Distributing telephone around the house

Hi

Following the excellent advice given to me a few weeks ago here about flood wiring my house with Cat5 and CoAx I have now run 3 lengths of Cat5 and one length of PH100 CoAx to each of 8 rooms.

Each room faceplate now contains two Cat5 modules, a telephone module and a CoAx module.

I have bought a 20U rack and a 24 port patch panel and cabled back to node 0, which now also has a Labgear MRX390 distribution amp and a DSL router/hub.

I am also running an additional two lengths of CoAx from Node 0 to the home cinema should I want to add Sky+ in the home cinema in the future.

My question is how do I distribute telephone via the Cat5 - does it need its own patch panel and hub and how is the patch panel connected to the master phone outlet? If I need a REN amplifier, where should this go?

Thanks, in advance

[clockwork]

Ive got plans to do the same.

What I plan on doing is not having telephone modules at the faceplate and only putting in RJ45 and f-type connectors for coax.

At the patch panel I will reserve 4 or so rj45s for phone usage. These should be commoned up so all the various colours are connected up. Then I would run a connection from the master socket to one of the rj45s in your 'commoned' patch panel.

I would then either crimp on rj45s to my telephones or buy adapters (I think they are about 2 quid each).

This way you could use any RJ45 connection in the room as a telephone extension or for data if you changed your mind. All you do is patch from an rj45 on the 'commoned' patch panel to the point you want to connect a phone to.

I hope that makes sense.....

You should only need a REN amplifier if you plan on connecting up more than about 4 phones. Are you planning on doing this? However dont ask me about them cause I dont have a clue :-)

Cheers

The idea is that you put services (phone, network etc) also onto a/the patch panel, and use patch leads to connect any service to any point.

Maybe you'd like to buy a small switchboard (4-6 extensions should cost roughly a hundred quid plus or minus 50). Otherwise you can just connect multiple extensions as normal.

Assuming no switchboard, I'd suggest: phone line to two way splitter; one way goes to adsl, the other way goes via a microfilter to the backs of (say) 4 consecutive patch panel sockets. You can patch these across to any four outlets round the house. By putting the microfilter there, you shouldn't need any on the individual phone sockets.

Normally you'd use cat5 sockets for the phone too, and plug in the phones via little LAU adapters. But you say you've got BT sockets, so you can patch straight to those. You need at least one master socket (with a capacitor in it), but you've probably already got one.

I don't know about REN amplifiers, but it would go between the filter and the patch panel sockets.

If you've got teenagers in the house, then I'd recommend a switchboard rather than a REN amplifier, so you don't have to answer their phone calls! You'll have to make up suitable leads to patch the switchboard to the rooms instead of wiring the outside line to patch panel sockets.

Since you appear to have used up your whole patch panel, getting a switchbaord will save the need for another one.

Thanks for all the help so far.

It looks like I have restricted myself by putting in a BT point rather than another RJ45 module into each faceplace. I could always change this later, I guess.

At the patch panel I will reserve 4 or so rj45s for phone usage. These should be commoned up so all the various colours are connected up.

I can reserve 8 ports on the patch panel for the phones, however I'm not sure how to "common all these up" - do I need to run wire between each coloured connector to the corresponding colour on each of the commoned RJ45's on the patch panel?

You should only need a REN amplifier if you plan on connecting up more than about 4 phones. Are you planning on doing this?

We will probably be running more than four phones on the system so there will have to be either a REN amp. I'll look into the switchboards - does anyone know the best place for them?

here's part of the back of my patch panel showing twelve ports. Four are commoned together on the right hand end, and the BT phone cable is linked in to the top one of the four.

The remaining four top right are normal Cat5 sockets, and the four bottom left are currently not in use.

I can patch to four room wall ports (in addition to the sockets already in the house.

For switchboards you could try CPC.co.uk, or http://www.rocom.co.uk (BT's distribution subsidiary).

Should have said "the remaining 4 top left" of course.

http://custom1.farnell.com/cpc/produ...ct%5Fid=267124

AncientGeek - thanks for all this info

I'm studying your patch photo to understand how you have "commoned" those inputs.

The exchange in the CPC link looks good, but I'm wondering how/if it would connect to the Cat5 cable run to the BT point in each faceplate. There isn't any info about the Ultimate 106 wiring kit.

Each cat5 socket is one row of eight. The three vertical wires at the right common together three of the signals on the four connectors at the right hand end. You can see the three wires from the BT line master socket connected over the top of those wires on the top one of the four.

The phone line only has two used wires from the exchange, but the "maser socket" converts that to three. The other wires in the cat5 cable aren't used.

To connect a switchboard. you would take the extension cables from the exchange and either put an RJ45 plug on the other end,, plugging it straight into the required socket on t he patch panel, or you would assign a row of patch panel sockets to the exchange "service", and connect the cables to those sockets. Then you'd use ordinary patch cables to link to the required room sockets.

BTW this is not my specialist subject!