Making use of old copper wiring in-house

Forums › LAN (ethernet/Wifi/routers/Bluetooth) › Making use of old copper wiring in-house - a silly idea?

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nickb800

2715 posts

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#1481518 29-Jan-2016 21:27

That's usually the cable that comes into your house from the street, and doesn't tend to connect to more than one socket - normally other sockets daisy chain off it. Perhaps there was a second line installed separately at some point? But yeah, doesn't sound promising for your plan

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tangerz

616 posts

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#1481774 30-Jan-2016 14:15

Lizard1977: Bad news. The jack in the lounge (which took an age to get off the wall because the guy who installed it didn't leave any slack in the cable) has a different cable to the kitchen, and only has four wires. It looks like they are black yellow white and brown, which doesn't match the other room at all. Any ideas or is the whole idea screwed?

What you have connected to the lounge jack is the cable coming in from the street (essentially making that jack the ETP for the copper line) At some stage it has had the connections from it to both the bedroom and kitchen disconnected (perhaps to increase the ADSL performance).

If you 'fish' in the wall behind the lounge jack you may find the disconnected ends of the cables to the kitchen (and bedroom), which you could then wire to a seperate lounge RJ45 jack (on the cable to the kitchen), leaving the copper line still in place to the lounge jack should a future owner want to use copper!!

webwat

2036 posts

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#1482450 31-Jan-2016 21:03

MikeAqua:

Apologies for tagging on. But if this work with two pair cable. will it work for Cat-5 cable? The phone system in my house is all wired up with Cat-5. Only one line is actually used for a physical connection to a phone. The wiring (6 years old ) is daisy chained does that matter.

Obviously Cat5 has the pairs twisted so will perform better. Try to run another cable if possible though.

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MikeAqua

7769 posts

Uber Geek

#1482631 1-Feb-2016 10:30

Not obvious to me (novice), so thanks for the information.

webwat:

Obviously Cat5 has the pairs twisted so will perform better. Try to run another cable if possible though.

Mike

Lizard1977

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#1482668 1-Feb-2016 11:12

tangerz:

Lizard1977: Bad news. The jack in the lounge (which took an age to get off the wall because the guy who installed it didn't leave any slack in the cable) has a different cable to the kitchen, and only has four wires. It looks like they are black yellow white and brown, which doesn't match the other room at all. Any ideas or is the whole idea screwed?

What you have connected to the lounge jack is the cable coming in from the street (essentially making that jack the ETP for the copper line) At some stage it has had the connections from it to both the bedroom and kitchen disconnected (perhaps to increase the ADSL performance).

If you 'fish' in the wall behind the lounge jack you may find the disconnected ends of the cables to the kitchen (and bedroom), which you could then wire to a seperate lounge RJ45 jack (on the cable to the kitchen), leaving the copper line still in place to the lounge jack should a future owner want to use copper!!

I poked around in the wall behind the jack, and there's nothing else there. It sounds like this idea is dead in the water. A shame, as I had really hoped to be able to make this work.

I guess my options are now down to running new cable or using Powerline adapters. The new cable option is probably going to be most difficult though, as the part of the house where signal is weakest (the kitchen) is an extension built about 30 years ago, which has no easily accessible underfloor access and even ceiling access is probably going to be tricky based on the roofline. So I guess powerline may be the best bet.

tangerz

616 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1483297 2-Feb-2016 10:06

Lizard1977:

I poked around in the wall behind the jack, and there's nothing else there. It sounds like this idea is dead in the water. A shame, as I had really hoped to be able to make this work.

I guess my options are now down to running new cable or using Powerline adapters. The new cable option is probably going to be most difficult though, as the part of the house where signal is weakest (the kitchen) is an extension built about 30 years ago, which has no easily accessible underfloor access and even ceiling access is probably going to be tricky based on the roofline. So I guess powerline may be the best bet.

Looks like the plan is a no go then.

Just a thought. Even if you can't run the cable the whole way to the kitchen area underfloor, you could try running it as far as you can to allow you to place an AP much closer to the area of weak signal. Might be enough to get the result you want. You could even test it beforehand by just runnung the cable through the house and putting the AP where the cable would reach to! ;)

Lizard1977

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#1483391 2-Feb-2016 11:13

Yeah, that is another option. About a month ago I did experiment (half-heartedly) with a spare AP in just the way you suggested, but I was pressed for time and didn't have the time to fully test how much things would improve. I may give it another go this weekend if the opportunity presents itself.

elpenguino

3383 posts

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#1483450 2-Feb-2016 12:23

Don't forget another option is to run cable on the outside of your house. It's quick but it's dirty.

For inspiration, look at a Sky installation near you.

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Lizard1977

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#1490327 11-Feb-2016 13:09

To close off this topic, here's what I've ended up doing. The phone cable that was coming into the lounge socket actually was coming in through a hole in the wall from the next room (our second lounge). While my plan was to put the second AP in the kitchen, that wasn't going to happen without expensive/complicated wiring or powerline, so I decided to see if putting it closer to the kitchen would be good enough. So what I did was pull the old phone cable back into the second lounge, and then fed the ethernet cable back through the same hole in the wall, giving me a wired connection in the second lounge which is much closer to the kitchen than the first lounge. I even terminated the cable in the first lounge with an RJ45 socket in place of the old phone jack keystone, so all I have to do is run a small length of ethernet from the main router to the wall socket. The ethernet cable in the second lounge runs around the perimeter of the room, which isn't the neatest solution but I'm going to tidy it up with some discreet ducting along the skirting board to keep it out of prying hands. So I now have a wired connection point in my second lounge (which also means my desktop PC can be wired rather than wireless for the first time ever), and the AP in the second lounge gives much better signal into the kitchen and other deadspots than the main router (thanks RayTaylor for your useful guide on setting up routers as dumb APs - everything worked perfectly first time).

It doesn't give me a proper, structured wiring solution (that's the long term goal), but it does solve my immediate wifi deadspot problem, using (mostly) gear I already had lying around. I was also able to DIY things, which is always good. I also learned how to wire up RJ45 sockets, which is a nice piece of knowledge to file away.

Thanks to everyone for your advice and suggestions. :)

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