Wiring through a patch panel

Forums › LAN (ethernet/Wifi/routers/Bluetooth) › Wiring through a patch panel - advice plz

KTran

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Topic # 22562 1-Jun-2008 00:54

hi all,

Just found this very helpful forum recently while I was looking for ways to wire up my house - which is currently being built. I've been searching through the forum and found some really good posts. Below is a simplified (4 port) schematic of what I am planning to do (will probably go for a 16 or 24 port). The bit I was unsure about was how to wire the phone connection of the alarm to the patch panel setup. Is this the correct way to do it? Thanks in advance.

Patch panel schematic of a simple 4 port setup

Patch panel schematic of a simple 4 port setup

ort setup

cyril7

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Reply # 134711 1-Jun-2008 07:56

Hi, so you intend to permanantly wire all wall plates with the phone at all times? Whilst this is ok, its not really advised as you preclude GigEthernet operation. I personally would decide which wall plates are the most likely place to have a phone, and install two RJ45s on those wall plates and run a cat5e to each. On your patch panel upsize it to 24, and reserve 3-4 jacks at the end for phone patching, wire the phone circuit to the centre pair or those jacks only. Then use patch cords to patch the phone to any wall jack as required, or to the switch if ethernet is desired.

As for the alarm, normally alarms have a sieze mode, this requires that the phone line from the splitter goes to the alarm panel first, the line then returns from the alarm to wire onward to the house phones. If you open your alarm panel you should see there is four termainal slots (or a Mode3 RJ12) to do this, this lets your alarm take control of the line should it need to dial out, it also means a burglar cannot enter your house, lift a phone and half dial a number so stopping the alarm from dialing out while he eats your fridge out, and takes your TV.

What are you doing for a test port, the lattest PTC have recommended that a RJ45 is used (could be on patch panel or on a wall plate near the panel), the inbound line wires to pins 4/5 as usual, the outbound from the test port to pins 1/2. You can then make a special cable that connects 4/5 to a MM3200B ADSL filter and also goes to your DSL modem, the return from the filter comes back to pins 1/2, which from the rear of the jack wires to the alarm and onward to the phones.

Cyril

KTran

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Reply # 135169 3-Jun-2008 13:21

hi Cyril,

For now, I intend to wire both a phone and an ADSL connection to every port - this gives more flexibility. If there is the need to upgrade to gigabit, then I will just unconnect the phone to the ports (at the patch panel) that I want gigbit to run through.

Thanks for the heads up about the alarm system. Here is an updated version of the schematic:

The house is currently being built and the gib won't go in for another week or so. I have wired in 20 cat5e lines (6 bedroom house) and will need to talk with the electrician who is doing the alarm and phone connection to sort out the test jack.

cyril7

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Reply # 135176 3-Jun-2008 13:33

No worries, I presume from that then you will be placing both a RJ45 and BT socket on each faceplate, very expensive option as BT mechs dont come cheap, or will they both be RJ45 but only one wired for data and other phone only?

Cyril

sbiddle

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Reply # 135179 3-Jun-2008 13:40

Looking at your diagram I still get the idea that you are hard wiring the phone to a jackpoint which means you can't patch it.

If you have a look at my DIY wiring guide here you will see that I use ports 13-16 of a 16 port patch panel for the incoming PSTN line and you can then jumper these 4 ports across to any of the other 12 jacks on the patch panel. This means it's very simple to reconfigure the phones.

The other issue to factor in is whether you may want to move to a VoIP solution with an ATA in the future. If you do want want a monitored alarm to continue working over VoIP (many will work OK but that is beyond this thread) you would obviously need to make provision between the ADSL splitter and alarm to insert an ATA.

cyril7

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Reply # 135182 3-Jun-2008 13:55

Yeah steve I tried to expain that before, but there we go. Along with limiting flexibility it also means its possible to overload the REN figure. Once again I would warn against permantely wiring a phone circuit.

If you are after a premade test point including DSL filter and modem cables PM and I can quote you one, most sparkies dont have a clue.

Cyril

KTran

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Reply # 135185 3-Jun-2008 14:11

cyril7: No worries, I presume from that then you will be placing both a RJ45 and BT socket on each faceplate, very expensive option as BT mechs dont come cheap, or will they both be RJ45 but only one wired for data and other phone only?

Cyril

I will have two RJ45 ports per room and each port will be wired for both ADSL and phone.

cyril7

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Reply # 135188 3-Jun-2008 14:15

Halt right there, if you plug an ethernet device into any of those room sockets it will loop the phone line and the phone will never work. There is a standard structured cable practice as both myself and stevebiddle have described, doing what you plan to do will not work.

All 10/100Base T Ethenet PHY interfaces short the unused pairs together and then terminate that via 100 or 75ohms to the reference ground, this will cause your phone line to not work.

Cyril

KTran

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Reply # 135189 3-Jun-2008 14:21

sbiddle:
Looking at your diagram I still get the idea that you are hard wiring the phone to a jackpoint which means you can't patch it.

If you have a look at my DIY wiring guide here you will see that I use ports 13-16 of a 16 port patch panel for the incoming PSTN line and you can then jumper these 4 ports across to any of the other 12 jacks on the patch panel. This means it's very simple to reconfigure the phones.

The other issue to factor in is whether you may want to move to a VoIP solution with an ATA in the future. If you do want want a monitored alarm to continue working over VoIP (many will work OK but that is beyond this thread) you would obviously need to make provision between the ADSL splitter and alarm to insert an ATA.

Hi steve,

Thanks for the link. I plan to do exactly what you have done but instead of wiring the phone to just 4 ports, I plan to wire to it to all the ports so that each port will support both ADSL and phone. If, further down the line, I only want 4 of the ports to support ADSL and phone, then all I have to do is remove the phone line jumpers to all but 4 of the ports so from this point of view, the wiring is not considered permanent - is this correct?

Do you mind drawing a quick schematic of the wiring you did in your DIY guide? That would be most appreciative.

KTran

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Reply # 135190 3-Jun-2008 14:28

cyril7: Halt right there, if you plug an ethernet device into any of those room sockets it will loop the phone line and the phone will never work. There is a standard structured cable practice as both myself and stevebiddle have described, doing what you plan to do will not work.

All 10/100Base T Ethenet PHY interfaces short the unused pairs together and then terminate that via 100 or 75ohms to the reference ground, this will cause your phone line to not work.

Cyril

Oh, I wasn't aware of that.
So each RJ45 port cannot support both ADSL and phone if I intend to it as an ethernet port? But if intend to use it as a phone port, then it should be ok?

cyril7

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Reply # 135191 3-Jun-2008 14:33

Correct, I had assumed from your original post that you intended to have a RJ45 and BT on each faceplate, the blue pair to the BT and the rest to the RJ45, that would work. But to do as you intend to do will not.

As both myself and steve have outlined the correct thing is to wire all circuits fully through at both the face plate and patch panel. On some of the spare jacks of the patch panel wire just the blue pair in parallel (steve shows this in his blog) this line goes to the phone, you can then use a patch cable to patch the phone to the room socket at will using these phone distribution jacks on the patch panel.

If you want both phone and ethernet on a particular faceplate at the sametime then it can be done using appropriate adpators, and both a patch to the above desicribed phone patch and the ethernet switch, I will get some links for appropriate devices.

What steve and I have described is the most flexible, and the structured cabling standard, what you propose to do is not.

Here is a voice/data combiner/splitter, there are several other sources and they come in other physical formats, but as you see you place one on the patch panel and one in the room of the line you wish to use, then patch phone and data into and out of each end, this lets you use both phone and data simultaneously without issues, what you propose will have issues.

Cyril