Run wired telephone over home Cat5

[2Btoo]

Guys,

This may be a very simple question or a completely stupid one ....

We use Virgin as our Broadband and home telephone supplier. They provide us with a router which has RJ45 connections on the back of it, which I plug into a small unmanaged switch. This then distributes network all 'round the house via Cat5e cables. All nice and simple.

The Virgin router also has two RJ11 sockets in the back of it, once of which is connected to our telephone via an adaptor lead. It looks like this:



However this means that the telephone has to live next to the router 'cos they are connected by a lead. (In practice the telephone is a wireless one, so it's the base that is tethered to the router by this lead.)

The router lives in our basement next to the network switch but we want the 'phone (or 'phone base) in the main part of the house. Is there a simple way of plugging the telephone wire into the switch and then connecting the 'phone to one of the RJ45 sockets somewhere else in the house?

RJ11 to RJ45 connectors are plentiful and cheap but is it as simple as plugging in one at one end and another one in at the other end and everything works? I can't imagine it would be this simple because there would be no TCP-IP processing on either end so the switch wouldn't be able to direct the telephone traffic. (And, come to think of it, I doubt that the RJ11 is running a digital protocol anyway - I suspect it's analogue.)

In short: do I buy a pair of RJ11 to RJ45 connectors and plug 'em in, or is it more complex than this? If it is more complex then what do I need to do?

Thanks!

[964Cup]

Won't work. The switch won't, as you conclude, switch the analogue phone signal.

But you can definitely carry analogue over cat 5 - you just need a direct wired connection. So instead of going via the switch, you need to go from the router directly to the relevant cat 5 cable, then plug the adaptor into the socket at the other end. If the cable won't reach, use a patch cable and a female to female RJ45 joiner - there's no signal quality issue here with analogue.

[Smurfsarepeopletoo]

I work for virgin and do this on a regular basis, you need an rj11 to rj11 cable and some telco cable,

Plug one end of the rjll into the hub,
Cut the end off the other side and strip back,
connect the stripped end to one of the coloured pairs of the telco cable, I suggest blue and blue/white,
run the telco cable to the virgin box on the front of your property,
find the telco cable that comes from the street and joins to the telco cable that then goes into your property and disconnect them.
Connect the new telco cable to the cable that goes into your property, making sure you connect the collours you have used at the back of the hub, to the same colours that were connected on the internal cable.

All of your phone sockets should then work as they did before.

Alternatively, call Virgin and pay £25 for an engineer to come and do it, but bear in mind that they wont lift floorboards or anything like that.

[2Btoo]

964Cup said:

Won't work. The switch won't, as you conclude, switch the analogue phone signal.

But you can definitely carry analogue over cat 5 - you just need a direct wired connection. So instead of going via the switch, you need to go from the router directly to the relevant cat 5 cable, then plug the adaptor into the socket at the other end. If the cable won't reach, use a patch cable and a female to female RJ45 joiner - there's no signal quality issue here with analogue.

964Cup,

Thanks - that's VERY helpful and makes perfect sense.

To clarify, I should simply connect the RJ11 to RJ45 connector into the relevant point on the patch panel and run the 'phone signal straight to the point in the house where the 'phone will sit, with with RJ45 to RJ11 connector on the other end plugged into the phone, and nothing 'phone-related running through the switch?

Smurfsarepeopletoo said:

I work for virgin and do this on a regular basis, you need an rj11 to rj11 cable and some telco cable,

Thanks SAPT. That makes good sense and is helpful, but I suspect will achieve something a bit different to what I am aiming for. Thanks nonetheless - this info may well come in useful at some other time!

[mrmistoffelees]

Yes, this works and using the bits you've suggested will be fine, you're just putting different connectors on the same wire (ie an 8P8C to a 4P4C). So hub -> RJ11/RJ45 convertor -> structured cabling -> RJ45/RJ11 convertor -> phone. Job jobbed.

[FlossyThePig]

Here is a youtube video covering a similar issue with a BT Smart Hub.

Connecting a BT Smart Hub 2 to domestic telephone

[Smurfsarepeopletoo]

2Btoo said:

Thanks SAPT. That makes good sense and is helpful, but I suspect will achieve something a bit different to what I am aiming for. Thanks nonetheless - this info may well come in useful at some other time!

What I advised would make your existing telephone sockets live, so you would just be able to plug the phone back into where it was before you changed to having it run out of the back of the hub.

[silentbrown]

Slightly O/T maybe, but now we're on fibre we've switched the home phone line to a full VOIP - Gigaset DECT Handsets and an old N300 IP base station. Apart from being digital end-to-end, there were unexpected advantages like the ability to have multiple calls simultaneously, even though we only have one number.

With this you just plug the base station into any ethernet port on the router.