I noticed that Toll Brothers now build new houses with 2 new CAT5e lines as a standard. Why? Each CAT5e can support 4 pair of phone lines.
I noticed that both jacks on the same outlet connect to the same phone number in my friend's new house.
Yup, you should not run phone and data on the same cable. It will work but you will get about 1000 "soft" errors every time the phone rings.
It is probably easier for the builder to stock one kind of cable, and use it, for both phone and lan pre-wires.
Cause there is only one phone line to the house, and people expect a phone jack to work?
Are you asking for help for a problem or just why the builder would run 2 cat5 lines?
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I am just requesting information.
I am in the process of finishing a basement. I am putting two CAT5e jacks on each outlet. Voice jack to 66 block, and data jack to the router.
Now this Toll Brother setup was different. Both of their CAT5e jacks on each outlet are voice, with the same phone number. I am just wondering what is the advantage of the setup. If that provide some extra functionality, I might copycat it.
They were just saving the price of putting in the CAT 5 tombstones if the end user was never going to have a LAN. It is easy to switch them out once the wire is in the wall. Centex does the same thing but they put in the RJ45 on one of them. These should all be home runs back to the utility/cable/phone entrance area, usually in the garage so it is easy to install a hub, router or cable modem. They should have also put in a 120v outlet there.
They are probably not really the same phone number as such -- rather, the installer probably just hooked ALL the Cat5 wires up to the same block. When you use two lines, you don't typically wire special "line 1" and "line 2" jack - line 1 is the inner pair and line 2 is the outer pair. So if this house had two phone lines, then they would both be available on any jack. Also, it's possible they used one RJ45 and one RJ11 but just wired them all up to the phone block - if wired "correctly" (for a phone) then the RJ45 would also work, though it was likely intended for a network.
When doing your own house I'd definitely run two CAT 5's and also two coax lines (for TV, and also good for digital audio). Wire is cheap... you'll be glad it's there a couple years from now.
Well, I am not sure if they just wired both jacks to the same block to avoid one of the jacks looking non-functioning.
If the individual CAT5e cables are not labeled clearly at the block (mine were not), then it is a real challenge to find out which cable goes to where from that big mess of phone cables, if one want to remove them from the 66 or 110(?) block and set a LAN at the place.
Jamie wrote:
Waste of time and money. Everything is going wireless.
You think so? I would agree it's a waste if you are considering pulling wires in existing construction, and wireless meets your needs. But for new construction, the cost is minimal. 200 bucks worth of materials tops to do an entire typical house. I would say it's very shortsighted to pass up the opportunity to very inexpensively wire your house when the walls are open, when it will cost you a hell of a lot more in the future if you ever need it.
I have both wired and wireless networks in my house. The wireless is currently inadequate for the following:
1) Streaming uncompressed audio and any decent quality video 2) Moving large files around between PCs 3) General reliability - it is subject to interference from other devices which will only get worse as wireless becomes more pervasive. If you need a solid connection -- e.g. for anything other than casual web browsing -- wireless does not cut it. 4) Coverage - in my house, with plaster walls, I can barely get a signal at the other end of the house, and the basement is out completely. Sure, I could put repeaters everywhere, but how is that better or cheaper than putting in real wires for machines that don't move?It's going to be a long time before you can get enough bandwidth on your in-home wireless network to watch TV... so no question you need the cable for that anyway. Likewise, i've never used a cordless telephone that sounds as good as a wired one, so probably most people will still want phone jacks around their house. I absolutely need hardwires for a streaming audio device.. I tried it wireless and it was too flaky.
So in the end we're talking about one extra home run to each jack for networking. You can buy 1000 feet of Cat 5 for less than 50 bucks. So why gamble on a technology that is not currently consistently reliable, and may become more problematic as more people are fighting over a narrow frequency band? 802.11x has it's place to be sure - I love browsing the internet from my laptop wherever I want to. But it's not for everything, and definitely not a replacement for wires, yet.
Hi, Digitally one pair of wires can do lot of things. Multiple numbers, fax, DSL modem hook up, etc. Here local builders wire new houses for phone, data, audio, video, security hook up throughout the house. I thought U.S.A. is high tech country. I am in Calgary Alberta. Even rural farmers have fiber optics based high speed Internet access. Tony
Hi, Data network within house, how about audio, video, security hook ups? No home theater? No intercom? Local builders put in everything to cover current state of affairs including fiber optics(this is an extra option)
802-11a is latest now. Tony
Your farmers may have fiber optics, but our farmers have FIREARMS!
You've never been to Alberta, have you?
Mike
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