ on it.
 
It does look like Cat 5 because of the twists...but you will want to make sure to cut all that garbage off when you reterminate, on both ends...
 
jeffmoss26 said:
It does look like Cat 5 because of the twists...but you will want to make sure to cut all that garbage off when you reterminate, on both ends...
Click to expand...

Agree. then Use a cable tester to test each cable for shorts or broken link.
 
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