Cat5 Phone Lines

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 Question by Mark Neves posted 11 May 2006
 Cat5 Phone Lines
Recently I wired my new house with separate Cat5 for telephone and networking. No connections were made until the phone company (Quest) came out and hooked up two of six phone lines. All lines are home runes to the media box in the garage. The phone company used standard phone jacks at the wall. When I hooked up all the other wall jacks using RJ45 connections none of the new phone connections worked. I used the T568A wiring which should have worked according to everything I have read. The Blue/Blue White pair was used on the working phones. Could the standard RJ11 wall mounts be causing the problems or is there something more sinister go on here. Any help would be much appreciated.
Sincerely, M7even
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 Answer by Joseph Golan posted 11 May 2006
Dear Mark,
I need to know whose make of the media box you have and what panels are installed (i.e. Leviton has a few versions of telephone panels) to give you a better answer. Most of the media centers I have seen are geared for a max of 4 telephone lines so I a little mystified by your mentioning that "Quest hooked up two of the six phone lines", maybe you can elaborate more on this. Also if you can take a picture of your media box and post it with your reply that also might be more helpful (there is a spot on the posting screen for uploads). I can mark up the picture and send it back with my reply.

The use of T568A is correct (for residential per the standards, and should mate up with the two lines of an RJ-14 (actually an RJ-11 is for one line only, the RJ-14 is the two line version). The white/Blue pair is for line 1 and the White/Orange pair is for line 2. The mixing of RJs with T568A 8 pin modular jack should not be a problem nor will it cause your problem.

Did you install 8 pin modular jacks (outlets) or did you install male 8 pin plugs? I never recommend the use of plugs as most will home-brew connectors will give trouble either immediately or in the future, jacks are the proper way to go and then plug the telephones into them. Please include in your re-post the make and part number of the jacks you used.


I would prefer to this on the help desk site as the replies may help other users in the future but if you run into problems, please email me directly. I usually check the help desk several times a day so I will get back to you quickly.


Sincerely,
Joseph Golan, RCDD
jpgolan-rcdd@cabling-design.com

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