Cat5e to 4 wire phone line splice 1

[Mark9999]

OK Folks, be gentle. I'm a complete novice at this and just bought a new home that appears to use Cat5e cable for the telephone wiring. I'm trying to drop a new phone line into a spare bedroom, and am wondering what the best way to splice into the Cat5e cable in the attic is going to be? There is no way to do a "home run" to this room, or to access an existing phone jack in another room, so a splice is my only way to go.

Any advice you can offer would be much appreciated. i.e. should I splice in with ordinary 4 line phone cable or with another run of cat5e cable? Should I do butt splices, or is there some sort of Cross Connect device that I should be using?

Thanks,

Mark

 

[youcandoit]

If you splicing into cat5 it doesnt matter what type of cable you're going to use. you are already degrading its integrity. The use of butt splices would be acceptable. typically in a 568b environment the blue pair is for voice and the orange and green would be for data. This would leave the brown pair to splice the other room into.

hope this helped.

 

[chiefred]

No problem--if the cat5 is used as voice--then splice away--just remember that if you cut the cable--you will probably cut off the feed pair to the room that cable was servicing-normally the blue/white- blue, pair will be the lead pair, then you will have to figure out if there is a second line and if its on the green/white-green pair or the orange/white-orange.

 

[Mark9999]

Alright, let me ask you this. Youcandoit mentioned that by splicing the Cat5 cable I will have already degraded its integrity. Will I still be able to use the cable for data later on if I so choose? How badly will the service be degraded by splicing an additional line into it?

Thanks,

Mark

 

[chiefred]

Here is what I would do-I thought we were talking only about phone--but.....if you have a Data connection (Home Run cat5) in your bedroom and you want a data (Home Run cat5) connection in your guest room, and you can access the guest room via the attic from your bedroom, I would get a hub and run a new, second cable up the wall, in the wall, or however your first data cable is run into from the attic and duplicate it down into the guest room.

If your guest room is on a wall dividing your bedroom and the guest room, then you can feed the cable through the wall--or if you know how to install a mudring and a wall plate and mod plugs, you can make it look professional.

Hope that helps

 

[Mark9999]

Thanks, that gives me some good options to consider.

Mark

 

[chiefred]

Try this--it may help or give you other ideas

http://www.wildtracks.cihost.com/homewire/

Most times cat5, cat5e, is run now for voice--because you can switch it over for data if you need it--but you would not want both running over the same cable----

Good Luck

 

[youcandoit]

I would post some additional repsonses but it looks like everyone's got it covered.