Our house is wired with CAT5 lines and COAX lines to all rooms in the house. I would like to distribute wired internet access to my existing TV in our living room and future purchased TV in our gameroom for access to Netflix, Amazon Prime movies, etc.

All of the COAX and CAT5 terminate in a closet and the CAT5 wires are all hooked to what I think after doing some searching online is called a data/phone patch panel. Every CAT5 line is unbraided and installed on 1 of the 10 attachment points one of the 4 panels. At the top of each panel, there is a CAT5 input and then a “phone” input. If I have my cable modem CAT5 output line, should I be able to plug this into a distribution panel and make all these lines running to my rooms “live”? I tried this and was unable to get a signal so I’m thinking I may be leaving out a critical step or piece of hardware. Forgive my ignorance on this - any guidance is appreciated!

No.

You'll need something between your modem and all the other lines (a router).

I would try and get a router, feed your modem out line into the router input and then try and plug each of the Cat5 cables into the ports on the router.

A picture might help in this situation, I'm having a hard time figuring out what you're dealing with.

+1 on a pic.

Typically the board that all the lines terminate to have a patch panel that plugs into a switch/router, which then plugs into a modem. Sounds like the lines are terminated into the patch panel but don't go anywhere from there.

More info. = better help.

Here's a crude diagram of what you'll need.



Basically, the cable modem will plug into a router. The router will plug into a switch. Then you'll plug each connector on the patch panel into a port on the switch.

The key concept that needs to be communicated here is that ethernet is a digital signal and you cannot splice or split it simply by tieing the ends together. You can do that with phone lines (analog), which are typically connected in parallel.

That patch panel is a convenient place to tie the CAT5 cables. Those patch panels allow you to use the CAT5 cable for telephones or ethernet. But if you want to use a line for ethernet you need an ethernet switch or hub to manage the signals. The cable modem probably has just one ethernet jack. It needs to go to the router as shown above. You will need several short CAT5 cables to do this. And an 8 port switch should cost about $40-$50.

[This message has been edited by SpicewoodAg (edited 1/3/2012 8:56a).]

Sounds like somebody used cat 5 cable for phone service.

Thanks for the replies. At work but will post a picture this evening to help.

Since the panel has only one ethernet jack, but 10 CAT5 connections spliced into it, I think I need to pull the spliced CAT5 connections I want live with ethernet, crimp some ends on these lines and use a router between the these lines and my output from cable modem.

I'm sure the builder did it the least expensive way possible to say every room is wired with CAT5.

Thanks for getting me on the right track!

Your house sounds similar to ours, built a few years ago.

All the rooms with wiring feed back into a drop box in our wash room.

There is a patch panel like what you're talking about that has an input along with several other outputs. All of our phones are connected through this because, as mentioned above, they're analog and can just be tied together.

Our Cat5 cables were all just hanging in the box when we got the house. The rooms are all wired (the hard part) but we had to put the jacks on the end of the cables.

There is a good chance that the ends in each room are also unterminated. We had to remove the plastic covers and terminate those as well.

I would recommend a good crimper as well as a connection tester - lets you plug a little device into one end of the wire and then plug another little device to the other end and tells you if it is correctly wired into the terminators. For us it is nice cause each room has 2 cat5 jacks and it helped determine which cable was which.

JDCAg - you didn't put "jacks" on the end of those cables. You put "plugs" on them. Ethernet cables are terminated with a RJ45 plug. A router or switch has RJ45 jacks.

You insert a plug into a jack.

I had a similar situation at my house. The builder ran CAT5 for all of the phone lines. Most were installed with the coax in the same wall box/plate. All of the CAT5 originated from a patch panel and terminated at telephone jacks.

Not knowing much about patch panels, I just pulled the cables I need from the patch panel, crimped RJ45 connectors onto the ends and plugged them into a switch. On the other end, I replaced the telephone keystone with a RJ45 keystone. It's all very simple. My setup looks exactly like the drawing above.

Coax > Cable Modem > Router > Switch > CAT5 cables.

In rooms where I require multiple hard wired connections, I simply use a small desktop switch from monoprice.

Thanks for the help. I think I'm good to go with your help here. Going to pull the few CAT5 lines to the room I need live, add connectors, buy a router and then I should be good. After further inspection, these switch panels actually have two (one grey & one blue) CAT5 lines running outside of the house for phone access and then connected to the "in" at the top of the panel. Here is the picture of the setup:



[This message has been edited by AgCPA95 (edited 1/3/2012 8:07p).]

Take all the cat 5 loose, and terminate them with RJ45 ends. I am sure there is a youtube video. It is really easy though. I'd skip the patch panel. Unnecessary for a few rooms of cat5.

Plug them all into a switch from best buy.

Mount switch to the wall with a few screws.

^ I second that

I'd be sure to buy some ends with "channels" to guide the wires up into the ends, it'll save a lot of time and frustration.

Before you terminate the CAT5 cable with RJ45 plugs, you need to determine which CAT5 wiring standard was used for the existing wall plates. There are two standards - 568A and 568B. There is no practical difference between the two, but any single CAT5 cable must be wired at both ends the same way. The A and B standards use the orange and green twisted pairs differently.

http://www.dragon-it.co.uk/files/cat5_colour_codes.htm

[This message has been edited by SpicewoodAg (edited 1/4/2012 9:05a).]