Ok, I'm going to throw a bunch of stuff at you that will probably answer a bunch of ?'s, all of info can be googled if you want more detail. Summary at the bottom
- let's start with the good news:
1. Cat5 is ethernet cable, so you can reuse it for networks
2. In your first post, the 2nd pic (of telephone patch panel) it looks like the cat5 cables might have labels. if so, that's great, so you have an idea where the cables are run to.
3. Cat5 ethernet jacks in room drops
4. You don't necessarily have to rip it all apart, you may be able to do one drop at a time and see how it goes
- Now the not-as-good news (maybe not "bad" per se):
1. Cat5 cabling is within spec up to 100Mb/s. since the Cat5 was installed, a few cable specs have been released that increased speeds to 1000Mb/s or greater. "starting from scratch" could include pulling new wires (Cat6 at this point), but that is not always feasible, it totally depends on your home whether it's worth it.
2. You may want to not rip all of the drops out of the patch panel if you plan on using the phone system currently installed, which makes getting at those cables a bit tougher. Or you can "save" a couple cables for phone drops. make a diagram and/or take pictures of how the wiring is configured(kinda already did )
- On to physical layer stuff:
*NOTE: You'll need an ethernet switch in any case, the switch will need enough ports to "activate" the room drops you want plus one port to link back to the ISP's
link to switch example - if you wanted to activate 7 ports in the house
*NOTE: links are examples, there are quite a few brands out there to choose from, different size patch panels, etc...
1. I'm sure you noticed on the jacks the wiring diagrams for "568A" and "568B". You'll need to ensure both ends of the cable run are using the same color coded pinout
568A/B wiring standards
2. Cable types (further cable jacket inspection required)
a) "patch" (stranded copper) - this type of cable is made to crimp RJ45 heads onto. it's not used for punch downs
If the Cat5 is "patch", then you'll want to get a crimp tool and RJ45 heads, and you can plug these directly into a switch
trendnet crimp tool
RJ45 heads
How to crimp ethernet cabling
You can plug these directly into the switch
or
b) "riser" (solid copper) - this type of cable is made for punch downs.
If you determine the Cat5 is "riser", then you'll want to get a patch panel, some cat 5 or 6 jacks (aka keystones), and a punch down tool:
1U patch panel bracket
patch panel bracket
keystones
trendnet punch down tool
With all that stuff, you would build the physical drops as a panel, then plug in patch cables from the panel to an ethernet switch (position the panel and the switch near each other and just use
1meter ethernet "patch" cables to complete
Google how to wire a patch panel
SUMMARY: Yes it's salvageable. However, the current cabling is a older spec and may not yield current "standard" speeds, but still good speeds for regular uses. You can do it at a moderate cost, time, and effort. You may feel like going with a wireless "mesh" system is a better use of time and money up front, and work on this in the background. I know my wife and kids would be like "when TF will the internet be up" if only wired was available