cat5 wiring in house not working?


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Old 09-09-14, 02:57 PM
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cat5 wiring in house not working?

I have what appears to be cat5 wiring in my new house. So I did some tests with my Ooma and telephone. I connected a working Ooma connection to one of the jacks and went around the entire house to make sure all of the jacks were wired up - they are. I got a ring tone on each of the jacks.

Next, I unscrewed the jacks and saw that three of them were wired up with what I think would be for ethernet - 4 sets of twisted pair wires. In the On-Q box, all 8 wires per line coming in are connected (except for the one on the "svc" line from outside).

So then I think I may be able to use the 3 jacks that have the 8 wires connected as ethernet cable and I connect a router to one of the jacks and my laptop to another. No signal! I try all combinations of router/laptop on the 3 jacks, but I get no ethernet signal.

I am obviously missing something here. The jacks are definitely wired up since the phone works. The On-Q box shows that all 8 wires are connected and the 3 jacks show that all 8 wires in the jacks for those 3 are connected.

In that case, why can't I connect my router/laptop through those 3 jacks?
 
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Old 09-09-14, 05:24 PM
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Welcome to the forums.

Are you going to be using those cables for just the network..... not telephone too ?
It would be pretty unusual to have RJ-45 (8 pin) connectors installed for telephones.

If those are RJ-45 cat5 jacks then the wires need to be attached in a certain order.
I also don't recommend using a single cable for phone and network use.
 
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Old 09-09-14, 09:17 PM
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Thanks PJmax!

No, I would not be using them for both applications. Only for ethernet. The jacks themselves are color coded, meaning the jack has colors on them and the correct colored wires are connected to it. The On-Q box also has colored connectors and all of those colors are in the correct order also.

I also tried connecting my laptop directly to the punchboard in On-Q box since it had a connector (with a router tried in each of the 3 jacks) to no avail.

I guess now I will check that the jacks are indeed connected to the correct colored wires, I may have over looked this.
 
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Old 09-09-14, 09:41 PM
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There are two standards in use. T-568A and T-568B.
Both ends must be punched down to the same code.... A or B.

If you have an OnQ box like in the picture...... it won't work. You need a block where each wire punches to its own jack. The one in the picture is for phone use where all cables get tied together.

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Old 09-10-14, 12:34 PM
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So that is what I have, all the wires get connected together. But, I am only using two of the wires (i.e., just the two jacks that have all 8 wires connected). I am not using any telephone connections and do not have external telephone service. So nothing should be driving any of the wires.

I don't understand why it wouldn't work if the wires you want connected have extra (unused) jacks on them.
 
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Old 09-10-14, 05:47 PM
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That OnQ block I've shown is punched down for basic phone service not data. The wires are not in the correct order to match that one jack.

The extra wires just hanging on there are not conducive to maximum speed.
 
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Old 09-12-14, 07:40 AM
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I finally understand what you are saying, sorry for being obtuse!

I understand the thing about having wires hanging off reducing speed, but I would like to still test it out.

So in this case, if the On-Q box I have looks like yours, I could change the ordering on the jack side to get the correct ordering of wires for ethernet?
 
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Old 09-12-14, 05:43 PM
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I could change the ordering on the jack side to get the correct ordering of wires for ethernet?
I never tried that but it should work. You would have to verify that there was nothing connected to the other wires or it could cause a short to the data signal.
 
 

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