Converting Telephone lines to Ethernet

[hitechseeker]

I have several telephone jacks around the house. One is in the kitchen and 4 more in different rooms.
I was trying to trace the wires and found that form the outside a line comes into the kitchen, from there one line goes out to one of the downstairs bedrooms and the other goes to one upstairs bedroom. However, the wiring terminates like that.

At upstairs, there are 3 other telephone jacks. All three are connected, but there are two wires at each point. These jacks are not connected to the wires in the kitchen.

The house was build in 1997.

outside -> kitchen -- >One bedroom downstairs
-- > one bedroom upstairs

Upstairs -> Telephone jack in office area - > telephone jack to BR 1 - Telephone jack to BR 2.

Since the wire from the outside that comes to the kitchen is connected only to the two sockets ( one upstairs and one downstairs), how would I connect al socket together ? Is this normal for telephone wires ?

 

[Ian]

The sockets may all be connected, just in a mix of topologies - i.e. some of them will be spurred on to other sockets.

Do they all work on the same line at the moment?

I see from the thread title you mention converting them to ethernet, but don't mention it in the post - is that your goal here? To find a pair of phone sockets you don't use, then use the cabling for ethernet? If so, it's unlikely to work well unfortunately - as telephone wire isn't usually 4 pair and the shielding is quite poor - it'll be quite problematic even running it as ethernet.

 

[hitechseeker]

Ian,
Thanks for taking the time to reply.

I have not had a true land line for a few years. I do have OOMA that works on Ethernet, but hardly ever use it.
I went to the outside of the house and at the incoming I can see a telephone like cable with 8 wires -- I read that this should work fine for Ethernet. However the wire only goes to the kitchen. From the kitchen there are 2 wires( (both 8 stranded) that go out, one to a bedroom downstairs and one to a bedroom upstairs. None of these are connected to telephone jacks upstairs (apart from the one mentioned). I have an additional, 3 telephone sockets upstairs, all with 8 wires that are all connected to each other( only two wires go to the telephone jack, but there are 8 wires available throughout).
I can connect the modem/router supplied by ATT fiber to the wire outside the garage and have signal coming into the kitchen. From there I can use an Ethernet switch to send the signal to the one bedroom upstairs and the one bedroom down stairs. My issue is with providing the wiring for additional jacks upstairs. Since I have jacks in three places upstairs, with two wires with 8 strands each, I am assuming that these are connected to a telephone line from the outside somewhere ?
I need to bring in the Internet to one of the three sockets upstairs but cannot find where a telephone line that comes to any of these, but since the sockets are present, I assume that there must be way ?

I have wireless Internet that does not work very well, so I am trying to use the existing telephone wiring to get a wired internet. The current telephones wires and the telephone jacks are just wasted.
I hope you understand the topology and my problem ?

 

[hitechseeker]

Ian, I am in US, California, if that makes any difference.

 

[Ian]

Ah, I'm not sure how it'll work in the USA - but if you've got 8 core cable then maybe you can get it working . It works quite differently in the UK, so please ignore my advice above! It may be better for another USA member here to advise, as I don't know what your wiring may look like for that sort of thing.

Something that I used to use in the UK was a powerline adaptor, it uses your internal electrical wiring to provide ethernet ports throughout your house. It works surprisingly well! Here are the US versions of the ones I use:

https://www.amazon.com/TP-LINK-Powerline-Pass-Through-TL-PA9020P-KIT/dp/B01H74VKZU/

 

[hitechseeker]

Thanks Ian.
If I cannot find a way to bring Ethernet to the three sockets I mentioned above, I might have to use a Powerline adapter pair for this part of the bridging.

 

[He who knows]

Something that I used to use in the UK was a powerline adaptor, it uses your internal electrical wiring to provide ethernet ports throughout your house.

Hmmm.


Nasty things, I'm afraid. Only "legal" because the manufacturers exploit a loophole in the certification process; they demonstrate that the device itself doesn't emit much interference and say that the interference subsequently emitted by the unshielded mains wiring is outside their responsibility. It's not unlike the situation with diesel engines that don't exceed emissions standards in lab tests but do on the road.


If they do cause interference, then they are only "legal" to use if the user is unknowing - as soon as they are told that the device is causing problems then they are knowingly causing interference, and action can be taken against them.

https://www.ban-plt.org.uk/

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.p...te-owners-bad-powerline-network-adapters.html


Seriously - these devices may be technically legal in the UK because of our weakly worded legislation, and people may in practice get away with spoiling other people's lives because Ofcom refuse to step up to their responsibilities (see https://community.talktalk.co.uk/t5/TalkTalk-TV/powerline-adapters/td-p/1736914 and https://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/05/ofcom_plt_response/ although things may have changed since that last article was published.

 

[He who knows]

As for ethernet over phone wire - even if there are enough pairs, the spec of the cable is wrong, and quite likely how it's been installed.

Yes, it will "work".

No, you will almost certainly not get anywhere near what Cat 5 will do, let alone 5e, 6, or 6a

 

[Ian]

Nasty things, I'm afraid. Only "legal" because the manufacturers exploit a loophole in the certification process; they demonstrate that the device itself doesn't emit much interference and say that the interference subsequently emitted by the unshielded mains wiring is outside their responsibility. It's not unlike the situation with diesel engines that don't exceed emissions standards in lab tests but do on the road.

I didn't know there was such a backlash against these devices, I'll do some reading up on this!

 

[hitechseeker]

As for ethernet over phone wire - even if there are enough pairs, the spec of the cable is wrong, and quite likely how it's been installed.

Yes, it will "work".

No, you will almost certainly not get anywhere near what Cat 5 will do, let alone 5e, 6, or 6a

Hopefully it will be better than the wireless situation.
On the Ethernet over power lines, if it was a big issue, would they not have been disallowed ? I see these devices everywhere. I am not challenging, just trying to understand.

 

[He who knows]

If I had to bet I'd say it won't be better than wireless.

As for PLT, I dunno what the regs are in the USA, but here, as I said, the makers get away with saying "our device does not emit RFI". Which is technically 100% true, it doesn't. It's the power cables which emit RFI when you plug it in and use it.

And the regulator (Ofcom) tasked with doing something about problems when individuals do plug one in and their power cables do start to emit RFI is as ineffectual and uninterested as they come. Probably a characteristic you see in regulatory bodies in the US.

 

[piglet11]

Wired Ethernet (LAN) is better than wireless in most most situations, but the actual difference in performance may not be significant as the computer dictates the speed of applications. A good Ethernet connection will give you the best performance because the wireless frequencies are very crowded and wired is less susceptible to interference.

I ca only speak for UK practice. UK telephone (fixed landline), comes in as a pair of wires supplied by the utility.
From there, it usually distributes in a 4-wire cable to allow for extensions and stuff like bell suppression.

The big difference is in the cable structure. CAT5e, widely used, is 4 pairs of individually twisted wires (in a pair). This cable is unshielded.
Newer cables like CAT6 and CAT7 are shielded for better performance. Al the specs are very tight on number of twists per metre and even bend radius. CAT5e only uses 2 of the 4 pairs, so a 2-pair twisted cable might work if you can sort out the correct connections.

Telephone cable is much cruder and some of it is a flat, totally untwisted, unshielded.

Broadband comes in on old untwisted copper lines, but goes into a modem that converts the data into Ethernet (LAN) compatible outputs on the router.

The long and short of it is that telephone cable might work, but really isn't worth the effort. In the UK, the incoming cable and the master socket are off limits for home tinkering and getting it wrong can be expensive. Any extension lines can be fitted by a competent DIYer, and I can at anytime disconnect the extension cables and do what I want with them.

I ran all new CAT5e cables to all rooms by taking one main cable up to the roof space from the router, installed a network switch, then dropped cables to rooms using a variety of routes, following pipe ducts, ceiling coving etc. There are no visible cables. RJ45 plugs and sockets are fairly easy with a crimper and a Krone insertion tool.

It's also unlikely that telephone cable will fit the plugs and sockets.

 

[hitechseeker]

Thanks.
I agree that putting in new wires specified for the speed is the best way to do this.

The telephone company owns the wires up to the point where they come to the house. Everything from there on is owners responsibility.

I have 8 wires going to each telephone socket in the house, presumably because they expected me to have 4 separate telephone lines or it was just the wire the builder had at the time? Even though the shield on the round cable says "cat 3". I am trying to use these existing wires to connect to the Internet from the garage where ATT has installed the modem. The wirelessly connected throughput is around 60 Mbps on a 1 G bps internet. Its also not totally reliable -- its pretty good !

It just seems much easier to repurpose these wires from telephone to Ethernet although I understand that this will not be perfect for signal quality, as long as its more reliable. I can wire directly from the garage to the kitchen, so I will test that part. My total cable length should be less than 200 feet.

My biggest issue is that I have not started the project because the wiring upstairs does not seem to be connected except for one socket from kitchen to one bedroom. I want to go all wired or leave as-is. In these Covid times, the whole family is more or less confined to one house.

 

[piglet11]

It might work, but CAT3 is ages old and might struggle with higher broadband speeds
You could do a lot of work then find it's no good.
You need minimum CAT5e for modern broadband and even that is being superseded
Can't you use the old cables to pull some new ones through?
I think you will regret not upgrading the cable.
.

 

[hitechseeker]

I would prefer to have newer cabling if possible.
I tried to gently pull the existing cable ( to see if I can attach the newer wire to it and pull through) but the old cable seems to be offering quite a lot of resistance to being pulled and I did not want to damage it, even though it will probably not be used for telephone service while I am in the house.

 

[hitechseeker]

The last sentence is meant to be: while I own the and live in the house.

 

[LT.Son]

Hi Ian,
The wiring is likely stapled to a stud at each end, and there are likely a few tight bends in the run from one point to another.

Powerline ethernet is 100% legal here in the US, and when it works, it is usually pretty reliable. It's been a long time since I set one up, but I think with a house build in the late 90's it should work. The problems I remember having with them were because of... um... (sorry to the forum) idiotic electrical... DIY <ducks> done by the previous owner.

Netgear is what I used, but this was 2005-ish...
LT.Son

 

[hitechseeker]

Thanks, I ran ethernet from the router in the garage through the telephone wires into the kitchen just as an experiment. Even with the telephone cable marked as Cat3, I managed to get full bandwidth ( 450 Mbps download speed) in this run of about 60-80 ft of wire. However, I have to check the wiring again on the downstairs bedroom as, I could not get anything there. Possibly broken cable, but I will check each cable to be sure. It may be the length of the cable from kitchen to the bedroom, but I doubt if its just that.

 

[He who knows]

Powerline ethernet is 100% legal here in the US

It's 100% legal here too, it just becomes illegal to allow your electrical cables to continue to emit RFI once you are aware that they are causing problems.

 

[hitechseeker]

I see a number of expensive wireless router at Costco. My Modem is in the garage( courtesy of ATT), with two rooms upstairs that are furthest from the garage. Does anyone have a similar situation and have solved it with a Mesh or Wireless router, such as TP-Link AX11000 https://www.costco.com/tp-link-tri-band-12-stream-ax11000-wi-fi-6-router.product.100519717.html
Or

https://www.costco.com/tp-link-deco-m9-plus-tri-band-wi-fi-system-with-built-in-smart-hub%2c-3-pack.product.100477095.html

or something else ?