RJ11 to RJ45

cletus

Good evening folks. Couple of questions for those more knowledgeable than I.

Recently we converted the box room in our house to an office. The computer up there is on our WiFi network, but the is an RJ11 face plate in the room. I began to ponder the possibility of replacing this with an RJ45 faceplate. I figured this would most likely require pulling new cable (if this is even possible), but I thought first step was to remove the faceplate and have a gander at what was behind.

Turns out there are two cables running into the back of the face plate. They would appear to be cat5 or cat5e, which leads me to my first question; is it possible to tell the difference between the two without having it printed on the sheath?

Both cables are using two wires, connected together, in two terminals. The only other phone socket I have is in the hall, where my router is. I had assumed, and the guy from Vodafone didn't disabuse me of this assumption, that the hall socket was the primary socket, am I wrong?

I've attached a photo of the back of the faceplate in the upstairs room (office), if it's of any use.

Any and all suggestions, comments and advice is welcome

newirishman

Color scheme looks like a proper network cable, It is pretty much impossible to say if cat5 or cat5e Without seeing what’s printed on it - the main difference is the way the wires are twisted to avoid crosstalk, and difficult to tell from looking at it. If it was wired in the last 15 years, it is quite likely that it is 5e though.

You can always test it: Wire it up with proper rj45 sockets, connect a computer and a gbit switch, and see if it is able to negotiate 1gbit or not.

cletus

Thanks for the reply. House is about 10 years old, so fingers crossed.

Can I just get a RJ45 faceplate and connect all wires the way the two in the picture are done?

cletus

Also, with regards to the hall socket, I presume I just get a double RJ45 faceplate (RJ11 plug fits RJ45 socket, I think), wire appropriately, plug the router back in, then run an ethernet cable to the router from the other socket

newirishman

cletus wrote: »

Also, with regards to the hall socket, I presume I just get a double RJ45 faceplate (RJ11 plug fits RJ45 socket, I think), wire appropriately, plug the router back in, then run an ethernet cable to the router from the other socket

Buy a rj45 double socket, given you have 2 cables, and wire it correctly. Rj11 has only 6 pins, rj45 has 8.

For computer networking, rj45 all the way.
I recommend the 568B wiring scheme (seems to be the one that used more often)

cletus

Thanks for the replies, much appreciated

newirishman

cletus wrote: »

Thanks for the replies, much appreciated

The sockets are usually colour coded, so easy to wire up. Get the right crimp tools, cheap enough on Amazon etc., Otherwise it'll be a pain to get done, never mind right.

tsue921i8wljb3

Ethernet is not as tolerant of poor wiring as voice. Those cables need to be cut back flush and terminated properly for Ethernet. It is not acceptable to untwist the four pairs to the extent shown in that picture.

Ethernet faceplates use punchdown connections so you are going to need a punchdown tool to do the job.

It would be best to watch some videos on YouTube to learn the correct termination procedure if you haven't done the job before.

shanec1928

newirishman wrote: »

The sockets are usually colour coded, so easy to wire up. Get the right crimp tools, cheap enough on Amazon etc., Otherwise it'll be a pain to get done, never mind right.

a punch down tool is what your looking for not a crimper

cletus

Right, back again with a few more questions. Had a look at videos for wiring RJ45's. Have sourced a punchdown tool, but it seems like parallel wiring both wires like the RJ11 wouldn't be an option.

It would seem that they are parallel wired in order to continue on to some other termination point (speculation, as I don't recall seeing another phone socket in the house).

So, questions.
How would I go about wiring these to RJ45 without losing whatever continuity they were originally set up with.

How do I determine which of the two phone sockets in the house is the 'master' socket?

Should I take all these queries over to the Net&Comm forum, see what those boys make of it?

EdgeCase

Analogue voice would practically run over anything. It's a big, powerful and relatively simple signal that's very actively driven by the exchange. It's designed to be able to drive a voice signal down several km of copper wire and deal with a lot of impedance and so on. If the impedance high due to long line / bad signal, the line card in the exchange will compensate by outputting more power. It's generally very robust. DSL equipment also compensates for some of those issues and can adapt to line conditions.

Ethernet is far more sensitive to interference, impedance, induced noise and so on, so you need all your wiring and junctions 'just so'. It's expecting everything to be done as per the spec.

cletus

Thanks for the replies folks. I took some of these questions, along with some more photos, over to the nets&comms forum. Response was basically that even if I could figure out some of the bad wiring, I can't replace the faceplate at the modem, so no way to have ethernet connection. Will be leaving it so

Thanks again