I would like to add a phone jack to my office but i want to make sure that the DSL will still work there, as it does in the other rooms that currently have phone jacks (i.e. those installed professionally by the phone company).
If i dont want to spend $75 for getting a new jack installed, can i simply plug some kind of a wire into an existing jack and get that jack "extended" to another room, without losing any signal quality (which might impact the DSL availability in the office)
Where does one go to get the stuff to install a phone jack oneself? Radio Shack or is there a better place? I live in the San Francisco Bay Area.
You don't want to do any actual wiring, is that it? Anyplace that sells telephone wiring will have a device that plugs into your jack and has two jacks on it. Plug an extension into one of them and put it wherever you want.
Wiring it properly is not much harder. Just connect the red wire to the red wire on your jack, and the green to the green. Attach a jack to the other end of the wire and you have it.
As long as the phone jack is installed properly it will have no effect on the DSL, as the DSL and the phone line share the same pair in most cases. Paying $75 is not a bad price for a phone jack, especially in a high cost of living area such as yours. That said, installing a phone line generally is easy but there are many factors. How is the current phone line installed? Is there a central point that all phone lines go to or is it the classic Daisy chain install that has been prevalent up to the last few years? Do you have attic or crawlspace access to an existing phone line you could tap into? Do you have the ability to drill into the top cap of the wall and snake a phone wire down (or up) to where you want the jack? You can make some pretty clean splices into existing phone line. You should go ahead and use some high quality Cat5e cable, and for splicing some Scotchlok IDC Commununication Connectors should be used. There are kinds for tap splicing and butt splicing. These are gel filled and made just for this. DON'T just twist and wrap with electricians tape. I can probably have you banned from this site if you use electricians tape. :-) If you take this route, sit down at the kitchen table and waste a few connectors and some wire making sure you understand how to use them before crawling under the house or into the attic.
I suggest you look into someone beyond the phone company that does Low Voltage and structured wiring. Many of the tools you need for some of this work they will have. I (ahem) do this stuff, but my price would probably be in the $1000 range as I would have to buy a plane ticket from Dallas to get there. Of course, if you hit the Lotto and want me to come out there.....
Anyway, good luck with the project. Let me know how it goes.
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