Splicing phone lines without a punchdown block?

flyingcheesehead

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Hi folks,

I'm wiring some stuff for my parents. I have a run of Cat 5e going from one end of the house to the other now, but I've run into a snag.

The goal is to get an Ethernet (10/100 is plenty) connection from one end to the other (also, it's upstairs on one end and downstairs on the other), and also to get a phone line at the upstairs location. To that end, I'm using the orange and green pairs for the Ethernet (1-2-3-6, TIA-568B ) and I was hoping to use the blue and brown pairs for phone lines (the idea is to have the capability of having two phone lines, but only one is connected - The one that's on the blue pair).

So, upstairs will have the orange and green pairs terminated in an RJ45 jack, and the blue and brown pairs terminated in an RJ11 jack. That's done.

Downstairs, however, is "interesting." My parents had some remodeling done and put a kitchen where the laundry room used to be (they have a new laundry room upstairs). The electrical stuff is now in a closet to hide it. The old telephone punchdown block for the house was attached to a joist about 2 feet outside of where the electrical closet is. My mother, in her infinite wisdom, decided that the punchdown block was ugly and thus must be walled in (this after I warned her not to do that - Or at least move it to the closet). So, it's now inaccessible.

There is, however, one short run of Cat 5 that's attached to the phone line (blue pair) on one end, and runs down to the box where the downstairs jacks are going to be.

I was hoping to simply terminate the blue pairs of both runs of Cat5 into the RJ11 jack and have that work as a splice to send things upstairs. Unfortunately, that's not working. So, I somehow need to splice the blue pairs inside that box so that I have one pair going up the Cat5 to pick up the phone line, one going up the 5e to the upstairs, and now a third to terminate in the downstairs RJ11 jack.

The trick is, these all have to be connected inside a wall box downstairs. Do they make miniature punchdown blocks or some kind of splicers that will do this in a very confined area? I feel funny asking this question 'cuz I used to do this for my business sometimes (network, phone, and stereo wiring in the walls) but I must admit I never ran into someone who buried their punchdown block inside a wall. :rolleyes:

Thanks.
 
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Troy has it right..Those are scotchlocks...for solid wire only...
 
Can someone who knows better tell me why just terminating the two lines in the RJ11 jack didn't work? I thought I remembered doing this before and having it work, but as I recall now sometime since I left for college my parents replaced that bit of hackish wiring with another bit of hackish wiring.
 
Can someone who knows better tell me why just terminating the two lines in the RJ11 jack didn't work? I thought I remembered doing this before and having it work, but as I recall now sometime since I left for college my parents replaced that bit of hackish wiring with another bit of hackish wiring.

Should work. Bad connection/crimp would be my guess. RJ11 jacks are meant to take one wire in each spot--getting two in there can be tough.
 
Should work. Bad connection/crimp would be my guess. RJ11 jacks are meant to take one wire in each spot--getting two in there can be tough.

I think Troy's got it. The jack terminals are designed to strip a tiny portion of the insulation from the wire as you push it in by virtue of a 'V' shape to the slot the wire goes into. Putting a second wire into the same slot usually ends up with no connection on the top wire. You can sometimes eliminate the problem by stripping the second wire before pushing it in but that connection can develop corrosion later which causes a "crackling" noise on the phone. The 3-way Scotchlocks are the best approach as they provide a corrosion free, gas-tight connection. I'm not certain that the product RS sells are genuine Scotchlocks but the picture sure looks like it. BTW the last time I bought some (for some reason we used to call them "whiffies") I got a box of 100 for about $12, looks like RS has a pretty steep markup.

BTW, using extra pairs in a Cat-5 Ethernet run for telco lines is likely to have problems with crosstalk. You won't hurt anything but there's a good chance that you'll hear "data" in the phone and an even greater chance that the use of the phone will cause some packet loss on the Ethernet (those would normally be recovered automatically).
 
Don't you get it, guys? It's all ball bearings these days!!!
 

I saw some of those (both - At least I saw red and green, what's the difference?) when my mom showed me pictures she took of where the Cat5 that drops to the downstairs jack was spliced in prior to the drywall being installed.

Troy has it right..Those are scotchlocks...for solid wire only...

Huh - They don't look like the scotch locks I've used before, but sho'nuff: http://solutions.3m.com/wps/portal/...E3E02LECIE20O4M7_nid=NZW3RHPDRDbeDP16W8FB2Ngl
 
When I wired my house with Cat 5 for both telephone and network, I checked continuity on each and every wire to be certain they connected exactly what they were supposed to connect.
See if this link helps...
http://www.mavromatic.com/archives/000458

John,

I'm doing exactly what he's doing (right down to the color pairs), except I don't have the fancy punchdown-to-RJ45 block and I'm using different wall plates (separate from AC power).
 
Can someone who knows better tell me why just terminating the two lines in the RJ11 jack didn't work? I thought I remembered doing this before and having it work, but as I recall now sometime since I left for college my parents replaced that bit of hackish wiring with another bit of hackish wiring.

Should work. Bad connection/crimp would be my guess. RJ11 jacks are meant to take one wire in each spot--getting two in there can be tough.

I think Troy's got it. The jack terminals are designed to strip a tiny portion of the insulation from the wire as you push it in by virtue of a 'V' shape to the slot the wire goes into. Putting a second wire into the same slot usually ends up with no connection on the top wire. You can sometimes eliminate the problem by stripping the second wire before pushing it in but that connection can develop corrosion later which causes a "crackling" noise on the phone.

Yep - I tested the downstairs phone jack. The blue pair in the blue cable (conveniently, the cables are different colors - The blue one is the one the electrician ran to the phone lines, the gray one is the one I ran through the house) is connected to the phone line. When I put that pair into the RJ11 jack first, the phone works when plugged into that jack. When I put the blue pair from the gray cable in first and the blue pair from the blue cable in on top, I get nothing - I even was careful to put the part where the insulation had been cut through directly into the V on the upper pair when I swapped them. No go.

The 3-way Scotchlocks are the best approach as they provide a corrosion free, gas-tight connection. I'm not certain that the product RS sells are genuine Scotchlocks but the picture sure looks like it. BTW the last time I bought some (for some reason we used to call them "whiffies") I got a box of 100 for about $12, looks like RS has a pretty steep markup.

Surely. I'll see what Home Depot has tomorrow.

Those round scotchlocks - do they need anything special to crimp them? The ones I remember you could just use a pair of pliers.
 
BTW, using extra pairs in a Cat-5 Ethernet run for telco lines is likely to have problems with crosstalk. You won't hurt anything but there's a good chance that you'll hear "data" in the phone and an even greater chance that the use of the phone will cause some packet loss on the Ethernet (those would normally be recovered automatically).

How far apart would they need to be to avoid that? I figured that even if I did run a second cable that they'd end up right next to each other anyway - The only "open" part of the run is in the furnace room, I even put Wiremold up going through the garages. Mom's picky about looks! So a second cable would be practically touching the first for the entire run.

The crosstalk issue is especially important because the main reason for running the phone signal to the new jack upstairs is to allow their DSL router to move about 5 feet away from its current location. (Noooooooo, she can't do the easy thing and just run a patch cable from one side of her desk to the other, that would be UGLY! :rolleyes::mad2::loco:) Then, the Ethernet is going to connect the main DSL router to a second WiFi router. So, there will be data going back and forth through both at roughly the same time. If that's gonna cause a lot of packet loss, then I'm gonna need to change something.
 
How far apart would they need to be to avoid that? I figured that even if I did run a second cable that they'd end up right next to each other anyway - The only "open" part of the run is in the furnace room, I even put Wiremold up going through the garages. Mom's picky about looks! So a second cable would be practically touching the first for the entire run.

The crosstalk issue is especially important because the main reason for running the phone signal to the new jack upstairs is to allow their DSL router to move about 5 feet away from its current location. (Noooooooo, she can't do the easy thing and just run a patch cable from one side of her desk to the other, that would be UGLY! :rolleyes::mad2::loco:) Then, the Ethernet is going to connect the main DSL router to a second WiFi router. So, there will be data going back and forth through both at roughly the same time. If that's gonna cause a lot of packet loss, then I'm gonna need to change something.

If there's not other easy way I'd just try it and see. The events most likely to cause trouble on the Ethernet would be going off and on hook with the phone plus dialing. If you separate the wires by as little as a half inch it will reduce the crosstalk considerably. Basically you need to get separation that's 5-10x the center-center spacing of the two wires in a pair.

As to the tool required for Scotchlocks, a small pair of slip-joint pliers works fine. The jaws are supposed to be parallel during the crimp but you can get close enough with regular pliers.

I have no idea what the difference between the red and green ones is other than it looks like the greens are shorter (probably to take up less space when splicing a bunch of wires).
 
The events most likely to cause trouble on the Ethernet would be going off and on hook with the phone plus dialing.

Okay. I don't think there's going to be an actual phone connected to that particular run, just the answering machine, fax, and DSL. Will those events cause problems hooked to any run of wire, or just that particular one?

If you separate the wires by as little as a half inch it will reduce the crosstalk considerably. Basically you need to get separation that's 5-10x the center-center spacing of the two wires in a pair.

Hmmm. To even get a half inch I'd have to drill some holes in a couple of places and stuff ?something? into the wiremold to keep the cables separated. So, I hope there aren't any issues...
 
Take a saw, cut a hole in the wall over the punch block and use it. Either replace and tape/mud the cut out back in, or put a door or picture or whatever over the hole. "I told you not to cover it mom, this is why" should take you through the objections.
 
Take a saw, cut a hole in the wall over the punch block and use it. Either replace and tape/mud the cut out back in, or put a door or picture or whatever over the hole. "I told you not to cover it mom, this is why" should take you through the objections.

Problem is, I'm not exactly sure where it is, and the area is now covered partially with wood (wall above an archway) and drywall (ceiling, so no hanging pictures).

I'm tempted to pull the blue cable out of the wall - It's literally about 10 feet (5 horizontal, 5 vertical) from where the punchblock is to the box, and the transition from horizontal to vertical happens in the electrical closet where the punchblock should have been moved to. I could put a new punchblock in the electrical closet, connected to the blue cable, and of course I'd pull a few more feet of cat5 through the box so I could connect that.

Problem is, I'd still have to get the phone line run upstairs, which means I'd have a choice of either putting the splices in the box anyway, or running a second cable upstairs for the phone anyway, or cutting the cable where it runs above the electrical closet and terminating both ends of it again.
 
I've used the small scotchloks pretty successfully (and the phone company and alarm companies use them, too, so I'd expect no problems).

The other thing I've used is small closed-end crimp-ons. Twist wire pair, insert, crimp w/pliers. I've used them on phone (but not CAT-5) and alarm wiring. Note these aren't the nylon/plastic kind that one uses in car wiring, these are very small, twice the size of a grain of rice, and come in packs of 100.... the outer insulation is flexi-plastic (looks like heat shrink over a small metal crimp tube).
 
You could make a solder splice... I've done it many times with small-gauge solid-wire cable on the job, for extending premade cables, etc. Use a low-voltage iron with a fine tip, stagger the splices and put a little shrink tube (or good tape) over each soldered part as you go, and it should be fine. It's real easy to make a mess of that, but I trust a solder splice in such cable more than a crimp. If you don't have great soldering chops, just grab some scrap cable and practice a little first.

The proper block, even a screw-terminal type, would be best, though.
 
How far apart would they need to be to avoid that? I figured that even if I did run a second cable that they'd end up right next to each other anyway - The only "open" part of the run is in the furnace room, I even put Wiremold up going through the garages. Mom's picky about looks! So a second cable would be practically touching the first for the entire run.

The crosstalk issue is especially important because the main reason for running the phone signal to the new jack upstairs is to allow their DSL router to move about 5 feet away from its current location. (Noooooooo, she can't do the easy thing and just run a patch cable from one side of her desk to the other, that would be UGLY! :rolleyes::mad2::loco:) Then, the Ethernet is going to connect the main DSL router to a second WiFi router. So, there will be data going back and forth through both at roughly the same time. If that's gonna cause a lot of packet loss, then I'm gonna need to change something.

You shouldn't get crosstalk in separate TWISTED PAIR cables, or even in the same one for that matter. The twisted pairs isolate from the others. Newer cables are designed to allow POTS and Ethernet on separate twisted pairs in the same cable jacket.

The phone line side of the DSL modem is going to be very tolerant - better if the red-green-yellow-black cable is twisted pairs vs. the heavy gauge straight 1960s-era stuff. As a touch point, mine is on an old cable like that about 100 feet from the IT and I get the full 3MBs Internet fine and reliably.

More of a risk is the Ethernet side. Believe it or not the capacitance of the connection is even an issue, i.e. the big 64 punchdown blocks are not allowed on 100mb Ethernet but the smaller 100 blocks due the capacitance of the surface of the bigger lugs.

In spite of all that, I've gotten 10mbs to work fine even with "temporary" strip and twist splices. You can push 10bms ethernet over barbed wire. You just can't get the full 100 meter distance. If the run is short you have few worries.
 
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You shouldn't get crosstalk in separate TWISTED PAIR cables, or even in the same one for that matter. The twisted pairs isolate from the others. Newer cables are designed to allow POTS and Ethernet on separate twisted pairs in the same cable jacket.

Multiple UTPs in the same sheath do offer some pretty good isolation from each other but it's nowhere near perfect when the distance between the pairs is similar to the distance between the two wires of a single pair. Like I said before, it may work fine but don't count on it, especially on a long run.
 
In spite of all that, I've gotten 10mbs to work fine even with "temporary" strip and twist splices. You can push 10bms ethernet over barbed wire. You just can't get the full 100 meter distance. If the run is short you have few worries.

Ahh, Cisco's Long Reach Ethernet involves some sort of modem AFaIK, or at least it's not standard Ethernet baseband. Heck with the right electronics you can push 10Mbs "Ethernet" through a vacuum.

I do agree that 10Mbs true Ethernet is pretty forgiving of the medium, depending on the distance.
 
How'd it work out, Kent?

I just used some of these splice connectors today (Lowes had 'em) running a new fax line for the chiropractor's office my wife works for.

The red ones take THREE wires. I used the red ones to tie into the existing gray cable that had three pairs of twisted pair (blue/white-blue, brown/white-brown, orange/white-orange) wires in it. I pulled the sheathing back on the original fax line run, exposing the pairs. I snipped the blue/white-blue pair (this line only used the T1/R1 run) that was used for the "line 1" POTS fax line.

(see here for USOC phone wiring diagram)

Into one of the red three-wire splice locks I placed the two blue ends of the wire I'd just cut, and the blue wire from my new fax line run.

Into the other red three-wire splice lock, I placed the two white-blue ends of the wire I'd just cut, and the white-blue wire from my new fax line run.

At the other end of my new home-run, I punched the blue pair down on pins 3 and 4 of a new Leviton USOC RJ25 block, and replaced the existing 2-plug plate (phone and data) with a new 3-plug plate (fax, phone and data).

The green connectors may be for splicing 2 connectors instead of 3?

I agree you can buy them cheaper (somebody mentioned 100 for $12), but if you don't do this everyday, why would you want 100 connectors laying around in your garage? I picked up a variety pack at Lowes today, Ideal 25-pack Telephone Splice Connector Kit, Lowes part # 85-960, and I see now that the kit contained not only the red 3-wire and yellow 2-wire SPLICE connectors, but also blue TAP connectors--the blue TAP connectors would have been better suited to my application today, as it would have allowed me to tap into the existing run without cutting the wires on that run.
 
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How'd it work out, Kent?

Well, I went to Home Depot and bought a pack of the red 3-wire scotch locks. 25 for $4.19, a very reasonable compromise between Radio Shack's $3.29 for a 4-pack and having 99 of them sitting around the house for all eternity.

Worked like a charm:

Before:
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After:
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I put the upstairs router on that phone line. So far, so good. Second router will go in soon, and we'll see how well the ethernet and phone play together.
 

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Yeah...I see no similarity at all...sory for the confusion...:rolleyes:

I'm thinking he's used to this style of Scotch-Locks, and they don't look like the red- and green-button style:

http://www.megatronixusa.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Category_Code=3MSCOTCHLOCK

Nice job, Kent. Why'd you mount the jacks upside down? ;-)

(this is like the infamous "which way does the toilet paper roll go", which everyone knows should be so that the paper comes over the top and hangs off the front, not so that it hangs down and rolls off the back next to the wall)
 
Yeah...I see no similarity at all...sory for the confusion...:rolleyes:

I'm thinking he's used to this style of Scotch-Locks, and they don't look like the red- and green-button style:

Bingo. That is the kind I've used before.
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Nice job, Kent. Why'd you mount the jacks upside down? ;-)

I just KNEW some purist would say that. :rofl: It used to be everyone mounted them tab-side up, and then someone said "Oh no, they might get dirty that way and not work! Mount them tab side down!" Frankly, I think the dirty thing is a bunch of BS, and I think tab-up is more aesthetically pleasing (or at least *I* can't get used to having them the other way) so I put 'em in the way I like 'em.

Interestingly enough, these Leviton jacks and plates only fit together one way, and on the back of the plate it says "UP" on one end. So I suppose technically they are upside down, according to Leviton. I need to switch brands now. :rofl:
 
:rofl::rofl::rofl:

We do AV installations and scotchloks are banned.. This is some of my competitors "wiring"


Bingo. That is the kind I've used before.
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I just KNEW some purist would say that. :rofl: It used to be everyone mounted them tab-side up, and then someone said "Oh no, they might get dirty that way and not work! Mount them tab side down!" Frankly, I think the dirty thing is a bunch of BS, and I think tab-up is more aesthetically pleasing (or at least *I* can't get used to having them the other way) so I put 'em in the way I like 'em.

Interestingly enough, these Leviton jacks and plates only fit together one way, and on the back of the plate it says "UP" on one end. So I suppose technically they are upside down, according to Leviton. I need to switch brands now. :rofl:
 

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:rofl::rofl::rofl:

We do AV installations and scotchloks are banned.. This is some of my competitors "wiring"

Holy crap, that's ugly! :eek:

Dunno why you'd "ban" scotchloks entirely, but they should be used sparingly, and only when there isn't another good option (as in my case). That picture is most certainly a VERY excessive use!

Y'know, when I was in business doing this stuff, the worst people we had to clean up after were the FREE INSTALLATION! cable TV guys.
 
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