New telephone wiring?

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 Question by Marc Chevalier posted 15 Oct 2005
 New telephone wiring?
We are just about finished building a new home where I have run cat5e cable to every room in the house and terminated with the T568A wiring standard. I have also purchased a Leviton structered media panel with 24 ports. All the jacks are rj45 and we will be using 3 lines. Will all 3 lines work with regular 4-wire rj11 phones? I am not sure what to do now with the wiring. I understand that my current cabling will support 4 lines but do I have to purchase phones with 4 line capability in order to have access to the 3 phone lines? Signed, slighty confused.
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 Answer by Joseph Golan posted 16 Oct 2005
Dear Marc,

Your choice of T568A will allow Lines 1 & 2 to perfectly align with a 2 line telephone equipped with an RJ-14 (2 line version of an RJ-11. You do not say what the 3 lines will be for. Will one of them be dedicated to a FAX or Modem?
Most 4 line telephone come with 2 sets of RJ-14s so there would be 2 lines on each cord.

I looked up the residential 24 port structure media panel and it seems to include a "Telephone Line Distribution Module" (TDLM). I can certainly see from a white paper I found at the Leviton site why you would be confused but it also sheds some light on how the panel works. Look at this link:
http://www.levitonvoicedata.com/support/documents/applicationnotes/841b_TLDM_Whitepaper.pdf

By using the 2 line ports of this panel (and there are a number of combinations) you should be able to find the combination you need. It can also be expanded (any of the combinations) by use of their expansion module.

Last note on this is that the cabling could be wired for 4 line but the user will only use 3.

Write me back directly at jpgolan-rcdd@earthlink.net if you have additional questions I can help you with.

Sincerely,
Joseph Golan, RCDD

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