CAT5e 'Information Drops' & Multiple Telephone Lines

[dhnl]

Many customers are requesting all data cabling to be installed as 'information drops' where everything is terminated on 8 position CAT5e jacks at workstation and patch panel ends. 2 or 3 drops are typically installed to each room in the house/office or workstation area.

The advantage of this idea (instead of separate voice and data cabling) is the customer can easily reconfigure the network (telephone lines) on their own without calling in the telco or interconnect to relocate a line to a jack in another area of the building etc. Telephone changes are as easy as re-patching network connections. Network and telephone lines are also totally interchangeable.

A typical telco demarc would have 25PR CAT5 connected one pair to each port on a 24 port patch panel mounted above the CAT5e runs to the workstation areas. The other end of the 25PR CAT5 terminates on BIX block at the telco entrance location.

The problem with this idea is it makes it difficult to easily connect multiple telephone lines to the workstation area making use of the 2nd, 3rd and 4th pairs in the 8 position CAT5e jack.

Are you aware of a rackmount type bridging device or another method of neatly patching multiple telephone lines to workstation areas? This device may also allow the same (analog only) line to be shared by multiple locations.

We could of course wire all 4 pairs on the 'demarc' patch panel (use 100PR cable) and make all the multiple line connections with BIX blocks before the lines terminate - but this would defeat the whole purpose of making the system totally customer manageable.

Thanks for your help

 

[TouchToneTommy]

You could use an additional patch panel, and wire some groups for multiple lines. Using jumper wire, from one port, wire the 1st part to the 1st pair of another port. Then wire the 2nd pair of that 1st port to the *1st* pair of another port. Then wire the 3rd pair of the 1st port to the 1st pair of another port, etc. You would patch the different lines into the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc. ports, then patch an 8-C cord from the first port to the cable run.

(Bad ASCII art follows; use a mono-spaced font to view it)


1
2--------------+
3---------+ |
4----+ | | Patch this Jack to
5--+ | | | the wire run
6--|-|--+ | |
7--|-|--|-|--+ |
8 | | | | | |
| | | | | |
| | | | | |
1 | | | | | |
2 | | | | | |
3 | | | | | |
4--+ | | | | | Patch "Line 1" to
5----+ | | | | this port
6 | | | |
7 | | | |
8 | | | |
| | | |
1 | | | |
2 | | | |
3 | | | |
4-------+ | | | Patch "Line 2" to
5---------+ | | this port
6 | |
7 | |
8 | |
| |
1 | |
2 | |
3 | |
4------------+ | Patch "Line 3" to
5--------------+ this port
6
7
8

Note that the 3rd line (if you're going to use it as an RJ-25 3-line jack) is on a split pair, but won't matter if you don't also have a 4th line. The other 2 lines ARE on twisted pairs.

You could also wire the "Line 3" to pins 1&2, and a 4th line to pins 7&8, then make a mating "breakout" at the station side with a patch cord and a couple of surface mount jacks.

 

[62838]

I us a 50 pair cable to a 24 port panel, 2 pairs for each port, pair 1 pins 4/5 pair 2 pins 3/6, if I want to terminat 2 lines to a working station then it is very easy, if this line is for 2 different WS then I use a Y shape patch cord for it, main RJ-45 terminated with 2 one pair cables on pines 4/5 both cabels g i the same pines in the main RJ-45.and the other 2 ends terminated on pairs 4/5 and both labeled line 1,
You can do the same for 2 line from your Pbx panel to 2 diferent line then you terminate the main RJ-45 with 2 one pair cable, first cable pins 4/5 second cabel pins 3/6 labeled line 1 and line 2 other 2 RJ-45 teminated on pines 4/5.when you use this method them the costemer can easly change the line place.

 

[shipwright]

If the customer wants a Structured Cable Installation, then if an add on is required he will have to pay for additional cabling etc,more money for the workers.

 

[lopes1211]

Hubble makes a Cat1 or Cat3 patch cable that was originally designed for trunk connections to AT&T Merlin systems. It's even called a &quot;Merlin&quot; cable in some of their literature. It's an 8 pin RJ-45 on 1 end, and the other end is split into 4 RJ-11's. The only potential caveat is that the RJ-11 tails are only about 8&quot; long from where they split from the 4 pair cable. It just means that your 4 PBX ports would have to be within 16&quot; of each other. You could use the same cable at the station side with couplers added to the RJ-11's allowing you to distance the phones from one another. Personally, I prefer 110 hardware (or the PBX vendor's recommended hardware for non-Lucent etc) and patch panels for data but what you are describing could be O.K. for a small <100 user application. -CL