6 twisted pair telephone wiring in new apartment. 100baseT possible?

[denpgeorge]

ive just moved into a brand new apartment complex. ive never seen the type of wiring they used for the telephone, it has 6 pairs. its got all the same colors as regular cat5 with the addition of grey/grey stripe and red/blue red stripe. we only use one phone line, and it runs on the blue/blue stripe pair. the jacks are all wired to the central telephone box, star topology. i want to run 100baseT off this wire, and avoid having to run my own wires.

my question is, will it be ok to do with this wire? even though the phone line is on the blue pair? i dont know if theres some kind of rating i need or what. is there some way to find out what rating it is? i think i can get whatever might necessary to do that.

also theres 10 wires coming to the telephone box from each outlet. what would be a good clean way to get all of those to a switch, and have one pair to the telephone punchdown box from each wire?

thanks

 

[ScottMac]

It's not likey to be certified at any category rating. 10BASE-T will probably work OK, 100Base probably won't (may connect, but low throughput).

It's likely to be a violation of the rental/condo association covenent (or the phone company's rules) to mess with the wires in the NID (the grey box that terminates the phone company connection).

Running phone and network in the same jacket is a bad idea anyway.

Maybe do wireless, or the phoneline networking, or pull some real cable .... but don't mess with the wires ya got, they'll probably suck, performance-wise, and you're likely to get in trouble for it (like fines / assesments).

Good Luck

Scott

 

[bbqweed]

HPN (home phone networks)...will only run at 10Mbps....(10baseT)....100Mbps is not possible....

 

[denpgeorge]

exactly how bad an idea is it to run phone and network in the same jacket? what is the difference with a 6 pair cable and a cat5 4 pair cable? and is it a bad idea because the phone line could cause interference on the other 4 pairs? seems like it shouldnt.

is there a particular rating required for 10base and 100base? can you give me any links to information on this?

im not too worried about breaking the "apartment covenant" and paying any fines i may get charged with.

if im correct, this is not home phone networking (HPNA). im using 4 different pairs than the pair carrying the phone line. pulling my own cables is probably not an option. and i dont like the idea of wireless or HPNA, but it will be looked at if this absolutely cannot be done.

 

[bbqweed]

reason being :

1 - you don't know how long the wiring is...cat5 can only be run a certain length....the longer the cable...the more complications you may run into...(as distanced traveled...slow down communication)

2 - EMI (electro magnetic interference)....the jacket covering the wires may not be suitable....for shielding the EMI from powerlines that run throughout the walls as well.

3 - wires may not be twisted throughout their length...causing possible EMI and data collision

4 - you might be tapping into some other line...maybe phone for another unit (apartment)?

 

[heartsurgeon]

i suppose you could just try it with two computers to see if it works.

it probably will work, at what speed is unclear.
another concern...you should not assume that the person who wired the building did it the way you think they did.
i've seen phone lines in brand new construction pulled in all sort of strange ways (multiple wall recepticles serially linked together), such that you may not necessarily have a "network" friendly topology to your wires.

but good luck!

 

[L3Guy]

Even if the wire was CAT 5 rated, placing a phone on one of the pairs is a really bad idea.
If I remember correctly, ring voltage is 85 V! 85V should be enough to play havic with anything close to it.
Also the practice of "tapping off" phone lines will render unusable (for data) any line this is done to.
Example: There are two phone jacks in a room. Rather than pull 2 cables, I can splice off the one cable.
No big deal (for voice). The splice will create a filter that will destroy data transmition.

I agree with ScottMac ( duh!, he is the expert here abouts) it probably will work at 10 Mbps (God willin' and the crick don't rise), and no more.

Good luck.

Doug

 

[mobogasm]

I think it would work at 100base myself, try it, won't hurt anything to try. I have done this at work before successfully and have seen no problems. let us know how it goes.

 

[denpgeorge]

aww yea! it works beautifully! 100base and everything, and no problems with the phone ringing.

i still havent found a good way to organize the mess of wires in there though, but hey it works.

 

[denpgeorge]

alright, ive got an additional question now. not entirely related to networking, but it is sorta. so we've got a surround sound entertainment system in the living room, and this magical 6 pair cabling runs to both sides of the living room... so we got to thinking. it worked beautifully for eliminating network cables all over our apartment, why not use it for eliminating speaker cables too. we actually have it wired to work right now. best part using regular Rj45 jacks too. and we tested it out, it seems to work.

so my question is, how good an idea do you think it is to do this? could i severely screw something up or anything like that?