Connecting ONT to existing RJ45 ports

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richms

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#3427043 21-Oct-2025 16:38

The jacket should extend all the way to the outlet, minimal exposed pairs. All cables should be going into the slots from the inside, not the outside like the green and one of the browns seem to be.

The coax should not look like that with exposed shield and that round thing crushed flat. It should have been crimped with a hexagon probably for that type of connector with the jacket extending into the hex area and the braid folded back under the crimp.

The phone one in the middle may go back to another piece of cat5/6 cable and be able to be swapped out for another RJ45 so that its useful, but my worry is that they are using one cable and this is their attempt at splitting the pairs.

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evnafets

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#3427051 21-Oct-2025 17:46

Essentially the wires should not be untwisted as much as they have been.
This website explains it: What does bad termination look like

What I'm wondering about this one:
There are 5 pairs of wires in the photo
4 pairs going (badly) to the ethernet.
Extra blue/white pair coming from another cable for phone?

Are all of the outlet panels the same? With Aerial/phone/data on them?
Or is there a 'different' one you can find?

My house is from approximately the same era, so I'll explain the setup I found when I moved in.

Phone outlets in several rooms with one cable doing a daisy-chain loop around all of them. Unused now.
There is a 3 ethernet socket panel in the office
There is a 1 ethernet socket panel in each of the bedrooms.

3 cables go from the office point - one to each bedroom. (trial and error to figure out which one is which)
Effectively the office point became a sort of "patch panel"

Given that it is approximately the same era, you might have gotten something similar?

Essentially for ethernet you want a 'star' network - with each panel getting its own cable, and all of the cables ending up in one central point where you can put your router.

hope this helps,

evnafets

coffeebaron

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#3427053 21-Oct-2025 18:25

You will ideally need a tone tool and open up every jack-point you can find. Then build up a bit of a map and a plan of action. Then get some new RJ-45 sockets and termination tools. Or get a data cabler in to do it for you. Approx where in the country are you?

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Odsodium

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#3427062 21-Oct-2025 19:31

Appreciate the responses.

I did some investigating and turns out that there are 3 ethernet cables dangling inside the wall of one of the bedrooms. Makes sense now as there are 3 other ethernet outlets in the house.

However, the location is quite inconvenient since my router and ONT are both in the living room and the outlet for the 3 cables is in a room far away and also near the floor.

Ideally the ONT and router should have been installed in a closet or garage? but I think it would be too costly to change that now.

richms

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#3427065 21-Oct-2025 19:44

ONT gets installed in the easiest location where the chorus techs could get away with it. They do not care about your existing cable, they will just blast it thru a wall near where the point of entry is and spin lines like "it should go near your main TV" if that sounds plausible to the people getting the install done.

If you investigate the cabling that is used for the phone you might find that one of those goes back to near where the ont is, and you could repurpose it for Ethernet, assuming its an intact run the whole way.

Richard rich.ms

snj

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#3427088 21-Oct-2025 20:56

Odsodium:

Appreciate the responses.

I did some investigating and turns out that there are 3 ethernet cables dangling inside the wall of one of the bedrooms. Makes sense now as there are 3 other ethernet outlets in the house.

However, the location is quite inconvenient since my router and ONT are both in the living room and the outlet for the 3 cables is in a room far away and also near the floor.

Ideally the ONT and router should have been installed in a closet or garage? but I think it would be too costly to change that now.

Is there power available where the cables are dangling? If the cables are all in working condition, the best solution to get things working would be in the living room, have the router plugged into the ONT, and a cable from the router to the wall. Where the cables congregate have a basic network switch (something like https://www.pbtech.co.nz/product/SWHTPL1003/TP-Link-TL-SG105-5-Port-101001000Mbps-Desktop-Swit) with all three cables plugged in, and then you'll have ethernet in the other two rooms that have ports in the walls, additional switches would be required if you need multiple devices in those rooms.

If there isn't power where the cables meet you'd probably need something like the Ubiquiti Flex Mini switch, and a power-over-ethernet injector to provide the power to it through one of the cable runs.

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#3427096 21-Oct-2025 22:21

Odsodium:

There seems to be a white network cable (ethernet?) going from the ETP into my attic and coming to a wall in the living room where it connects to the ONT. This was added after the home was built.

That cable is called Opticat and it contains cat-5e with 2 strands of single mode fibre.

I recommend you leave that one because it will need special tools if anything goes wrong.

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evnafets

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#3427164 22-Oct-2025 14:04

Are any of the ethernet ports close to the living room where your router is?

Odsodium

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#3427167 22-Oct-2025 14:17

snj:

Is there power available where the cables are dangling? If the cables are all in working condition, the best solution to get things working would be in the living room, have the router plugged into the ONT, and a cable from the router to the wall. Where the cables congregate have a basic network switch (something like https://www.pbtech.co.nz/product/SWHTPL1003/TP-Link-TL-SG105-5-Port-101001000Mbps-Desktop-Swit) with all three cables plugged in, and then you'll have ethernet in the other two rooms that have ports in the walls, additional switches would be required if you need multiple devices in those rooms.

If there isn't power where the cables meet you'd probably need something like the Ubiquiti Flex Mini switch, and a power-over-ethernet injector to provide the power to it through one of the cable runs.

There is power avaliable near the outlet where the 3 ethernet cables meet but I don't fancy the idea of having a switch and 3 ethernet cables coming out of an open outlet laying on the floor.

Any suggestions on how to make things more concealed?

Running the cable from the living room router to the bedroom is no issue. I'll get to checking if all the cables work when I have the chance, if they aren't, I'm thinking of just running some new CAT6 cable.

richms

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#3427168 22-Oct-2025 14:22

snj:

If there isn't power where the cables meet you'd probably need something like the Ubiquiti Flex Mini switch, and a power-over-ethernet injector to provide the power to it through one of the cable runs.

As an alternate for a small switch that can be powered by PoE there are PoE extenders on aliex for $15 or so that will take PoE in to run it, and optionally provide it to the output ports. I have these in use in many places both as their intended purpose of splitting PoE to multiple cameras, and also just to use as a switch that I don't need to find somewhere to plug in.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006412456175.html

And then just find someone with a spare power injector they are giving away.

These are also what I have put into places where the sparky was a moron and daisychained the cat5 between phone outlets to pass ethernet around the house.

Chances are the cables all go to the place where the old owners had the DSL router when that was a thing, and was put in to take it to other locatons in the house from it so I would expect there to be power for a switch tho.

Richard rich.ms

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