a cat5 / RJ11 question

[markster37]

What a great forum this is. I have a million questions but will try to stay focused.

We ran some new cable in our building recently. 8 drops, two Cat5 cables per drop, one for voice, one for data. The vender installed the faceplates and punched down the cable at each drop, but left it up to me to crimp rj45 plugs (?) at my server and the rj11's at the telephone switch.

The RJ45 is done. I used the 568A order, which started with green-white at pin 1. Network seems functional.

I am now tackling the voice lines. The voice lines we are replacing were cat5, too. The "plug" that plugs into the switch itself has 6 prongs, not 4 or 2. What's the order of the wiring, from pin 1 through 6?

I crimped one today in this order, if memory serves me correct: orange-white, orange, blue-white, blue, green-white, green. Just snipped off brwon and brown-white. And ran upstairs, found which outlet I had made live thanks to my $50 LAN tester (which handles rj11/ 12 in addition to rj45), plugged in a phone and I DO have a dial tone. Wow.

But my LAN tester is giving me some strange patterns. I think I have some crossed lines if I'm reading it correctly, which is questionable. Any thoughts or websites that will show me the correct order and discuss this some more? Thanks.

 

[vaoldschl]

Before I could point you to a website I would have to know what kind of voice system you are dealing with but on the happier side of things you should just be dealing with a straight through connection for your phones. Voice is not as sensitive as data. On an RJ12 I would probably wire the same way you have.

In terms of your tester I'd have to know what type you're using but it's probably just trying to tell you that you haven't split a pair as you would for network cabling.

In the same situation, knowing what I know of your's, I would find out if the telephone system requires all six wires to operate and if so adopt what you have described as the standard for the installation. I wouldn't cut the brown, however, as you may want to add dedicated fax or modem lines and that only requires a single pair. If say only four wires are required I would save the green and brown and double the number of phones I could add in any given area.

 

[jimbopalmer]

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/LANs/cabling-faq/

i think phone lines use the USOC standard The one thing you can't give for your heart's desire is your heart. - Lois McMaster Bujold

 

[vaoldschl]

This is what jimbo is talking about:

1 White/Brown
2 1 White/Green
3 2 White/Orange
4 3 Blue
5 4 White/Blue
6 5 Orange
7 6 Green
8 Brown

And that would be great if who knows, way back when, all manufacturers of telephone systems had actually decided to conform to it. If I wired my jacks like this my users would never get dial tone because my system uses pairs 1,2,3 &6 off the 8 wire config so, I guess I could make it work by using the white/brown, white/green and the white/orange, orange at the cross connect but how much sense does that make? As I said, this works great if you're pulling dial tone directly from teleco but doesn't always fly with proprietary digital systems.

 

[jimbopalmer]

Yes it is possible that your tester beleives in a standard your installer or vendor did not! The tester is making recommendations, you don't HAVE to adhere to! The one thing you can't give for your heart's desire is your heart. - Lois McMaster Bujold

 

[markster37]

Thanks for your input, everyone. I just kept doing what I was doing, since it seemed to be working. All my lines are operational now.

The switch, by the way, is an inexpensive little unit called Bizfon. Works well.

 

[DSADOG]

Just remember this. Always cable everything 568B. Since is the standard. I dont care what anyone says 568B is the standard. GR

 

[ChrisAC]

568B is certainly the standard that I've always worked to on commercial installations.

We've always wired out building with CAT5e to all points so that they can be used for either voice or data. This certainly gives more flexibility than installing data cable and voice cables! We then install a multi-core voice cable (usually 100 or 200 pair - depend on the size of the job) from the Krone racks in the telephone switch room to voice patch panels in the mail comms cabinets. How this is terminated depends on the phone system in use, but we usually wire two pairs per port, one for analog and one for digital. These can then be jumpered over to the switch krone strips for either service.

Just thought I'd chuck in my 2 pence worth!!

Chris.