I just moved to a new place, a town house to be exact. And one of the Jack's was not working, the one I wanted for DSL. So I went looking for the phone box where the line comes in, I found the box where the outside line comes in the house and it is just a mess. There are 6 phone lines that go out of the box and there are only 5 phone jacks that I can find. What I want to do is clean this up and only have 3 for phone and one for DSL. What I was thinking of is drawing a diagram of how one of the line's is hooked up and taking them all off then going from jack to jack with a phone to see which ones are what, then hooking up the ones I want. What I would like to know is, if there is an easier way to do this and if I should get a different type of cable for the DSL and run that to the jack I want or just use existing wire for it.

I'm a complete newbie when it comes to this so not sure which wire is already there or how to hook them up, thus the diagram.

Thanks

 

Those six wires go somewhere. Either there is a sixth jack in your townhouse or someone is stealing from you.

You don;t need anything special for DSL. Regular phone wire is fine. Certainly shielded wire would be better, but I would get i working and worry about other things later.

Certainly figure out where those wires go. You can remove one at a time and figure it out that way, or you can remove them all and put them back one at a time. Label them when you are done. Yes, make notes on how everything is hooked up before you start.

 

got to disagree , if not propery grounded sheilded can cause problems , used to solve problems when installed by qualified installer not a DIYer product.

keep in mind your dsl signal is traveling over telco cable , often not evan twisted pair so your running special cable the last 100yds dosnt do much good.



when you say townhouse is there more than one dwelling in the building ?

could the wires be feeeding dialtone to other houses ?

if all the cables are feeding your townhouse then I think yoyu have a good plan unhook everything that isnt in use .

 

I'm not a security expert, but couldn't the sixth line be for an RJ-31 X jack for a monitored security system?

 

Even if there's no security installed, it could well be in place for a prewire for a security panel

 

The mystery jack may of been taken out at some point or plastered over? Or a wire may of gone bad and the extra is a new run..

If your going to take the time to run your own home run for DSL, just use twisted pair wiring (CAT3 or CAT5).. It's always best to use a whole house filter outside, and send the DSL in on it's home run.

As for determining what goes where, the process of elimination works best.. Hook pairs up one at a time and see what jacks work as you go.