Tap into phone line

[midnightscape]

I ran extra Cat 5 to go back to my home run (on the opposite end of the house) for my addition and come to find out I didn't run enough length (figures :roll: ) So I'm wondering if I should tap into the available line that comes in the house from the outside box or just splice on another 5-10 feet to make it to the box outside. I'm running 4 additional lines to the addition (1 more than current house!) and thought if I tap into the line inside the house, I'll wire in one of those 6 line splitters or something like that.

I only have 1 line in the house.

Thanks,
midnight

[giddonah]

I would think that cat5 for phone is a little overkill, but I like overkill.

You have only one phone line right now? I don't get it, you want to run 4 lines? Are these different phone numbers? If they are all different numbers then I would try to make the lines go all the way to the main box just to make it easy in the future for someone else if you're not there to explain what you did. You can go to radio shack and get a screw plate thing. I used one that has 4 or so connectors, but I think I saw bigger ones. Then just use that instead of splicing. It's a $1.50 item to make things easier to deal with. The only thing you'll lose in splicing vs making it the whole way is some bandwidth depending on how much of the line will be untwisted. If you're not running ethernet on it, it's not a big deal at all. If you're going to be using it for networking, that's a little different.

http://www.radioshack.com/product.asp?catalog%5Fname=CTLG&category%5Fname=CTLG%5F011%5F003%5F009%5F000&product%5Fid=274%2D659

I stand corrected, it's $2.39.

[midnightscape]

I should clarify. I have one phone line coming in to my house. I have 3 separate outlets between main level and basement (2 upstairs for phone and satellite, 1 in basement for phone). I'm putting 4 more outlets in my addition: satellite, satellite, phone, future maybe computer/networking) So I'm tying it all in to same main phone line. I found the line that is coming into the house from outside that I can tie to easily.

[giddonah]

Satellite? Networking?

I'm not sure you can run ethernet and phone on the same cat5 line. If you can, it's news to me. How is the satellite figuring into this? You looking to run all that on one cat5?

[midnightscape]

:oops: I knew I was going to dig a hole.
The spot where I can access the current line is where my current 'puter setup is, if in the future I choose to connect to that "future networking" outlet in the addition I would switch the line off the tapped in spot and over to my printer/DSL modem/whatever, in the mean time I would have a open spot for a phone in the addition. The satellite is just for the continuous hookup they require if I ever order any movies off the dish. I just used cat5 for everything just for future expandibility, overkill I know, but I likey.

I'm sorry to make such a mess of this...thanks for your patience.
midnight

[bkrahmer]

FWIW... Ethernet over cat5 uses only 4 of the 8 pins. If you want, you can run ethernet and two phone lines over one cat5 cable.

I'll be wiring my house soon. I'm thinking of running two cat5 and two coax to most of the rooms. One cat5 will be dedicated to networking, the other will be for phone, and two coax for the directv.

[giddonah]

I looked around. Some people do use cat5 for both it seems. I wouldn't do it though. Phone lines carry em fields that don't play well with ethernet (don't run ethernet parallel to power lines within 18"). I've run cat5 and found it to be very sensitive physically, gigabit ethernet needs all 4 pairs, and cables are too cheap to skimp on this. If you want to run multiple phone lines over one line, that's one thing. Running ethernet and phone looks like it's a grey area. As it is ethernet needs a lot of collision detection to get signals sent accurately, I wouldn't want to make it harder. Plus, I'm getting tired of waiting for my files to transfer. One comp is still only 10/100 and I'm looking forward to a full gigabit network. 8)

[steeve]

in my house i have about 15 phone jacks runing regular phone wire from one to the other, dont have any problemes, it's not like you will use all the phones at the same time....for ethernet they used some kind of filters, can't help you on that, i have cable now...separating them would be a good idea, for the futur. :wink:

[oleRocky]

midnight,

3M makes a scotchlock connector used to splice phone wires. They are jelly filled to prevent water from entering the splice. They are called a UY2 or UR2 either one will work. You can get these I think at Home Depot. If not you might try Radio Shack. If you make a splice I wouldn't leave the splice exposed outdoors because you are just asking for trouble. (your probably knew this but you would be suprised at the stuff you find that people do) What you might think about doing is running a main line to a common point either in your attic or a closet and then run all of your feeder cables back to that point to tie into the main line w/a bunch down block. It makes it easier to isolate trouble if your phone line ever quits working.

You were talking about CAT5 being overkill, I think you will be glad you went w/CAT5. I work for a small phone company and we have starting using CAT5 for all of our installs. The bandwidth demands just keep growing and growning.

[giddonah]

In the interest of completeness, I've dropped the question on a tech forum I post on. They gave me this link:

http://www.lanshack.com/product1.asp?CustomerID=2114279&ACBSessionID=0UHd3Nv6kGXhxxlIY4st&SID=10&Product_ID=1797

But again, you need all four pairs for gigabit ethernet.

[Vector]

All of the phone installations I did when wiring residential houses were Cat5E, same wire as the data. The cost difference is so little, why use anything different? Easier to stock one part #.

Yes you can mix 10 and 100baseT Ethernet with a voice line by splitting out the unused pairs. It'll usually work fine. Of course, when you get a call, there's 90VAC running on the voice pair(s) which is probably going to cause at least a temporary issue on the data lines. Plus, if you have DSL it could mess up both the DSL and the data pretty much all of the time.

giddonah is absolutely right about gigabit, as well as various other wire protocols, which will use all four pairs.

Two wires are rarely much harder to pull than one. My last house I retro'd in 4 Cat5 cables to each room, and set them up as 2 voice, 2 data.

My next house (in progress) is going to have a *lot* more than that. All pulled in flex conduit for easy upgrades too.

[midnightscape]

For some reason I wasn't getting notices for new posts.

Anyway thanks to everyone for the great info. I appreciate it!

midnight

[giddonah]

Hey Vector, why all the communications lines? I just did a cat5 and a cat3 into each room. You plan on running two networks?

[Vector]

Hey Vector, why all the communications lines? I just did a cat5 and a cat3 into each room. You plan on running two networks?

Flexability. Plus, I hardly every underengineer anything :)