Can I convert the wall phone connector (BS 6312) to ethernet?

Frank Jeagar · 5 Sep 2016 at 17:54

I just moved into a new flat and every room has a phone connector on the wall (at first I was like, great ethernet! Then I looked closer haha) and I'd like to convert the one in my computer's room to be converted to ethernet so I can wire it's network connection.

I unscrewed the face plate and had a look at the cables behind and there are 2 separate cables supplying the connector; a black one and a white one, and both of them appear to have the necessary wires for ethernet: brown, blue, green and orange (striped and solid), although only the blue and the orange are being used for the current connector and the others are just wrapped up behind the face plate.

Does this mean I can crimp an RJ45 onto the wires and have a wired connection? I would assume there are a couple of extra steps needed, but I've never done stuff like this before because it has never really come up.

Any help is appreciated!

bremen1874 · 5 Sep 2016 at 19:00

You need to read what's written on the cable jacket. It's very unlikely they've used network cable.

lee32uk · 5 Sep 2016 at 19:04

Yeah you want Cat5e ideally.

Rroff · 5 Sep 2016 at 19:04

Sometimes they'll use cat3 unshielded twisted pair for phone wiring - not great for network use - anything else and you'll likely get very poor/unusable results - be lucky if they've used proper network cable.

Frank Jeagar · 5 Sep 2016 at 19:10

bremen1874 said:
You need to read what's written on the cable jacket. It's very unlikely they've used network cable.

I pulled the cable out a bit and couldn't see anything so I wasn't sure if it had writing... I'll have another look.

I understand the cat standards, so I know I need Cat5e at least for it to be worth it.

bledd · 5 Sep 2016 at 19:22

They often daisy chain phone cables, so if this is the case, it won't really be usable

Frank Jeagar · 5 Sep 2016 at 19:30

I had another check and I can't see any writing on the cable, but I can see that there is absolutely no shielding so this looks like a bust... And there is a bathroom between the computer room and the router, so running a wired connection is pretty much out of the question

Thanks for the help though everyone!

Caged · 6 Sep 2016 at 00:39

If you terminate each drop with a double outlet and put a switch there (or a short patch cable between the two sockets) this this might work fine.

Deleted member 77746 · 6 Sep 2016 at 09:06

Take a photo and show us.

Frank Jeagar · 6 Sep 2016 at 09:23

Caged said:
If you terminate each drop with a double outlet and put a switch there (or a short patch cable between the two sockets) this this might work fine.

How would this work exactly? Is it just running two cables to a single connector in parallel to increase bandwidth?

DragonQ · 6 Sep 2016 at 09:36

If the existing cable drop is very straight you might be able to use cable rods to get a new Cat5/6 cable in there. Otherwise I don't think the existing cable is going to be useful. Telephone cable is crap and there probably won't be enough pairs for anything other than 100 Mb/s either.

ov_sjo · 6 Sep 2016 at 09:41

CAT3 is fine for 10BaseT

Frank Jeagar · 6 Sep 2016 at 09:50

DragonQ said:
If the existing cable drop is very straight you might be able to use cable rods to get a new Cat5/6 cable in there. Otherwise I don't think the existing cable is going to be useful. Telephone cable is crap and there probably won't be enough pairs for anything other than 100 Mb/s either.

I might look into running new cable, but I'm not 100% comfortable attempting it since I have no experience. Any tutorials you could recommend?

WILD9 · 6 Sep 2016 at 10:01

Frank Jeagar said:
How would this work exactly? Is it just running two cables to a single connector in parallel to increase bandwidth?

I think Caged is explaining how you would overcome the issue of daisy-chaining rather than the fact the cable is poor quality.

Caged · 6 Sep 2016 at 22:55

Yeah, that. If the cable is Cat5e but only runs between rooms in a ring then you could sort of make it usable by terminating it and either joining the cables together with a short patch lead in rooms where you didn't need network, or using a small switch in the rooms where you did.

Frank Jeagar · 7 Sep 2016 at 20:10

Ahh okay, thanks for the clear up.

There are 4 twisted pairs, so I would have thought I could get enough bandwidth for my Internet, I don't need a super fast local network. Though it is unshielded so I'll have to see.

bremen1874 · 7 Sep 2016 at 21:37

You wouldn't expect it to be shielded even if it was network cable.

Tealc · 8 Sep 2016 at 08:46

The twists on telephone type cable are far less often than you'll find on cat5e cable. The twists work to reduce crosstalk and interference so expect a very compromised connection if you use it.

Shielding is for high noise areas, something you'll not likely need.

WILD9 · 8 Sep 2016 at 11:06

I cant help thinking by the time you've jumped through all these hoops to get a quite possibly unusable connection you would have done better to just buy a couple of powerline adapters or an AC bridge