Apartment Cat5e Re-wiring for Internet

It sounds like you didn't wire the jacks correctly on either (or both) sides.

Honestly, there's just not much information to go on. If it were wired for phone use before, it could be the jacks are daisy-chained from one to the next, which is common for phone use. Do you have a tone generator or a wire tester?

100 Mb connections require 2 pair (4 wires) and gigabit requires all 4 pair (8 wires). Get them all punched down.

However, I have no idea what this box and board actually does. Each wire from the LAN jack should terminate to one (and only one) port with a direct connection (no daisy chaining or connecting to something else beforehand).

why are you against wireless?

You have a router right?

Does the cat5 get the feed off your router? How is the internet coming in your apartment?

wow. You should stop doing whatever you are doing before you get in trouble and mess up your neighbors phone lines. If you wanted to run your network on the cat5, you have to control both ends of the cable. Right now, one end is in a punch down box for the phones, you will not be able to get this working.

dukebound85 said:

why are you against wireless?

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Maybe because wireless interference in apartments is ridiculous. When I lived in a few it drove me crazy. Only now that I'm in a house is it acceptable.

QuarterSwede said:

Maybe because wireless interference in apartments is ridiculous. When I lived in a few it drove me crazy. Only now that I'm in a house is it acceptable.

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hmm? I have lived in numerous apartments and have never had wireless issues. I wonder what the op's reason is though

dukebound85 said:

hmm? I have lived in numerous apartments and have never had wireless issues.

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Well, when everyone has a wireless router and you can't find an clear channel it tends to cause a lot of problems. I guess I was just unlucky.

dukebound85 said:

hmm? I have lived in numerous apartments and have never had wireless issues. I wonder what the op's reason is though

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Well, wired beats wireless every time, for anyone who does any kind of serious home networkng.. e.g. NAS or HD streaming. If a house comes pre-wired with Cat5, it is certainly a good idea to take advantage of it.

Of course, the OP problem is that he has no clue what he's doing. From the sound of it, he is punching down his Cat5 runs into Cat3 phone termination panel or something similar. My best advise to OP would be to spend a few bucks hiring a professional to properly terminate and test all Cat5 runs.

Without knowing what the cat5e wires connect to, there's not much point of trying to work with them. For all you know they aren't connected to anything but are just there for future building installs. You need to buy a wire tester and see if they are actually running to the patch panel in your utility closet.

Unverrich said:

My thing is, the blue wires are also punched down in this patch panel and have no idea why, they arent being used. so whats the point of the patch panel for the blue wires?

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Someone was using them for voice lines perhaps? ...

My "new" house was previously wired with 4 separate voice lines, some of which were run to various parts of the house with blue Cat 5 cable even though the pairs were split out to individual analog voice lines.

That's a lot of wires for an apt!

B

Unverrich said:

...i wanted to use the blue wire for home networking.

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If you want any sort of reliable network connection they must be terminated properly. All of the blue wires leading to the punch down block should be cut off, and terminated with rj45 plugs. You would then locate your router at the location of the punch down block and plug the individually terminated rj45 plugs into your router leading to the various jacks throughout the apartment. This also requires that your main internet connection be located at the same point, unless you use one of the cat 5 cable to feed your internet connection from another location into the box. The twists in the wires are there to protect the signal integrity and they should be terminated with rj45 plugs no more than an inch from the end of the outer blue jacket. You can probably get by with more considering it looks as though the jacket has been stripped back pretty far. You do not want to try and run a network location through a twisted pair punch down block. At the very least you will need to purchase some rj45 ends, and a matching crimper. Pay close attention to the order of the pairs in the plugs. orange white, orange, green white, blue, blue white, green, brown white, brown. This is the correct order in the rj45 plug when looking at where the wire are inserted into the connector, with the "hook" facing down.

It's common for the phone company to use cat5 for voice lines. It makes it easy to add additional lines after the initial run. They only need to use two out of eight wires to run a voice line then they tie off the rest. If they need to add an additional line in the same apartment later, they pick two more wires and make the connections.

You don't need to mess with preinstalled phone wiring in an apartment. ESPECIALLY if you don't know what you're doing and don't have the proper testing tools. Remember it's not your property, you're just renting.

If you want a wired network, run your own cat5 using surface mount conduit. There's lots available that's pretty unobtrusive. Leave the phone company's wiring alone.

Darth.Titan said:

You don't need to mess with preinstalled phone wiring in an apartment. ESPECIALLY if you don't know what you're doing and don't have the proper testing tools. Remember it's not your property, you're just renting.

If you want a wired network, run your own cat5 using surface mount conduit. There's lots available that's pretty unobtrusive. Leave the phone company's wiring alone.

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What he said. If you don't have a proper cable tester (made by Fluke, JDSU, and number of others) - you really shouldn't be touching this. Also, if you're renting an apartment - you need to get permission from your landlord before you do any wiring changes, especially if you're touching common patch panes serving other apartments in your building (and if I was your landlord - my answer would be a clear "no").

If you do get a permission to do this and you insist on doing it yourself.. I would recommend removing the blue runs from the common patch panel, and terminating them with direct RJ45 ends, which you then plug into a LAN switch.. or investing in a separate Cat5e patch panel just for data connections. But again, I would advise hiring a certified professional to do this, as you seem to have no experience in this sort of thing. And based on the pictures you posted - whoever did the cable termination on these patch panels - did an extremely crappy job.