Home network including telephones

chris

chris

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I've been asked by a customer who just moved in to his new house to connect his home network up. The electricians have pre-wired the house in cat5 cable to 10 rooms with each cable coming back to the cupboard under the stairs. The electricians have told him that the network points in each room can provide internet and telephone once terminated. His master telephone socket and Sky broadband router is also under the stairs so what would be required to get this working for him ?

Thanks
 
Hi Chris

Well I was posed a similar question a month or so ago but we ended up going down a different route, however, if the network is already connected to a router (which it sounds like it will be) then all you need to do is register with a VOIP provider for either a monthly flat fee or pay as you go system, they will issue you with a VOIP telephone number and you can then tap off anywhere on the network to allow for a standard telephone using this kind of device,
-http://www.voipon.co.uk/linksys-spa2102-p-340.html

Ah....I am wrong, I just re-read your post and he has a standard master telephone socket (presumably from Sky) in that case I am unsure how that works
 
A BT hub can be used, though since it only has four ethernet ports on the back, one would then need to be connected up to an eight way router.
 
To use the Cat5 cable for analogue phone use, take three or four (4th is Earth and not really needed unless connected to a PBAX) wires from the Cat5 cable, removed from any routers, and wire them up in the master socket as extensions, and at the other end you use a BT to RJ45 adaptor (Slave type) to connect a standard phone... :)

Don't forget to mark that cable and the end socket as "Telephone", just incase someone thinks it's a network socket... :)
 
2cvbloke said:
To use the Cat5 cable for analogue phone use, take three or four (4th is Earth and not really needed unless connected to a PBAX) wires from the Cat5 cable, removed from any routers, and wire them up in the master socket as extensions, and at the other end you use a BT to RJ45 adaptor (Slave type) to connect a standard phone... :)

Don't forget to mark that cable and the end socket as "Telephone", just incase someone thinks it's a network socket... :)
Click to expand...

All very well 2CV but that leaves him without network nodes in each of the rooms
 
Topper said:
All very well 2CV but that leaves him without network nodes in each of the rooms
Click to expand...

Not necessarily, if the networking's been wired up properly (standard 10/100 networking can't be wired like phone lines, you can't have sockets wired in parallel, they have to be independent), it'll be 1-line 1-socket per network point, so if they have access points in each room with 2 sockets, they could wire them so one side is a computer network and the other is a telephone network, and if you get really technical, you can actually use 1 cable for both, but that requires a custom splitter at each end... :)

Also, if they have modular sockets, they can actually fit BT socket modules to the faceplate, so no requirement for the RJ45 to BT adaptors... :)

I'd draw a diagram on how it'd work, but, I'm off to burnleh in a bit, so haven't the time... :D
 
It's not always safe to assume that electricians understand what they're doing when cat5 is involved; I once specified 2 sockets in each office cabled back to the patch panel only to find they'd pulled one cat 5 cable and one 3 pair cable to each point. Assuming there's only one cable to each point, you could get away with fitting a double cat5 faceplate with 4 cores for each. You still have a problem of what to do at the master socket, though unless fitting a switch in the phone system ..... 10 extensions from 1 socket would exceed the REN capability of the line although I don't know if that would be as much of a problem with modern phones
 
Well it's certainly easy enough to use any of the cat5 runs for either phone, or ethernet, you can get a phone dongle kit and patch lead at this site _http://www.run-it-direct.co.uk/bttorj45patchkit.html

I have heard of cases where people have run both down one cable, using only the required two pairs in CAT5 for ethernet module and the other two pairs for a phone module by the side in a data frame. Not sure whether there'd be any crosstalk though.

In fact just found a port sharing kit here _http://www.bttorj45.com/shop/40/patch_bt_to_rj45/
 
I have heard of people running telco and internet down the one cat5e cable and I have the instructions bookmarked somewhere if they would be any good?

I was going to do it myself but it was overkill for what i needed in a 3bed semmi lol

You would also need one of these patch pannels or something like these to get everything working eBay item no: 130400068691

You would have the patch pannel uner the stairs, the master BT socket would plug in as would the hub/modem

You would then plug all 10 cat5e cables into the pannel and mark the pannel so you know what room each wire terminates to, then you would use patch leads to connect from the internet and POTS to each room

Think old telephone exchange where the opperator would physically connect your line to the next line to make a call, same thing in essence
 
Thinking about it, if I were to be wiring my home for networking, I'd use cat6 cable rated for Gigabit, and ensure I have Gigabit capable hardware (my Portege M300 I think has Gigabit ethernet, unless that's my dead-screened Tecra M2), that way you can use it for faster file transfers, and even have a HTPC on the go and keep the files on a server elsewhere in the house for streaming... :)

But that's straying from the point I guess... :D
 
2cvbloke said:
Thinking about it, if I were to be wiring my home for networking, I'd use cat6 cable rated for Gigabit, and ensure I have Gigabit capable hardware (my Portege M300 I think has Gigabit ethernet, unless that's my dead-screened Tecra M2), that way you can use it for faster file transfers, and even have a HTPC on the go and keep the files on a server elsewhere in the house for streaming... :)

But that's straying from the point I guess... :D
Click to expand...

Thats what I was going to do before I realised it was over kill for 2/3 internet users lol

I was going to store all my movies, music and the rest on a pc under the stairs and use my DM500 to stream movies and music to my tv in the living room, use a pc upstairs to watch movies and sat via my DM in bed and use the wii for movies and music in they young uns bedroom (hardwired via the wii ethernet addon) and use my pc in the dining room to watch movies/listen to music if need be

Instead of doing that I bought a 20meter cat5e cable and cut it in the middle, I attached the 2 split ends to 2 rj45 ethernet sockets and ran one cable up the wall to my bedroom and another round the room to the dining room and plugged my hub3 into the rj45 wall points

I may still get a patch pannel yet as I`m looking into 4cheap pcs, one for the kitchen for music, one for the young uns room to keep him off mine and one for the other bedroom for our lasses niece (as she is staying with us) so if I can get or build 3 bog standard pcs or streaming terminals and get one with good storage to use as the server I might take the plunge and sort the job out (just dont tell the wife, it`ll be a job for when she is in town lol)

Even though the hub3 has gigabit from one port I dont think I can justify cat6 cable, cat5e would do the job for me because the young un only plays web based java/flash games or youtube, our lasses niece only does facebook and youtube and I will only be streaming in the evening when no1 else is using the network or when in the kitchen cooking and I only get 2meg internet off BT so I shouldnt notice a difference in internet speeds tbh

I`m still in 2minds about it, I want to network the home, just to give me something to be plodding on with messing about with wires lol but I could just as easy set up the other pcs on wifi but that would cause more problems than it fixes in this house lol (its very noisy RF wise, I have the hub kicking out wifi, I have a samsung house phone with built in wifi router and cordless wifi handset, I have a wireless access point set up in the loft and also a wifi hifi that can stream from me pc over wifi, then I have several radios that spew out RF when not tuned propperly and also recievers that get hammered off the wifi devices)

Let us know how you get on Chris and take pics if you can as it would be a great help to others thinking about networking the home like that
 
the electricians shouldn't of been so stingy and should of ran two cables to each room. it would of made things much easier.

i did it in my house recently. ran 2x cat 6 to all the rooms and 13 to my main room. (also ran loads of coax too)

all terminated into a patch panel in a comms cabinet. (cctv comes in here, SKY, coax , Tv distribution etc)

24 port gigabit switch + standard router, also have another router wireless as a repeater for the garden.

you can use the one cable to split the pairs for phone and internet but that is not the way i would of done it
 
Thanks for the help, Going to see the guy again tomorrow so will recommend he buys some cordless phones and uses the cat5 cables installed for his network.

Chris.
 
Have looked into these hummers??

_http://www.ipphone-warehouse.com/Single-Line-VoIP-Phones-s/611.htm
 
smoggy07 said:
Thats what I was going to do before I realised it was over kill for 2/3 internet users lol
Click to expand...

I wouldn't say it's overkill, with internet speeds getting faster (just look at BT's Infinity thing, that's about 40Mb up and download, and Virginmedia's top package is 50Mb Down, that's HALF the speed of a 100Mb network card!!!), it's logical that the hardware at your end should also be faster, especially with media sharing and home theatre computers on the go, a 100Mb network would get choked up pretty quickly, having to balance the load, you'd end up with reduced performance and streaming videos would get pretty choppy if you're also downloading at the same time... :)

Plus, it's better to be ready now than have to spend more later upgrading... :D

Also, Wireless networking is lagging behind, 11N (quoted speeds are up to 108Mb) is no faster than 11G in reality (seeing how they do the testing within a grounded, EM proof testing area, removing the reality of EM noise all over the range of frequencies), so that's really a poor solution for networking (not to mention, insecure, despite all the encryption algorithms!!), handy for laptops and mobile devices, but no good for modern high-traffic networking... :)
 
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